Seeing, Not Seeing, and Believing

This is a guest post by Revd Dr Tim Judson, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford.

At the end of the summer term, the ministers-in-training at Regent’s Park College gathered for a science-informed retreat day.

Revd Dr Dave Gregory—Baptist Missioner for Science and Environment—presented one of his videos from the series God Saw That It Was Good (funded by an ECLAS Scientists in Congregations grant). The video illuminated something of the wonder and fragility within creation, offering a kaleidoscope of images that exhibited the content he delivered to us. Dave also invited us to use phone microscopes to take close-up photographs of parts of creation that we could see around us at the retreat venue – and some stunning images were captured.

We noted that the first creation account in Genesis 1 reflects how “God saw” that what he made was good or even very good. The book of Job was also highlighted, where, after Job is finally confronted by the Lord, he exclaims: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” What an extraordinary statement: that Job had heard witness of God’s ways and works, but now gazed at the Creator and his response is to “repent in dust and ashes”.

It seems that seeing is a tremendous gift to many of us. We look and we can see incredible things. Much scientific research examines evidence of things that are seen, or at least, are perceived to be seeable. Technologies such as telescopes, microscopes, or data visualisation techniques are all about seeing. Our ability to navigate life depends on being able to see, and connecting to the world through this sense can be a means of inhabiting reality. Furthermore, many of the ways in which we speak about knowledge and understanding involve the metaphor of seeing.

Yet I couldn’t help but sense a significant “but” in how we think about sight, not just physically, but spiritually and theologically. I’m not convinced that things are quite as clear as we sometimes perceive them to be by simply looking.

A few years ago, I lost my eyesight.

Since then, my vision has pretty much recovered, but I live with permanent scarring in the backs of my eyes which means I cannot gaze at things clearly in the way I used to. It becomes painful to try, not physically (though headaches can arise if I strain too hard), but emotionally, because it grieves me that I do not have the same gift of sight that others have. I have never been able to gaze deeply at my youngest son, who was born after the issue arose. I can see a lot still, but it is tainted by the abiding memory of how things were for me at the beginning.

I wonder whether this can teach us something about the way we perceive Creation in general. We look at the world in all its rich variety: the wonder, the order, the non-order, and the continual work of renewal through death and resurrection that occurs. It is not hard to appreciate its beauty, and yet there are many ways we have marred God’s world, as well as ways in which we simply have to live alongside phenomena that are painful and confusing to behold at times. One can sense Job’s frustration at the supposed randomness of some of the forms of suffering he experienced. Seeing something does not necessarily mean knowing it.

I am reminded of Paul’s famous words: “For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known”. I would encourage us all, including myself, to recognise that what we perceive is real, and yet we only perceive it (in a theological sense) partially, through frosted glass, through sinful horizons, and through provisional eyes.

If my experience of losing my sight with its subsequent scarring has taught me anything, it is that I can be certain of things that I cannot see. Having experienced and beheld people, things and events clearly in the past, I have learnt to depend not on my sight, but on the One in whom I have faith. I know that God is near, though I sometimes cannot perceive it. I know that Christ is making all things new in this penultimate world, though at times it seems impossible to see.

Sight is indeed a gift of God’s image in us. But for those who cannot see, and whose sight is inhibited or marred by the complexities of life, perhaps we may have an insight into a deeper vision – one that is born and lives by faith and not by sight. Much as it is difficult at times, I believe this “vision” enables me to live not in relation to the way things are, but to have an imagination constituted according to how things will one day be, even if I cannot see it through earthly eyes.

Read more about the Science for Seminaries project ‘Science and Religion in the Baptist World’ at Regent’s Park College here.