Why is it so hard for people to understand us when we share our faith? I don’t even mean why is it hard for people to believe that the events in the Bible depict God’s involvement in humanity, but why do people have a hard time believing that we actually experience God?
I was pondering this during my morning commute. It makes a sort of sense, actually. When we tell people that we’ve experienced “that small, still voice” inside of us, it sounds as if we’re crazy. True, I’ve never experienced an actual, audible voice, but I know for certain that God has spoken to me. How do I know? I can’t explain it. It’s “just a feeling”. I guess that makes me sound like a nut, doesn’t it?
After all, people experience all kinds of subjective internal states all of the time. Every emotion, whether anger, or fear, or anxiety, or joy is something that only we can experience within ourselves. Nobody else can plug into our nervous system and actually feel what we feel (CAT, PET, and other types of scans aside). So how do you tell someone that how you experience God isn’t just another emotional or mental internal state that starts and stops inside of your brain and biochemistry? From a secular humanist point of view, that’s all it should be.
Then I thought about people like Ray Charles (EDIT: The information about Ray Charles is incorrect…see Richard’s comments below) or Jose Feliciano; people who were blind from birth. They never, ever, ever saw…anything. How do they know that this thing called “sight” is even real? Sure, people tell them there are such a thing as “colors” and that they can be “seen”, but what does that mean to someone who has never experienced vision?
Now imagine you are the first person to visit a planet where all the people are blind. It’s not a disability for them, it’s a state of reality. The very concept of “sight” doesn’t exist for them at all. They experience their world only through the other four senses and for them, that’s completely normal.
So you land in your spaceship and are warmly greeted by these people. You get to comparing your worlds and your cultures and you get around to saying what a lovely planet they’ve got. At first, they assume you mean it sounds lovely or it smells lovely, but then you start talking about “colors” and “visual textures” and things you can only experience if you can see. They think you’re nuts. You try as hard as you can to describe the very concept of seeing and all the different kinds of information you can gather with your eyes, but they just have no frame of reference for what you are telling them. They think you’ve been drinking too much from their local brand of “happy juice” or whatever.
If you are very fortunate, maybe just a few of these people will take into account that you are an alien and that your sensory system is built differently from the one they have. They conclude that it just may be possible you are able to experience something that they can’t because you come from another environment with different requirements. You are unique among them, but only because you come from a completely different place.
Let’s change the scenario slightly. You are born on the planet of the blind and you experience blindness as part of the way things are. In fact, being blind really isn’t a concept for you. You can’t miss a sight that you never had. Then you contract some sort of odd illness…a mutated virus infects you and affects you in a unique way. You wake up one morning having grown these weird objects on your face and these objects are feeding you a completely new kind of information. You don’t even have words to describe what you are experiencing. Yes, I’m talking about “sight”, but if you’ve never experienced sight before; if it isn’t even a theoretical concept in your world; if you have never met anyone else who’s had this experience, what do you say about it?
Taking the scenario just a bit further, let’s say the mutated virus starts affecting other people, but only a minority of the overall population. For some reason, only a small percentage of the people in your world develop this new sense. You meet with and interact with the others like you and figure out that you are all experiencing the same thing. It’s a terrific relief to finally be able to share your “vision” with other people and, around them, you start to feel “normal” again. And as time passes, you also discover that you and those like you, can “infect” others with the “gift” of vision, but they have to be willing.
Excited about what your group of people have to offer, you start telling the unseeing people around you about what you possess and saying they can have it too, if they’re willing. They think you and your group are nuts and most people want no part of you. They think you’re delusional or psychotic or are trying to scam them in some way. Certainly, most people aren’t going to voluntarily let you infect them with a virus just because you “say” it will be beneficial. Only a few people really listen to you and of those few, only a minority volunteer to receive new sight. Those that do are excited and thrilled, but find that it tends to cut them off from their family and friends who have rejected the gift. Only people who have willingly accepted the gift of sight understand.
The metaphor isn’t perfect, but I think it does somewhat communicate the idea of how it is for a believer to try and tell others what it’s like to experience God when the audience, who hasn’t accepted the existence of God, doesn’t have a basis for that experience. Actually, that’s not quite true. If non-believers never experienced God, how would they ever become believers (and how did we ever become believers)? Everyone experiences God in one way or the other, but it’s a matter of accepting that experience for what it is, rather than passing it off.
What if Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus thought that he had been hallucinating when he saw that bright light and heard the voice of the Messiah? What if he thought his blindness and his other experiences were the result of a medical condition such as a brain tumor? He didn’t, but then he was raised from childhood to understand that the God of Israel is The God. Our secular friends in 21st century America don’t have that advantage.
Can God give sight to the blind? Yes, but only if they are willing. In Mark 10:47-52 a blind beggar cries out to the “Son of David” to be healed of his blindness. The crowd around him tries to discourage him, but the man cries out all the more. He got Yeshua’s (Jesus’) attention, and by faith, Yeshua healed the man of his blindness. The result was the man started following Yeshua. Mark 1:40-42 depicts a man afflicted with tzara’at (often mistranslated as leprosy, but more accurately thought of as a “spiritual skin disease”…see Numbers 12:1-10 for one example). The man asks Yeshua to heal him if he’s willing. Yeshua, filled with pity, is willing and heals the man but in fact, both of them had to be willing. The blind man and the man with tzara’at had to both recognize that Yeshua was able to heal them and they had to be willing to let him perform that healing.
Of course, Yeshua was completely unaware of having healed the woman with the “issue of blood” (as depicted in Matthew 9:19-22 and Mark 5:21-34 for example) so he didn’t have to be consciously willing in that instance…but she did. While everyone can experience God, they have to be willing to open up to the experience and recognize it for what it is. When we communicate our experience with God, the people we’re talking to have to be willing to at least consider that this is possible and not just some fantasy of ours.
When you share your experience with God with others and they aren’t enthusiastic about it or worse, ridicule you…try not to be discouraged. I know it’s not easy for people to discount your faith and your relationship with God, but keep in mind that they’ve never experienced that before, or at least they’ve never let themselves recognize the experience for what it was. Remember, it’s not “all about you”, it’s about Him. People aren’t really ridiculing you or making fun of you, they are choosing not experience Him. Sometimes, the best way to communicate that experience is not with words, but by how you live. Don’t just tell people what it’s like to see; show them by living out a life full of light.
#1 by David Rudel - March 26th, 2009 at 10:27
This is great!
#2 by James - March 26th, 2009 at 11:05
I’m honored. Thanks.
#3 by Rich Breton - March 27th, 2009 at 07:18
Wow, Excellent!
#4 by Heidi - March 27th, 2009 at 08:26
Great analogy. Your thought process reminds of an H.G. Wells story, “The Country of the Blind.” The story is a rebuttal to the maxim by Desiderius Erasmus “In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
In it, H.G. Wells imagines a similar scenario, a villiage cut off from the world where no one knows what sight is, and they have all lived without it their entire lives. In the end, in order to be accepted into the community, the sighted man who stumbles into their city is asked to put out his own eyes.
You may be familiar with this story; it has always made me think differently about how preconceptions affect our reasoning, and established ideas and thought patterns may look silly from a completely different point of view.
#5 by Richard - March 29th, 2009 at 04:09
Two things – First it is a great analogy, but your statement on Ray Charles is incorrect – Ray was not blind at birth, he went blind around the age of seven. You are leaving yourself open to unwanted criticism by using that particular analogy.
Second – (Opinion) I feel that you seem to unfairly criticize the outside world. Most people (I’ve met) do not “discount your (my) faith and your (my) relationship with God” except possibly the hardcore atheists I’ve come into contact with. That is like saying “My version of Christianity is the only true version of Christianity”. God loves us all and wants us to believe and will help us along our walk with him. But we all have different paths to walk. And to say that others do not understand seems a bit elitist. My God is a god of the people and very accessible given the right circumstances. It’s only when you rush them quoting scripture do most people shut down. We can bring people to God by simply being a good, not scratch that, a great example to others. If you are they will ask and you have your opening.
You make it sound like this will always be a hard road to travel as a Christian or believer, I disagree – I only think it is hard to share if your eyes are not open to the opportunities around you – and you only come off as “crazy” or “alien” if you act that way by being too fanatical. We are in a soft sell world and people respond if you give them half a chance and don’t chase them away.
And I’ll be honest – I’m not perfect and I’ve chased away my fair share, but I’ve helped a few non-believers begin their walk and for that I’m grateful.
#6 by James - March 29th, 2009 at 05:53
Thanks for setting me straight about Ray Charles, Richard. I should have checked my information before posting that. I think I’ll let the error stand though, since your comment “corrects” the misinformation and, as you say, the analogy still communicates my intent.
I think that what I was trying to say though (and perhaps I didn’t do a very good job), is that we can attract people to faith by the example of our lives. It’s not just what we say but what we do and how we live that either sanctifies (upholds His reputation) or desecrates (tears down His reputation) the Name of God in the world.
In a sense though, I think the Bible *does* call us to appear a little “crazy” or “alien”(see John 15:19). Much of the content of Paul’s letters call for believers to adopt behavior that honors God but is inconsistent with how people around us behave. While that makes us appear sometimes odd, it’s also what tells the world that we truly do follow a different way of life when we live a life of faith.
The two examples I give in this blog post are of people who have a hard time listening to our message because of what it represents to them. What I was trying to say is, aggressively evangelizing to a group or individual who has already decided that our message is a “threat”, isn’t going to get these folks to automatically listen. After all, they are somewhat steeled against the message and perceive it as a threat against them and how they live.
As you say (and I agree), how we live our lives is the best witness of our faith. In Matthew 7:17-20, we are taught about how to recognize a tree by its fruit. It’s our “fruit” that will show the world around us that our faith is not in vain.
If we are used to help spread His message, we should be honored to be in the service of His cause, but remember that we aren’t the ones doing the leading…it’s Him.