Faith Vision

Pine Logs Do you see all those trees laying on the ground?

I realize most people looking at this photograph will just see a bunch of useless pine logs laying in a forest.  However, I see something entirely different.

Yes, I see the pine logs.  Yes, I see they are laying on the ground in the middle of the woods.

Nevertheless, I also see a new hay barn.

I see stacks of 2×4 and 2×6 lumber cut in lengths varying from 8 feet long to 16 feet long, neatly stacked and bundled, fresh from the sawmill.

I know what size and length boards will go where in the barn structure.  I know how the ends of boards will be coped to fit the required joinery.  I know how many screws to put in each connection, and have already increased some board sizes to make room for enough screws.

I have detailed plans for those prostrate pine logs and, because I have plans, I have a vision.  Yes, I see the pine logs.  Nevertheless, I also see a new barn.

For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for prosperity and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)

dirt padDo you see that dirt pad in our pasture?

I realize most people looking at this photograph will just see a pile of dirt and mud spread across the ground.  However, I see something entirely different.

Yes, I see the dirt pad in the middle of a pasture.

Nevertheless, I also see the site of our new barn.  I see the lumber (not yet milled) stacked neatly ready for construction.  I see the roof trusses being carefully assembled so they will all match and all fit.  I see the walls being framed and erected with concrete footings.  I see the fully framed structure standing tall and sturdy, well built and well braced.  I see the roof and wall cladding attached to close it in and keep the rain out.  I see a finished barn ready for hay to be stored, so our livestock will have food next winter.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1, KJV)

The substance of things hoped for…

Those logs have substance… but they are not yet a barn.

That dirt pad has substance… but it does not yet have a barn standing on it.

These are the substance of things hope for.  This is the wood from which we will construct a barn.  This is the site on which we will construct it.

The evidence of things not seen…

I cannot yet see that barn with my physical eyes.  It exists only in my mind… in my vision of faith and hope.  My plans stand as evidence.  Those pine logs are evidence.  That dirt pad is evidence.  I can point to that evidence and say, “See, this is how the barn will be built.  Here is where it will stand.  Here is the wood from which it will be constructed.  Here is a drawing of what it will look like.”

What ties this all together?  How do those pine logs and dirt pad become a barn?  What keeps the pine logs from rotting in the forest?  What keeps the dirt pad from washing away or being overgrown with grass and weeds?  What keeps them from becoming a distant memory without ever reaching the fulfillment of becoming a hay barn?

Faith, hope, and plans bring the vision to fruition.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He favored us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He set forth in Him, regarding His plan of the fullness of the times, to bring all things together in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him we also have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things in accordance with the plan of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in the Christ would be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of the promise, who is a first installment of our inheritance, in regard to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory. (Ephesians 1:3-14)

Wow!  Now that’s some plans!  Plans made by God before the foundation of the world… plans involving you and me… plans about our eternal destiny as children of God.

In God’s plans, you and I are the substance of things hope for, the evidence of things not yet seen.

You may look at me and see a flawed man… a man with a lot of limitations… a man who struggles discerning the right thing to do… a man prone to selfishness and sin… a man with a lot of insecurities.  And you would be right… just as those pine logs are right now a bunch of trees laying prostrate in the forest.

Nevertheless, when God looks at me, He sees me blessed with every spiritual blessing… chosen in Him… holy and blameless… predestined as His son… beloved… redeemed… forgiven… royal heir… sealed with the Holy Spirit… to the praise of His glory!

Glory!

God looks at you and me through eyes of faith… based on His plans… the substance of things hope for… the evidence of things not seen.

God has plans!

Lord, help me to see myself and others through your eyes of faith.

Miraculous Evidence

I recently read a Facebook comment lamenting the lack of objective proof of God’s existence. The guy seemed very sincere.  He mentioned his own personal crisis of faith and feeling disillusioned with his religious heritage.

I wrote a few words intended to encourage. I meant to come back to the post, but it was lost in my newsfeed.

It’s not the first time I’ve read or heard such thoughts…nor am I immune to such thinking myself from time to time. When faced with such questions, I mostly feel inadequate to meet the need.  I usually say much less than I would like to say, because I don’t want to come across as trite.  My head and my heart are full of potentially appropriate responses, but I struggle with how to express myself in a meaningful way…in a way that might be meaningful to the questioner.

The question reminded me of some of the ‘atheist challenges’ I’ve seen on the internet. One I read a few years ago challenged Christians to demonstrate just one objectively verifiable miracle.  I didn’t respond to the challenge…I did ponder the perspective of the author.

What, exactly, is a verifiable miracle? I assume ‘verifiable’ as used in the challenge means eyewitness testimony doesn’t count.  I assume it also means video evidence and photographic evidence don’t count.  Which drastically narrows the number of potential qualifying events.

On the one hand, I understand the reasoning. People have been known to falsify claims of miraculous events.  Eyewitnesses can lie or be misled.  Videos and photographs can be modified to show things that didn’t happen…or can be misconstrued to seem to show things differently from what actually occurred.  Someone feeling disillusioned is likely to feel very untrusting of such things and ask for more objective evidence of the miraculous.

Here’s where it gets tricky though. When we think of miraculous events, we’re usually talking about something extraordinary and transitory in nature, that cannot be reasonably explained or understood through natural laws or scientific explanation.  By definition, any transitory or temporary event we could name is already in the past…it has already occurred…which means the telling of the event now relies to some extent on circumstantial evidence.

Let’s say, for example, we’re talking about a miraculous healing. We could probably present the healed person for investigation to verify they are no longer afflicted with the reported health issue.  However, the reported health issue no longer exists and now relies on circumstantial evidence.  One could produce health records, scans, x-rays, test results and eyewitness testimony that the person had, indeed, previously been afflicted with the reported health issue.  However, all of these could be dismissed as not objectively verifiable.  Records can be altered.  X-rays, scans, and test results can have names and dates edited.  Eyewitnesses can lie or be misled.

This sort of evidence would likely be admissible in a court of law where the bar is “beyond a reasonable doubt” but would likely be insufficient for the person demanding absolute objectively verifiable scientific proof.

For the person requiring objectively verifiable evidence of a miracle before they will believe, no transitory miracle will suffice…because transitory miraculous events rely on circumstantial evidence for context and verification of facts prior to the altered state.

So, if legal proof is insufficient, what about scientific proof? Scientific investigation begins with hypotheses and theories that must be tested and verified.  The usual standard for scientific evidence is experimental verification that can be replicated by other scientists.

This is where we start getting into questions of the definition of a miracle.

Fire touched to dry gunpowder instantaneously initiates extremely rapid oxidation resulting in a highly explosive release of stored energy. I would call that miraculous.  It is also objectively verifiable and consistently repeatable.

However, I doubt the questioner would accept this as an objectively verifiable miracle. Why not?  It is certainly objectively verifiable…as well as extraordinary.  However, because it meets the scientific criteria for objectively verifiable evidence, he would likely not consider the explosive nature of gunpowder to be miraculous.  We can replicate the explosion at will and provide some level of explanation as to how it works.  Therefore, it is considered a natural phenomenon explained by science rather than a miracle.

sunrise through fog

Sunrise through Fog

Do you see the problem? We have no lack of evidence of the miraculous.  As I type these words I am looking out the window at a brilliant sunrise.  What a stunning miracle!

Yesterday, I visited my son and held my 4-month old grandson in my arms. I watched his sweet smile.  I heard his laugh and consoled his tears.  So much personality and life wrapped in such a tiny fragile package of humanity.  What a wondrous miracle!

Daily I am overwhelmed, awed and humbled by the miraculous. Most of these miraculous events are objectively verifiable by any scientific standard.  Yet, because they are objectively verifiable, they are dismissed as not miraculous enough.  The issue is neither a lack of scientific evidence nor a lack of miracles.  The issue is of a more philosophical nature…as soon as we are able to provide objectively verifiable proof we stop considering the event to be of a miraculous nature…because it is scientifically verifiable.

So, what if we could find a miraculous event that was scientifically verifiable but for which we have no scientific explanation…a verifiable phenomenon so outside our understanding of the natural universe that leading scientists are forced to admit it is beyond their understanding? Would that meet the standard of an objectively verifiable miracle?

If so, I have very good news for you. That miracle exists and is as close as the nearest light switch.

Light is truly extraordinary in nature. Light consistently defies our understanding of the natural laws.  Though not at all uncommon in our natural world, light obstinately behaves as though it belongs to some other realm outside our natural world. Every time we develop a new theory to try to explain the behavior of light, we make a new discovery that confounds the latest theories.

In trying to explain what light is, we may describe it as rays, or as waves, or as particles. Scientific evidence shows it is all three…and none of the above.  In some ways light behaves as rays…yet it also contradicts ray theory.  In some ways light behaves as waves…yet it also contradicts wave theory.  In some ways light behaves as particles…yet it also contradicts particle theory.

It seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory and sometimes the other, while at times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do. – Albert Einstein

In an effort to explain light’s stubborn refusal to conform to the normal scientific laws of relativity, Albert Einstein developed his generalized theory of relativity. The speed of light has been verifiably proven to be constant no matter the relative speeds of the viewer and the light source.  Einstein theorized that time and distance must, therefore, vary as a function of velocity.  Einstein’s theory nicely provides the required mathematics.  Yet, he clearly demonstrates that rather than learning how light fits into our understanding of the natural laws, we must instead adjust our understanding of the natural laws to conform to the behavior of light.

In more recent years, a whole new branch of physics called Quantum Physics has emerged to study another property of light. Even when light is carefully released one photon particle at a time, it still behaves in a wave interference manner, as though it were being continuously released as waves.  This behavior is objectively verifiable and repeatable, but virtually unexplainable.

Even more inexplicable, the behavior changes if an observer records the photon paths in real time…the observer influences the outcome of the experiment by simply observing.  Without an observer, the carefully controlled experiment results in wave-interference patterns.  With an observer recording the path of each photon, the exact same carefully controlled experiment results in random patterns as predicted by particle theory.

In an attempt to explain this behavior, quantum physicists have developed theories involving alternate parallel universes interconnected by probabilistic timelines.

space time continuum with duplicate earths

Alternate Reality – pic by Victor Habbick

Again, we find we cannot explain the behavior of light through our understanding of natural laws. We must, instead, adjust our understanding of the natural laws, including relying on hypothetical alternate realities we have no way of directly investigating or verifying.  We must rely, instead, on indirect observations based on the properties of light within our own observable universe.

I have heard a saying among quantum physicists, “If you think you understand quantum physics, you don’t.” So, here we have a scientifically verifiable phenomenon which the leading specialized scientists admit they do not understand, cannot explain, and must resort to hypothetical propositions of unverifiable alternate universes in an attempt to explain.

Surely, light qualifies as a verifiable phenomenon so outside our understanding of the natural universe that leading scientists are forced to admit it is beyond their understanding!

Light is, indeed, an objectively verifiable miracle which we encounter on a daily basis.

Light is an objectively verifiable miracle which we encounter on a daily basis! Click To Tweet

No wonder Jesus said of Himself, “I am the light of the world”! (John 8:12)

Jesus was in this world but was not of this world. Jesus did not conform to the natural laws of this world…the natural laws conformed to Him.

Born of a virgin…turned water into wine…walked on water…calmed a storm with a verbal rebuke…healed the sick…raised the dead…died and was resurrected. All verified by multiple eyewitnesses…carefully recorded for posterity…

Unbelievable? Not sufficiently objectively verifiable?

Surely no more unbelievable than the hypothetical alternate universes relied on in attempting to explain the miraculously supernatural nature of light…which is scientifically established as consistently objectively verifiable…