Seeing But Not Believing

(Romans 1:18-23)

They say there are none so blind as they who will not see. And this is an apt and accurate description for those who choose to reject a God and seek to understand the world around us without accepting His sovereign power.

They also say that seeing is believing and many reject God because they cannot see Him. But even when the evidence is clear and in their face daily, they choose not to see. Thus it has to be stated that seeing is NOT believing, for although they see, they do not believe what they see.

In this section of scripture we see Paul begin to look at the issues facing man in the world. Man suffers under the power of sin, but worse than that is when man fails to recognise what is before his very eyes. The fact that nothing exists nor can exist except by the power and wisdom of God.

Seeing Is Believing

Too often I hear these words that seeing is believing. People think that these words mean something and yet people are often fooled by what they are seeing.

Look at the great illusionists. They do amazing tricks and fool people into believing something that cannot be. They train and work at building illusions specifically designed to fool and trick the eyes of those who see.

There are also many people who will look at something or consider something and then deny the possibility of it occurring. How many people have failed to achieve their potential because they believed something could not be done, or more pointedly that they could not do it.

Consider the likes of Thomas Edison who invented the light bulb. It is said that he failed over one thousand times before he built a light build that worked. Stories have been circulated about his obstinacy and tenacity when people told him to give it up. All he said was that he had found a thousand ways it wouldn’t work and he continued to seek the way that it would work.

Edison could not prove that it was possible or practical to build a light bulb, but he still believed it was possible. He did not give up by saying, “It can’t be done!” Rather, he continued to search and test and try new materials until he achieved success.

Faith

What sustained Edison through what must have been times of intense frustration? It was faith! He believed in the possibility of the light bulb and also in the probability of it being able to be created.

He did not have to see it first to believe it was possible. Instead he did the exact reverse. He believed and then he saw. He believed and he experimented until what he saw in his mind’s eye was created in the laboratory.

And it is the same with God.

If you are waiting to see God before you believe in Him, you will never find Him. Just as Edison had to believe first and then he saw, so too man must believe in God and then He will reveal Himself to man.

But unlike Edison we have the fingerprints of God all around us. Everything in this creation that we can see shows us that God exists and that He is very real.

Furthermore we have the visitation of The Lord Jesus Christ who came to the earth in the form of man who showed us the nature of God and set a way for us to be able to seek Him out and find Him. And like Edison, that way to see God rests upon faith. When we believe in god and come seeking Him, then He will reveal Himself to us.

Rejecting God for Mans Wisdom

But what do we see in this world? Do we see people noting the workmanship of God in all that has been created? Do we see them wonder in awe at how it all fits together so precisely that if even one small element of the creation were out of balance the whole thing would collapse?

No! What we see is man worshiping at the altar of lies, theories and complicated explanations of how all this came to be through evolution, and pure chance. These theories are not only unproven, the facts of what science shows has disproved them as being even possible!

Consider the evolution theory proposed by Darwin, and even he was smart enough to call it a theory. How much has that theory been destroyed and utterly smashed as false through subsequent findings in genetics and the structure of DNA proving the impossibility of evolution, and yet it is still taught as fact in our schools. It was always a theory and if science acted as responsibly with this theory as they do with others, they would have completely disregarded it and relegated it to the same box as the flat earth theory.

But they don’t and man in general doesn’t because they do not want to accept the possibility of God. Instead they cling to lies, falsehoods and deception. And worse, they teach them as if they were truth and reject or belittle any suggestions of God as an alternative.

Is it then any wonder that Paul wrote of these things in this section scripture when he said in verses 21-23,

21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Man will never see God until he is prepared to believe in the possibility of God. When a man seeks God wanting to find Him and to be known by Him, then God does reveal Himself to man. There are many ways He may do this and prove Himself and His existence to a person, and He will use whatever means is necessary and whatever each individual needs to see or know to recognise God.

It is then that we DO begin to see and marvel in awe at the work He has done in the creation. And it is then that we see also in His work the proof of His existence and all that He has done and is continuing to do for us.

Believe it and you will see it.

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