A Word from the Pastor – The Evidence of Things Not Seen
In Bible Study a few Wednesdays ago, we talked about the effect of having a Resurrection perspective in life. If you believe that Resurrection is on your horizon, then that trajectory has many wonderful benefits. For one, it gives you an attitude of Abundance, which makes us more likely to love our neighbors, serve other people, and help those in need—all the Jesus kind of things. The opposite attitude is one of Scarcity, where we want to keep as much for ourselves as possible, not willing to listen or share, we’re very touchy, and we get over-reactive.
Someone in Bible Study asked why so many Christians claim to believe in Resurrection, but then seem to live with an attitude of Scarcity. Good question.
As humans, it’s actually really hard to develop a perspective of Resurrection, because it’s not how we start off in the world. Think of what we’re like as children. If a child doesn’t have what they want when they want it, they get upset. They don’t stop crying until they get what they want, no matter how many times you say, “You don’t need to cry. I’m making the bottle right now!” A baby needs to see or feel the thing it wants, and doesn’t take your word for it that it’s on the way. Or, if a baby can’t see its parent, it cries then too, because it doesn’t understand that the parent really is still there, even when the baby can’t see them. That’s how we all see the world when we start out in life, so it’s hard for humans to grow past it. And it’s why some people who claim to believe in Resurrection still live with an attitude of Scarcity, because they live based on what they see and what they have and what they want.
Concrete items and things and ideas are easy to see and feel, because they’re visible and are right there in our lives in the moment. But abstract concepts—things we can’t see with our eyes—those are harder to think about. It takes effort because a Resurrection perspective requires looking past our own situation and our own lives. It’s hard to grow out of our base humanity, and yet, we are called by God to always keep growing and maturing towards the mindset of Christ.
As a perfect but terrible example, take the coronavirus. The reason it’s so dangerous—maybe more so than symptoms and fatality—is that when people get it, they can spread it for about a week before they even start to feel sick. That’s why it’s dangerous. People think to themselves, “I know I’m not sick, because I feel fine.” And then they go visit friends or family or a group and don’t think precautions are necessary, until later, when the symptoms start, and they realize they’ve had it a while, and then symptoms start for others. All because it’s hard for people to believe something that they don’t see with their own eyes.
From the very beginning of the pandemic, infectious disease experts said, “This is a horrible disease. Treat it seriously and responsibly.” But many people decided it wasn’t that bad, until their friends or family starting getting sick, and going to the hospital, or worse. Only then did people realize it’s as serious as the experts told us in March 2020. How many stories have we heard in the news of people in the ICU regretting the way they thought and acted? If only we had taken it seriously at the beginning, without waiting until it affected each of us, to finally understand. We could have prevented many of the 680,000 American deaths that Covid has claimed so far. That’s a lot of people. Each one with a family, who now misses them.
So remember that it is for our own good that God calls us to mature our understanding toward that Resurrection perspective, because it helps us know things in life that we cannot see. Hebrews chapter 11 talks about that. And it also warns us, that people who grow to reach that perspective have been mocked and mistreated because they live in a way that is not based just on what is seen around us (Heb. 11:1-2, 36-38). That’s another reason it’s hard. It’s hard to act on things that we cannot see, because there will be pushback from people who don’t have that perspective. But Hebrews 11 also says that because of our faith in the unseen, we can endure and persevere anything that the world throws at us. Because our perspective is based on Resurrection.