(The) Divine Sight
Sept 14, 2020 | By Timothy Han SM ‘22+1
Lodged at the heart of the New Testament’s first book, the first version of the Christ story one encounters, is a thorny passage about the accessibility of God. After another of Christ’s sermons via parable, the disciples ask Jesus, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” Christ answers:
To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says:
‘You will indeed hear but never understand,
and you will indeed see but never perceive.
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and with their ears they can barely hear,
and their eyes they have closed,
lest they should see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart
and turn, and I would heal them.’
But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. (Matthew 13:10-17)
Matthew 13 is a difficult saying, and who can bear to hear it? The passage comes amid a series of episodes in which Jesus withdraws from public places to pray by Himself or to teach His disciples lessons that He will not share with the crowds. Christ is even reclusive among His disciples, showing a select few (Peter, John, and James) miracles He refuses to share with the others.
The most extraordinary attribute of the Christian God is His accessibility. God came to Earth, not thundering at the head of the armies of heaven, but as a carpenter’s son from a backwater province who ministered to lepers and broke bread with prostitutes. The Christian God demands no sacrifice to hear our prayers (He Himself suffered the requisite sacrifice for us), He desires no lavish gifts, and He asks of us nothing but a contrite heart (Psalm 51:17). The Christian God tells us that He will always abide with us, and that whenever we are in need we can come to our Father and call Him “Abba.”
Thus, Matthew 13 presents a seeming paradox. Having been introduced to the most radically accessible God in the history of human religion, we are now told that this God intentionally makes Himself vague so as not to be understood, and intentionally withdraws from those who would seek Him so as to intentionally let the lost perish in their blindness and deafness. How is one to understand this God?
The paradox of radical accessibility reconciled with divine hiddenness in Matthew 13 seems to me a parable for the fundamental problem of faith: the inability to see God. In attempting to answer that most fundamental problem, Matthew 13 asks us two important questions of its own. Just what does it mean to have “eyes to see” or “ears to hear”? And what is Christ trying to say about the problem of sight here?
In attempting to answer the first question, of how to interpret God’s admonitions about “eyes to see,” some theological movements have turned to sacralization of the world around us. Within the American charismatic movement, there is a widespread attitude that God, universally accessible, can be found everywhere in our world. All of creation was made by God, all of creation was declared good by God, and our God is omnipresent, always with us. Everywhere we find beauty, grace, truth, or love, God must be there as well. Even the Catholic comedian Stephen Colbert, in one of his frequent discussions on faith, articulated this premise and its conclusion, “If God is everywhere and God is in everything, then the world as it is is all just an expression of God and His love.” Colbert went further, daring to find divine grace even in unfathomable sorrow: “What punishments of God are not gifts?” [1]
While beautiful and imbued with deep truth, a literal interpretation of this attitude, which I will describe as the charismatic omnipresence theology, might ask believers to seek out what is redeemable in even the most Godless people and places. One such argument, popular for the degree to which it strains the human imagination, is that even Adolf Hitler loved dogs. But I submit that love, in itself, is not a virtue. Love must be tempered within the providential bounds of nature: agape sacrifice for a suffering neighbor is admirable; vanity is contemptible. The same holds for every quality humans ascribe to the admirable. Milton’s Satan demonstrates strength, cleverness, and imagination, but none of those qualities are admirable in themselves: Milton’s Satan may be sympathetic, but he is neither heroic nor admirable.
In addition, sacralizing everything blunts the moral weight of divinity. What is divine, what is holy, is what is set apart from all else. If everything is holy, nothing is sacred. The controversial Beatnik poet Allen Ginsberg satirized this attitude in his “Footnote to Howl,” declaring everything on this sordid earth from genitalia to Moloch holy. The omnipresence attitude has few answers for evil and its problems. And, if God brings gifts even in the form of terrible pain and suffering, then one seems to implicitly condemn those who cannot see God in the midst of their grief.
The problem of sight, of our inability to see God, seems to us fundamental because we think that it is our inability to see God that introduces doubt. We often think, if only I could see Jesus, if only I could behold Him, and be in His presence, then I would believe. But I question whether literally seeing God, even in physical manifestation, would meaningfully change the problem of faith. The disciples spent several years with Jesus, watching God perform miracles beyond belief and explanation, and they still struggled to believe. Scripture shares in detail the many failings of the disciples because they convey truths about our own failings. It was only by an impartation of divine revelation that Peter alone could muster out that Jesus was, in fact, “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16).
Even after all the disciples had come to know that Jesus was indeed God, they still were not satisfied. The disciples had stood stunned as Jesus miraculously fed tens of thousands with some loaves of bread and a few morsels of fish. They had watched God make lepers clean, they saw Him give sight to blind men, they saw Him raise the dead, and still, it was not enough. Phillip wanted to know when they would see the real God, not just this Jesus fellow: “Lord, show us the Father, and it will be enough for us” (John 14:8).
The disciples are not unique in their disbelief. Exodus describes how, upon reaching Sinai, the 70 elders of Israel
“went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under His feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And He did not lay His hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank” (Exodus 24:9-11).
In just forty days, Moses would come back down the mountain to see those same elders prostrating themselves in front of a golden calf.
Scripture clearly indicates that it will never be enough for us. We want our God to be visible to us, but just barely. We want space-time itself to strain to contain the pure power, energy, and authority that emanate from the face of an Almighty Being. We want a God so powerful in form that we would nearly be struck down and die just for looking at Him. We want the God that Moses met upon the mountain. When Moses intercedes with God at Sinai, he asks to see the face of the Lord. While God grants that Moses may see His back, “You cannot see My face, for man shall not see Me and live” (Exodus 33:20). [2] In short, we want God to share all those attributes that would make Him impossible to behold, and then we want to behold Him as well.
But the practical impossibility of this manifestation of God aside, I wonder whether we actually would want to see this God. We decry the panopticon and fear the abuses of coercive state power; do we really want to look up and know that the God of justice, eyes smoldering, the infernal winnowing fork in hand, is watching every one of our waking moments? Would a God of justice, observing every action, every word, every thought not seem a terrible tyrant instead? It will never be enough for us just to see God. We are always going to want to see the more powerful, more terrible, more perfect God. And then, when God finally relents and abides with us in that awesome form, we would deny His goodness and call Him a despot instead.
Nevertheless, having questioned the motivations behind our search for God, that still leaves us with the question of “eyes to see,” and how to gain them. While, as with most matters of faith, I think one comes by the answer more by feel than by formula, I think the charismatic omnipresence theology holds great wisdom here. Despite its many problems, the theology’s basic message about God’s presence in our lives remains true: we are, as a species, too under-awed and underwhelmed by the miracles of God’s mundanity. And, although this must be a limited comfort to anyone suffering through grief in their search for God, I hope there remains yet a comfort within the charismatic attitude of radical gratitude for the mundane.
David Hume, who famously launched sharp attacks on dogmatic religion, also argued there is no logical reason why past experience should predict future experience, even for the laws of nature. Just because A has caused B 100 times in the past does not mean that A logically necessitates B. We take the physical laws of the universe for granted, but is it not miraculous in itself that our God created an ordered world so that we could continually see our faith redeemed as evidence? When we rise in the morning, we trust that the sun will be waiting for us once again, like a faithful lover. As evening approaches, we trust that the moon will return to us, and it does, night after night. Like a faithful father, the moon departs in the morning and returns at dusk in time to kiss us goodnight.
There are greater wonders still in the mundanities of the spirit. Despite the vast, incomprehensibly large chasm that lies between man and God, whenever we humble ourselves in prayer and call out to Him, then the Creator and Master of the universe welcomes us in, embraces us, and listens to our complaints, to our suffering, to our need. In the miracle of prayer, the wretched of the earth can sit face to face with the Lord of the heavens. Wonders have not ceased, but perhaps our capacity for wonder has.
The danger, of course, in declaring that God is not at fault for the problem of faith, is the condemnation implied for the viewer who does not have “eyes to see” God. If man cannot see God, the problem must lie either with God or man. God is perfect; the fault must lie with man. One shudders at the terrible pronouncement. However, while God is indeed perfect and the fault must lie with man, I submit that the fault does not necessarily lie with the viewer. God is difficult to see not because the viewer is poor in faith or because God wants to hide from us, but because humans have hidden the glory of God. Scripture is clear that God has stamped His image upon this earth in the form of humankind. Unfortunately, instead of being image bearers of God, we have fallen prey to our many vices.
There is no better argument against Christianity than the everyday behavior of those who call themselves Christians. Feuerbach, Darwin, and Hume created not half so many apostates as the excesses of the Church. If everyday Christians lived selflessly, humbly, and continually demonstrated the love Christ showed for us, then no reading of science or philosophy could seriously threaten the faith. Darrow would not be the great enemy of Christianity, but the scourge of a certain reading of Christianity. Science and Scripture are not nearly so obstinately opposed as fundamentalists and Bill Maher would have us believe. If more Christians behaved like Christ, we would find a theologically compatibilist reading of science dominant in the university and scientifically compatibilist churches crammed full on Sunday. Humans have an amazing capacity to rationalize anything. Just as many humans rationalize against faith today, if we all saw a vibrant Church, with faith in action, and lovingkindness given freely, many more of us would rationalize in favor of faith. The agnostic J.S. Mill is simultaneously insightful and incisive on contemporary Western Christianity in his secular treatise On Liberty, and it is worth quoting him at length on the subject:
All Christians believe that the blessed are the poor and humble… that they should love their neighbour as themselves… But in the sense of that living belief which regulates conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to the point to which it is usual to act upon them... Whenever conduct is concerned, they look round for Mr. A and B to direct them how far to go in obeying Christ.
Now we may be well assured that the case was not thus, but far otherwise, with the early Christians. Had it been thus, Christianity never would have expanded from an obscure sect of the despised Hebrews into the religion of the Roman empire. When their enemies said, “See how these Christians love one another” (a remark not likely to be made by anybody now), they assuredly had a much livelier feeling of the meaning of their creed than they have ever had since. And to this cause, probably, it is chiefly owing that Christianity now makes so little progress in extending its domain.
We can also be assured that the case is not thus for non-western Christians. The fastest growing Church in the world is in Iran, where Christians under persecution commit to living selflessly, risking everything mortal for a chance at communion with the Divine. [3] The western Church languishes because of the very human vices to which we all fall prey. The problem of sight presents itself not because God refuses to reveal Himself, but because the Church fails to be a prism for God’s presence.
To be clear, God commanded the Church to be Godly, to be perfect, and that is what we all have come to expect from the representatives of God on Earth: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Against that impossible challenge, the failings of the Church are inevitable. The City of God on Earth will always be subject to sin because its role is as a hospital for the sick, for all of us ever more in need of God. As Christ said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). If the Church were a museum of the perfect, then we would be horrified indeed to find the gates of God barred against us. However, the hope of the Church lies in Christ and the knowledge that through Christ, the Church can rise above its station and continually reform itself in search of Godliness. That is, the one saving grace of the Church is that it can always and will always strive to be better, and to draw ever nearer to God.
I marvel that the writer(s) of Matthew dared to include Matthew 13. For the evangelist(s) of a strange, nascent religious movement already suffering intense persecution, this was decidedly not an easy passage for the proselyters to explain. Matthew 13 must have been fundamental to the theology of its writer(s), for it comes at the very center of an intricately structured gospel. The writers of the four Gospel books (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are clear that their narratives are concise accounts: each episode has been meditated upon and carefully selected for inclusion. The Gospel of John, in fact, ends with an explicit exhortation to read each passage carefully, because many important stories have been deliberately left out in order to lend greater weight to the passages that made it in.
But I marvel with equal measure at the wonderful kindness of Christ’s teaching. At first, God appears to be vengeful and to play favorites, to intentionally hide Himself from those who would seek Him, who would strive for repentance and redemption, with the express purpose of locking them out of salvation. Indeed, that is the accusation cynics levy at adherents to this God. But that uncharitable reading is not quite what Christ is saying. This is not quite the same problem of agency as God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, but rather the people hardening their own hearts, without intervention from the Lord. The passage in Isaiah prefaces its condemnation by declaring that the wicked have drunk deep of their own wickedness and thus God washes His hands of any obligation to save them. God will not strike them down on the spot, and He will grant them plenty of time in this life to turn away from their sin, but He does not have to save them, either.
Given the depths of the human capacity for harm, one may even read the passage in Isaiah as an extreme and intolerable leniency for the wicked. After all, for those who have suffered terribly at the hands of wicked men, this may even be justification for a ‘problem of evil’ postulation: witnessing the violence of human hands, Christ chooses to defer ultimate justice to the next life. So let us dispense with the notion that God is cruel. In Matthew, Christ’s blunt condemnation of evil grants Christians the moral authority to condemn evil in this life, and to resist it.
But the natural impulse to shudder at the frightening implication of Christ’s words comes to us because we fear what it means for those of us who have struggled to see God. If I do not always have “eyes to see,” is Christ condemning me?
So often the Christian attitude toward those looking for God but struggling to see Him runs in lanes of disbelief and victim-blaming. Did you really look for Him? Did you really pray? But the hurt and anguish inflicted by victim-blaming is why Matthew 13 is so crucially important. Christ knew the victim-blaming that would fall upon those who, in their grief, in their tragedy, cannot see God, and in this passage, He preached against it.
At the disturbing thought of divine condemnation, Christ’s last sentence asserts itself as an extraordinary wellspring of comfort. God tells His disciples unequivocally that it is not by special virtue that they experience the sublime: “many prophets and righteous people” longed for, but did not receive, the divine gift of sight. God is clear that lacking “eyes to see” is not in itself a moral failing, and haunts even the righteous, haunts many of the righteous, haunts, perhaps, most of the righteous. In the Gospel of John, Christ is even more explicit in advancing this non-condemnatory message. God even uses the blunt example of a physically blind man to assure us that, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3, ESV). The inability to see is not a punishment from God, but merely a burden of the human condition. Divine sight is a gift; its lack is not a curse.
And, having addressed the second question of what God is saying in Matthew 13, one returns to the problem of seeing God. Knowing full well that no matter what great, omnipotent, and terrible version of God we see, it will never be enough for humans, God chose a humbler form for His incarnation. He clothed Himself in flesh and sinew, and walked among us, talked among us, laughed among us, cried among us, died among us. He granted Himself neither beauty nor majesty: goodness and goodness alone was His scepter on this earth. And when He left, when God receded into the retreats of Eden, or ascended into heaven above, He left his mark upon us, and asked us to carry forth His image on this earth, a banner of lovingkindness and sacrifice. He commanded us to love one another, and this would be the mark by which humankind would know that we were the children of God: that we loved one another.
So for the believer, earnestly seeking but who cannot see God, there is now no condemnation. And for those to whom have been given the gifts of divine sight, there is an even greater responsibility, to become vessels, imperfect as we are, to allow God’s glory to shine through our love, our sacrifice, and our humility. Where can one see the face of God? Perhaps, in its most intimate and selfless moments, at its very best, one can see it in the love of the Church.
All Biblical quotations from the English Standard Version.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB46h1koicQ&t=611s. CNN, Twitter post, August 16, 2019. https://twitter.com/cnn/status/1162527875112869888?lang=en.
2. Of course, in that same chapter, the author(s) of Exodus note(s) that “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11).
3. Mark Ellis, “‘Fastest-growing church’ has no buildings, no central leadership, and is mostly led by women,” Christian Post. https://www.christianpost.com/news/fastest-growing-church-has-no-buildings-no-central-leadership-and-is-mostly-led-by-women.html
