Believing Is Seeing: A Physicist Explains How Science Shattered His Atheism and Revealed the Necessity of Faith

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The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight, and asked them, "Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?" His parents answered, "We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself." (John 9:18-21 RSV) Genesis records that God appeared to Abraham and made him a promise: Through your seed shall all peoples of the earth be blessed, (Genesis 22:17-18). The immediate seed was Isaac, born of Abraham's old age; but the ultimate Seed is Christ. It is through faith in Jesus Christ that this promise is fulfilled, and all the peoples of the earth are blessed in Abraham. This promise was later confirmed by an oath, God swearing by himself that he would fulfill what he had said. The writer is simply pointing out that Abraham believed God's promise and his oath. In the last chapters, the author challenges readers to ponder their own worldviews. He states that belief influences how we see the world. He feels that faith can handled being put to the test. My personal favorite part was the correlation between quarks and the Holy Spirit. You ask why I believe in prayer? Well, not because I have tried it and it has worked. I believe in prayer because Jesus Christ says that prayer is the secret of life and I believe him. Jesus Christ says that man must either pray or faint, one or the other. Because it is Jesus Christ who says this, I believe him, and, therefore, I pray and find it works. The proof of prayer does not come from my experience; that is simply the demonstration of what I have already believed, and I believe it because of who said it. Believing, therefore, is seeing. This is the blindness our Lord refers to here. In Matthew11 he prayed, "Father, I thank you that you have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent and revealed them unto babes," (Matthew 11:25). When we are reading the Scriptures we ought to recognize how desperately we are in need of being taught of God. He is able to open our eyes if we admit we do not see. But if we think we know, and we are confident that we do not need any help, then we are stumbling on into blindness. We will find ourselves eventually falling into a pit, unable to be helped.

This saying contains an impo A few years ago, a book entitled “The Five Gospels” was published. It was produced by the “Jesus Seminar,” a group of liberal scholars. The subtitle of the book is, “What did Jesus really say?” These scholars got together for the purpose of questioning everything that Jesus said. They came to the conclusion that Jesus never really spoke most of what the Bible quotes Him as saying. They decided that most of the written words and teachings of Jesus were fabricated by early Christians soon after Jesus’ death!Note the man's powerful and beautiful argument: "How can you miss the point so terribly? You are facing the greatest miracle, perhaps, this country has ever seen: 'From the beginning of time nobody has ever heard of a man whose eyes were blind from birth being opened.' This has never happened in all the history of this nation, now it has happened and yet you argue about whether it is valid because Jesus did not sign the register properly; he did not do what you thought he ought to do on the Sabbath." That is like giving someone a magnificent diamond and having it rejected because the box it came in is made of plastic! Such is the blindness of these men. Dear Lord, impart in me an unshakable faith. Forgive me for any doubts. I love You and believe in Your sovereignty, forever. In Jesus' Name, Amen.

The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar, said, "Is not this the man who used to sit and beg?" Some said, "It is he"; others said, "No, but he is like him." He said, "I am the man." (John 9:8-9 RSV) In this Book we have the revelation of the Lord himself. As we come to it we may have to come through difficulty, through hardship, through trial, through resistance, but that is all part of God's way to teach us what these words mean. As we read through the tears, oftentimes, that circumstances place upon us, our eyes are opened and we see the beauty and the glory and the majesty of our God. As a defense of the Christian worldview, Believing is Seeing is a bit of a mixed bag. First, there are some excellent bits:

The answer is not as straightforward as you might think. Remember those True or False questions from childhood exams? This isn’t one of those. The answer to this question involves numerous factors, having nothing to do with eyesight, which determine the seeming reality of the observer. Beliefs, acceptance, perception, perspective and past experience are all filters that shape our vision. His parents said this because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if any one should confess him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue [excommunicated]. Therefore his parents said, "He is of age, ask him." (John 9:22-23 RSV) So the Lord was saying to the crowds in the Temple courts, “Do you want to know what God is like? Look at me! I have come as a Light into the world, so that anyone who believes in Me will not remain in spiritual darkness. If you don’t believe in me, you can’t see God - you’re in darkness!” Never since the world began has it been heard that any one opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." (John 9:32-33 RSV)