Seeing That Which Cannot Be Seen

Well, another week has come and gone. By the time your next newsletter arrives, I will sitting in the college classroom: this is my last week to play. After living a life I would describe as one never-ending deadline and suddenly seeing it come to a screeching halt, I have fallen flat on my face, it would seem. I have had very little energy or ambition to write anything, though I have been spending a tremendous amount of time in prayer, mainly through hours and hours spent alone with God in nature. You will often see me either walking along the meadows beside the lakeshore, the ubiquitous mug of water in hand and my makeshift staff tapping its own steady rhythm—or else you will find me sitting on the bank catching up on some theological reading, mirrored sunglasses reflecting the rippling sunlight of the waves. The book I am currently working my way through is Cries of the Heart by Ravi Zacharias, as well as C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters on the side (and half a dozen other articles, essays, and assorted short readings as well). You would think that with all this free time to read and reflect, to walk and talk with God, to seek His heart and regain my grounding, I would have volumes of material to express. Not so. I have been happy simply enjoying existence itself: I couldn’t be happier at this point in time to simply live and let live, to enjoy the existential experience of simply being alive and free. It would appear that the never-ending deadline of college (when I’m not working at the factory) has left me, as I said a moment ago, fallen flat on my face: and I find that I like it here.

Where to begin? I suppose we should again visit my ongoing conversations with my pagan friend Jonathan, as it has been some time since we last eavesdropped on those proceedings. The thing the two of us have been spending hours in conversation about as of late is the idea of seeing not only that which is visible, but that which is invisible as well. The thing I find incredibly refreshing about talking with Jonathan is that he is an honest seeker, a fact which forms a vivid contrast to a series of e-mail exchanges I recently had with an anthropology professor from Italy who took issue with some of my views.

Concerning the latter, when it becomes apparent that a person’s only intent is to antagonize and that he or she is not at all concerned in finding common ground (much less the truth), it is time to politely but firmly pull the plug on the exchange. In the case of the atheistic anthropology professor, my attempts at common ground were met by scorn and ridicule. After making absolutely certain that I was not dealing with someone who was hurting too much to be honest (but who secretly wanted to be), I politely but firmly terminated the exchange. My final response? “It appears, then, that we have nothing more to say to one another.” Such a statement neither plays into the antagonism nor denies it; it does not cast blame nor does it apologize for its own stance. In fact, it is wonderfully ambiguous and should provide him with hours of fruitful thought as he tries to get an angle on what I might have meant. The final consensus is that the war he is waging exists within himself, not between the two of us. When the reply e-mail arrived after I had said my good-byes (presumably in protest) I simply and quietly deleted it out of existence without opening or reading it. Only he and God will ever know what he wrote, but unless a miracle had occurred within a twenty-four hour period, I can assure you it was filled with slanderous accusations of the sort that do no one any good. (For more on antagonistic atheists and the games they play, see Ex-atheist.com with special thanks to LeeAnn for mailing me this link.)

Jonathan has begun to change his viewpoint somewhat. He described himself recently as being at the same crossroads where he was standing when he first turned to the Asatru religion in search of answers. I asked him what it was that caused this turn of events in his life: the last I knew, he was still officially a pagan who was metaphorically describing himself in a room full of doors without a clue which one to open and now he seems to be suggesting he has grasped the doorknob of honest agnosticism. He thought for a moment, careful to pick the right words. He often laments the fact that he is not eloquent in speech and it is not always easy for him to articulate that which he feels and thinks so clearly within his mind. Soon he told me that while he could find nothing intellectually inferior or unbelievable about the Asatru faith, somehow he didn’t “feel complete.” He was looking for something that would bring balance and purpose to his life—something that would offer him fulfillment—and thus far at least, Asatru did not seem to be providing this kind of an answer. He concluded his thought by saying that something seemed to be missing: something was yet lacking in his life.

As you may well recall, if you have been keeping up with our dialogs at all, he often wonders if he will not find answers by turning his gaze to the stars in search of extraterrestrial life. Aliens have fascinated him since he was in junior high and have continued to hold many hours of his time and attention right up until the present. For a man in his forties, this represents quite a time span of thought and consideration, not to mention the accumulation of a great deal of evidence. Such things give him hope that he is “not alone in the universe.” However, his speculations and questions recently have centered more and more around spiritual beings, for he sees some definite correlations between the reputed activities of aliens and what has been claimed about spiritual entities for centuries.

The first chapter of the Old Testament book of Ezekiel rarely fails to escape the scrutiny of a dedicated ufologist, each arguing, as Jonathan has, that it is entirely possible that the people in ancient times would not have the words to describe a technologically advanced civilization if they saw one. He reasons that if a man who lived during this time period were to see a flying saucer or a being (or a group of beings) capable of some of the abilities widely reported in the tales of abductees, such a man would be forced to resort to more naturalistic explanations: that is, explanations drawn from nature.

My comment was to dryly reverse the tables and propose an alternative, but equally credible scenario. If we were to take a materialistic scientist from the twenty-first century who does not believe in God or the supernatural, we would expect that he or she might very well read into a truly spiritual account something of a technological explanation. The only conceptual expression such a person would have of the miraculous would be to use technological terminology. Further, I went on to add, the fact that scientists are beginning to report extraterrestrial activity, particularly in the form of some seemingly malevolent and benevolent beings, is what I would expect if the bible be true. The bible very definitely describes beings of a rather obviously otherworldly nature, some of which are benevolent, some of which are malevolent, and both of which have abilities that seem to defy the known laws of physics.

He decided he was going to take a break from his other studies to try to really get to the bottom of this whole alien business, partly of his own accord and partly because I encouraged him to explore it out to its end conclusion (or, for that matter, whatever he thought might satiate his quest for truth). During this conversation there was a mention of a rather curious book he had once read long ago by Raymond Fowler entitled The Watchers, one of five books Fowler has written about alien abductee Betty Andreasson Luca’s experiences. He decided that he would begin by re-reading this book and I applauded his choice. If a man wants answers, he must be willing to dig for them, for there is only so far that speculation alone will carry a person.

He began reading the book and there was something rather revolting that leapt off the page at him: Betty Andreasson Luca is described as “a devout Christian,” and she reports that aliens (his term, she prefers to call them angels or messengers) communicated to her that The Son of Man was the Savior of the world. He came back the next day, badly shaken, and reported his findings. He told me he had to put the book down for a while and went on to elaborate: “Who would have thought that two little paragraphs in a paperback book most people would probably not find very credible could shake a person up so?” He went on to say that he didn’t want to believe what he read; the last thing he wanted to read about—in a book on aliens, no less—was that Jesus might really be the Messiah. I smiled sympatheticly at him and assured him I understood exactly how he felt. I said, “Now you understand why I have repeatedly told you that I would not have chosen Christianity, but that I reached a point in my own life where I arrived at the inescapable conclusion that it was true. I had no idea how dirty of a word ‘God’ had become to me.”

I really felt bad for him and I could empathize completely with the struggle that was going on inside of him. I remember well my days of struggle—even after I became convinced of the absolute certainty that Christianity was true—it is no easy matter to totally uproot one’s life because of where his or her honest investigation has led him or her. I think he was wise to put the paperback down, because this is a very serious question that requires very serious thought and a very serious answer: one should not come too hastily until one is sure he or she is ready: are you really prepared to bank your entire life on this answer? Are you willing to place your faith on its claims? Don’t answer too quickly, because if you do, you probably haven’t thought through the question very deeply.

This brings us up to the present conversation nearly a month later. Between his shocking episode with the book and now, Jonathan is nearly a third of the way through it and fills my ears with all kinds of strange tales of visitors from the skies. Recently he sent me an article to gain my opinion about Betty Andreasson Luca and my first knee-jerk reaction (without having read the article yet) was to question the idea of her being a “devout Christian.” I went on to explain that she, like anyone else, was entitled to her own experiences and that I doubted that she was lying. But I went on to add that while the name “Christian” itself is a word that often has very little meaning (it can simply mean that one is not pagan, Islamic, or Jewish), the attachment of the adjective “devout” on the front suggests someone who closely patterns her life on the faith. I went on to suggest that though I had not yet read anything about her—and therefore was admittedly unqualified to elaborate—nonetheless, since he was pressing me for an opinion, I replied that from what he had told me, I found some of her experiences incompatible with the scriptures.

I hastened to add that logically this does not necessarily mean that her experiences were untrue nor that the bible itself was true: what it does mean is that if she is attempting to call herself a Christian and hold onto these teachings, she is like the woman who wants to proverbially “have her cake and eat it too.” We can only measure a person’s claims by the standard of those claims: a Christian is measured by the teaching of Christ as recorded in the bible, whether these teachings be true or whether these teachings be false, in the same way that one who follows Islam is measured against the teachings of Mohammed as set down in the Qur’an (or Koran), whether these teachings be true or whether these teachings be false. To this line of thought, Jonathan asked me, “Well, what then if she is right in her descriptions of reality?”

I said simply, “Then you would do well to believe what she says and conduct your life accordingly. Try to align your life around the truth that she presents, for if she is really right, you would be foolish to do otherwise.”

I went on to explain, as we both agree—though I always like to make sure we are on the same page—that ultimately I believe that the bible is true but that I could not accept this as being the truth for him. We both agree that truth must finally and ultimately coalesce down into a single irrefutable answer—however ridiculously complex—but we also know that many people disagree on such matters and that making up one’s own mind about such things is no laughing matter: it is a terribly important query and not to be taken lightly. We are both aware that such things could have some far-ranging consequences, so choosing wisely is of utmost concern. He recognizes fully that he alone can answer the question of what is true and what is false and that more persons than just himself could potentially reap whatever consequences such a choice might incur, for we do not live in an isolated vacuum. If he honestly believes that Betty Andreasson Luca is correct in her descriptions, he would be a fool to hold back because his friend happens to believe the bible is true (assuming that the bible does contradict what Luca is saying).

However, while there is certainly nothing wrong with calling into question the internal consistency of Luca’s beliefs and her truth claims, I began to see that a different line of reasoning was in order. If I am to encourage him to consider the thing I believe to be true—that is, if I am to encourage him to investigate the claims of Christ for himself which have made such a drastic difference in my own life—then aliens are really only peripheral to the conversation. If they exist, so much the better, if they do not, none the worse. Most of Luca’s claims that struck me as incongruous were more subjectively incompatible based on my own beliefs about aliens. I cannot objectively say, without further thought and study, whether what she advocates ultimately supports or undermines the teachings of Scripture, though admittedly I am not holding my breath.

Following this new vein of reasoning, I sent him an article this weekend entitled Some Well-Known Abductees And Their Religious Beliefs by Sean Casteel. You may or may not be interested in reading it, but my reason for mailing it is because several of these people claim to be devout Christians: not just Betty Andreasson Luca, but also her publisher and ufologist Raymond Fowler and several others. According to this source, Fowler issues the following explanation regarding his role as both Christian and ufologist:

Fowler concludes with these remarks: “On the one hand, I continue to attend church, sing in the choir, teach adult Sunday School and attempt with God’s help to live a good Christian life. On the other hand, I continue to live in tension as I attempt to construct a bridge between two sometimes seemingly opposing but true experiences—the double life of a Christian believer and UFO experiencer.”

Katharina Wilson, who unlike Betty Andreasson Luca’s largely positive experiences, expresses this sentiment:

Linda Cortile, who like Wilson experienced the negative side of abduction, says:

You can see how much more effective this sort of approach is if my end goal is to get Jonathan to consider the truth claims of Christianity. He was not even a monotheist before, much less concerned with the concept of God. I could argue about my personal opinions on aliens all day long (which are beginning to become a bit less skeptical and a bit more agnostic), but I would be missing out on a chance to share with my friend the experience that truly changed my life. Because he is interested in aliens, I will happily share with him articles that pertain to this subject: he is my friend. But if I can find one like the above that also includes elements of consideration regarding the Christian faith, this is part of what being an ambassador of Christ is truly about. I am afraid that many Christians—myself included—have already wasted far too many hours squabbling about things that don’t really matter and that we honestly don’t have a definitive answer on, short of the fact it doesn’t fit comfortably with our perspective of the universe. If you are a fellow believer, do you honestly think it matters if aliens exist of if they do not as pertains to the kingdom of heaven? I can’t see where my skepticism has cost me anything in my relationship with Christ if they do exist; if they do not, God is quite capable of correcting Jonathan’s error if He so chooses.

There is something else Jonathan has begun to do as well that I applaud. Apparently due to inspiration from my own reports of lakeshore walking in my I’ve-been-off-from-college-for-three-weeks expeditions into nature, he has been devoting an hour a day to retreating into the woods behind his house to seek contact with “the powers that be.” I have continually prayed for his safety and protection that he does become entangled with powers he might rather not be, and I think this search is reflective of a genuine spiritual thirst that is welling up within him. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised when he challenged me on a notion that I have observed.

In my studies of encounters with the spiritual realm as well as my own experiences, both before and after I have been a Christian, I have seen a common pattern: that of an altered state of consciousness. Now I am not here to advocate the presence of the spiritual gifts, certainly not to the degree of exulting them over their Giver as some do, for nothing is more important than a relationship with Him. However, I am a person that, for better or for worse, has had a sampling of nearly every spiritual gift the bible mentions at some point in time in his life or another. Thinking specifically for a moment of the receiving of visions, I will briefly defer to a previous newsletter and then expound my point about altered frames of consciousness before we return again to Jonathan’s challenge of this notion. In my largely autobiographical account Love: A Cup of Cold Water, I begin by excerpting a portion of the account regarding Elisha in 2 Kings 6:8–22:

Whenever I have seen a vision, there is a very slight alteration in my sense of perception. I would not call it the far flung reaches of perception in the same sense as a trip on peyote might induce or the outskirts of reality a healthy combination of methamphetamine and LSD afford, yet I would say that a change must take place in your perception in order to be given a glimpse into the normally unseen world of the spiritual that exists around us. In any case, whenever I have a vision, I see the same things everyone else always sees, only I see an additional “layer” that seems to be almost superimposed over the top of it, for lack of a more fitting description. There seems to be a subtle, almost imperceptible shift in my perception.

Jonathan, however, did not see it quite like this and said so. He told me that he found it impossible to believe that if there was a being as powerful as God—or any other such being or beings that might exist—that He, or they, would be forced to rely on an altered state of consciousness to make contact, if they so desired. He further went on to add that since such a being was obviously more powerful than humans, it could rather easily make its presence known if it so desired, regardless what state of mind the intended recipient might be in. You know, I was proud of him for standing toe to toe with me on the matter and I think it shines some remarkable insight into his conception of “the powers that be.” I find that I agree with him, though I am still inclined to believe that such encounters do require that “our eyes be opened,” however this is accomplished: I happen to find it convenient to believe it is through a slight alteration in our perception. (So there. I’m sticking my tongue out now and flapping my fingers from my ears, can you tell?)

So Jonathan, who has previously claimed to have no faith, is now sitting out in the woods for an hour every evening in hopes of hearing from “the powers that be.” So far, he has been unsuccessful, but he remains hopeful. I told him that from a Christian perspective, God was not likely going to work cheap table tricks, but that His ways are often slow and subtle and that Jonathan should have patience. Soon enough he might find that his perspective has begun to shift somewhat: he may find that the truth he so earnestly seeks will begin to grow on him. And, he finds a certain comfort in the promise of Jesus (particularly the part about seeking, though I think it has more to do with the nature of the comment and less to do with Jesus): “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7, Luke 11:9).

When it comes to spending time alone in nature, I recall how for so many years in junior high and high school I would get home after school only to grab a rifle and retreat into the woods until nighttime, rarely ever shooting anything (though I had many opportunities), but instead dozing peacefully against a tree trunk, the squirrels scampering merrily between my feet and the birds chirping with their (at times) cacophonous clatter. I honestly believe that some of the wisdom I have learned in my years under the sun have been acquired in these hours of solitude, alone with God in the middle of His grand creation, even if I never acknowledged His presence. I learned the patience of the hunt and how to listen carefully, engaging all my senses toward a particular end. I learned to wait until the very best moment: not too soon and not too late, and how to creep with stealth on leaves that would betray all but the most wary. (It is not so much that you move silently—a near impossibility—as that you learn to deceptively camouflage the sound of your feet into a less threatening noise.)

Whatever the case of my yesteryears, I can assure you that my walks every day since I have been out of college have been working a transition in me: I find myself filled with greater joy and I feel calmer and more at peace: a new spring to my step and a new poise to my posture: an alert relaxation, you might say. There are days I walk into the factory and I almost forget that the hallway is not the meadow and that beyond there is no lake: I can feel the sun at my back and the wind rushing through my hair as I brush past the anxious faces concerned only with their workaday worlds. There is just something about nature that is mystical, magical, and enchanting, and how much the more so when we go there purposely to meet God alone in all His splendor and gentleness of heart. But I fear I may very well parade off the page if I do not reel myself in, so . . . .

At the beginning of the newsletter, I mentioned that Jonathan and I have spent much time talking about the ability to see that which is unseen, to know that which is unknown. So then, he who has eyes to see and ears to hear will appreciate something that Jonathan came up with as he sat in the woods attempting to connect with “the powers that be.” Considering the fact that he listens most to the scientific community, the idea of seeing without his eyes and hearing without his ears does not come naturally to him. Yet, he reasoned, as he sat in his self-imposed solitude with nature, white light represents only a tiny fraction of the known spectrum of energy. We know that there are ultra-violet waves, infrared waves, x-rays, gamma-rays, and many other forms of energy on this continuum, yet our eyes cannot see them. He reasoned that if our sense organs were only capable of seeing such a small fraction of this known scale and our ears capable of only hearing such a small fraction of known sound, that the skeptic who is willing to stake his life on the claim that what empiricism tells us is all that there is to know, is a truly short-sighted person indeed: how could there not be more? I told him I found his idea so brilliant I would have to rip it off and paste it into one of my newsletters: as you can clearly see, I have been straight-forward and honest in this, my grand larceny, for here resides the stolen goods, exactly as promised.

Running this concept by an engineer at the church I attend, he noticeably brightened and offered quite a bit of elaboration on Jonathan’s idea, though I fear I was pinched for time and didn’t record everything he said. However, it was something to do with the amount of matter versus the amount of gravity (I think) that has caused scientists to theorize that something like eighty percent or more of what must exist according to these equations cannot be seen, measured, or observed with the technology we currently have. Scientists apparently refer to this substance as “black matter” or more commonly, “dark matter.” An article that examines dark matter in some depth can be found at: Dark Matter, Cosmology, and Large-Scale Structure of the Universe. If you read it carefully, you will likely see that I have not devoted as much time to careful research as perhaps I ought, if I am going to be bringing such things up in the first place. :)

But back to Jonathan. One of the biggest obstacles he faces is the hurtle of faith. I personally think he displays more faith than what he realizes and I told him as much. When I felt the time appropriate, I gave voice to my sentiments: “You know how when you see a really good movie that engrosses your full attention you forget that what you are seeing isn’t really real? We’ll say the heroine of the movie is a little girl and she has already stolen your heart with her feminine charm, innocence, and naiveté. You can clearly see she is about to make a bad decision and you are practically sitting on the edge of your seat in glorious agony, wishing you could somehow intervene and make her see how terrible of a mistake this particular choice will be. In the same way, Jonathan, when I am going through a trialsome period and express doubts in my faith, you are always quick to encourage me to continue on following God, to not give up, as though you fear somehow I will. Simply put, you have demonstrated to me time and again that you have faith in my faith, even if you do not have the faith to make it active and alive in your own life. You believe that it will work for me, even if you do not believe it will work for you. If we are to take Christianity as our standard of measurement, Christ taught that if our faith is as the grain of a tiny mustard seed, this is all that is required. You, Jonathan, have clearly shown me that you have just such a mustard seed.”

There were other, specific examples I cited to demonstrate my point, but the fact remains. Jonathan has faith. It isn’t necessarily a strong faith. But he has a mustard seed and if the words of Christ be in the least bit true, this small beginning could well grow up into a towering tree of faith some day, unperturbed by the winds of change, capable of “boughing” low to those in need: those struggling with mustard seed in fumbling fingers, anxious and uncertain. Indeed, a miracle is often only a mustard seed away.

Faith can be contagious, but the infection must first be caught before it can be transmitted; our faith might very well be able to infuse the faith of others with new life everlasting; we may very well be the agent capable of planting the seed of change. The question is, have we the faith? Can we see that which cannot be seen?

Very well. There is so much else I could write and it seems that this newsletter has taken a left turn or two or three away from the direction I had thought to steer it, but I suppose that is what next week is for. For the time, I fear I must leave you at this abrupt junction, for the future has yet to unfold: I am merely a scribe and it takes time for seeds to grow. Perhaps we can come back again soon and eavesdrop some more; maybe next time we will find that a beanstalk has sprouted from our handful of seeds? Oh! I’m sorry. I almost forgot our metaphor was mustard. How ditsy of me!

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

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