Newspaper Columns by The Rev. Canon Bill Lewellis
One of my favorite Kudzu cartoons would have worked well within the column, but it didn't occur to me as I was creating.
Frame one: Dear Preacher, How do you define "God"? Theologian.
Frame two: Dear Theologian, The Holy is greater than the sum of Its parts.
Believing is Seeing
By Bill Lewellis
May, 2001, The Express-Times, Easton
Seeing is believing. Or is it?
A 1999 movie I have not seen was called At First Sight. I understand it's a love story. Virgil has been blind since he was one year old. Amy encourages him into treatment on restoring sight. After a successful operation, Virgil finds that seeing doesn't mean understanding what one sees. He has no reference to interpret what he sees. They work through this together.
Publicity for the movie includes a creative tagline: "Only love can bring you to your senses. Science gave him sight. She gave him vision."
Seeing has as much to do with relationship as with sight. With "we," if you will, as with "I."
Modern men and women, unlike the post-moderns we may become, have grown far too comfortable with taking things apart. For our minds to get hold of something, we think we have to take it apart. That often sends us on a strange and destructive journey.
When we look too intently at parts, it might seem that they make sense apart from one another.
Take the Christian notion of faith, hope and love. Is it possible really for one of these to exist with authenticity apart from the other two. Think about it. Should we presume that religious faith is an act of mind and will that can happen all by itself? Is it possible to have genuine religious faith without hope and trust in God and love for God and one another?
Think about genuine religious faith, not caricatures of "true believers" practicing "drive by believing," i.e., belittling, patronizing or destroying the less than orthodox among us.
Some 12 years ago an Episcopal priest wrote a book for skeptics and for churches interested in ministry among skeptics: So You Think You're Not Religious. He suggested that the Latin word translated into English as "I believe" -- Credo -- really means "I set my heart."
We have no verb form in English for heart. Our English translation suggests we are dealing only with matters of the mind.
Don't rely on the argument from word derivation. As intriguing as it may sound, it might not be tightly woven.
Rely on your own sense of authenticity. Think about this the next time you pray "I believe in one God... in one Lord, Jesus Christ... who was made man... was crucified, suffered death... and rose again... in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life... in one holy catholic and apostolic Church, one baptism for the forgiveness of sins... the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come...
Might your prayerful recitation of that creed be more than intellectual assent? Doesn't it seem more like I believe, I hope, I trust, I love, I set my heart on God who loves me and who has done these wonderful things for me?
There is no genuine faith apart from hope and love. When we truly believe, we also hope and love. When we do all of this, we begin to see things differently. We begin to see things as they are, not as they appear.
"Have you believed because you have seen me?" Jesus says near the end of the Gospel according to John. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."
[The Rev. Canon Bill Lewellis is communication minister for the Diocese of Bethlehem, the Episcopal Church in a 14-county area of northeastern Pennsylvania.]
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