I Know What I Saw

So why don't you believe your eyes?

Seeing is not believing.

Need proof? I’ve just binge-listened to all 15 episodes of Uncanny on BBC Sounds with Danny Robins. He has been collecting ghost stories for years. In this series he speaks to people who have experienced many strange and troubling events in the past. Some have never spoken about the events since they happened decades ago.

Each event is then scrutinised by two experts, one skeptical and one ‘believer’. The explanations of the skeptic are often comically implausible. They cast around for ways of rationalising poltergeists, apparitions, blacker-than-black balls of evil and strange voices. They often say that fear can play tricks on your mind. But what if the source of that fear is having each of your cassette tapes being pushed out of their holder onto the floor one by one?

The ’believer’ is occasionally an Anglican priest, but normally is someone with a hodgepodge of views about the paranormal, or a Celtic pagan. As a result, I often find the explanations of the ‘believer’ just as frustrating. But then again, my own thinking is far from straight on the subject of the paranormal, which is why I’m reading Demons by Michael Heiser.

An Eerie Silence

What do Christians say about this stuff? Very little. Christians are divided when it comes to Halloween, about embracing it or rejecting it. But we so uncomfortable around the subject of spooky things. We just don’t talk about this stuff, which seems like a missed opportunity given that many people have had an experience they can’t explain. Even though they may say they don’t believe in ghosts. Even though they’ve seen one. Because seeing is not believing.

That is what is most striking about the stories on Uncanny: how often the people who’ve had the experience often remain skeptical themselves. Often they are adamant about the details of what happened, reflected by the haunting theme which has the refrain “I know what I saw.” But even though what they have seen has no rational explanation, they still are oddly reluctant to say they believe in ghosts, or that they believe in the supernatural. We say seeing is believing. It really isn’t.

Believe The Science

We live in a rational age where we are commanded to believe the science. Talking so unscientifically is not fashionable – even shameful. In one case of two students in an extremely haunted room on a campus in Belfast, one student spoke freely, but his roommate is now an eminent scientist. He eventually agreed to take part as long as he wasn’t named, and they had to voice his testimony with an actor so no-one would be able to identify him.

Isn’t it odd that a highly regarded scientist confirmed science-defying poltergeist activity which he witnessed first hand several times. But he won’t say so using his own voice on the BBC. Even though he knows what he saw?

Most witnesses aren’t scientists. So why don’t they believe that there’re more to life than meets the eye, even though they’ve had such encounters, and have never forgotten them? Because seeing is not believing.

Being There

We also know this from the New Testament in which Jesus and the apostles performed all kinds of miracles. You might be dubious about those miracles, but think that if you’d been there, and witnessed them for yourself, you would think differently.

But you probably wouldn’t. Seeing is not believing.

When Pilate offered Jesus – a man who could raise the dead – to the crowd, they chanted “Crucify Him!” They had seen his signs and wonders. But it didn’t make any difference.

Would you have cried out ‘Hold on a minute!’ because you know what you saw?

We tend to assume that Jesus performs these miracles to display his divine power so that people would believe in him. But he didn’t. Jesus did them to show who he is and why he’s come. He is the second Adam, another Jacob, a new Moses, and latter-day Elijah.

Who Gets the Credit?

As I point out in my live Water into Wine show, most of Jesus’s miracles in the gospel of John are actually hidden or obscured. When Jesus changes water into wine, who gets the credit? The Master of the Feast calls over the bridegroom and congratulates him. Jesus doesn’t butt in to say it was his doing. The servants knew what had happened. The disciples saw. But that’s it. This pattern continues for the next five signs.

So it’s interesting that John’s gospel also contains Jesus’s words to Thomas who refused to believe Jesus had risen:

“Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Would it also be true to add “And cursed are those who have seen but do not believe  – even though they know what they saw”?

Spiritually, we are all in the dark. This is why we need Jesus to turn the lights on. That is why Jesus heals a man who was blind from birth in John 9. It’s funny chapter, but the point is this: We are all born bind. We need the one who says he is the Light of the World. And eventually we will see him face to face.

Where the real battle between Good and Evil happens

I also wrote this about Halloween and where the real battle between good and evil happens.