Sarah Nyhan

I was reminded of something that I learned while taking a driver’s education class. There is a phenomenon where your brain has a tendency to see only the things that it expects to see.

This is particularly dangerous for people like myself who drive hours a day on the same roads over and over. We can look in the rear view mirror, we can check our blind spot, but sometimes our brain will only give us a mental picture of what we expect to see versus what is actually there.

I tend to be a visual thinker. I have entire parts of the city mapped out in my brain. On a good day it is fascinating. Someone can describe a building that I’ve been to and as I think about the building then all the surroundings will slowly come into focus in my mind from nearest to farthest. I’ve driven this city so much that I usually do not need to use the GPS to give me directions. I can picture one location and I have the entire map of streets in my mind that I can use to navigate to another location.

The bad part about this is that it is easy for my brain to operate on memory versus actual circumstances. More than once I have missed my exit because my brain was operating on auto-pilot. The more dangerous threat is that I will change lanes because my brain expects them to be clear and doesn’t see the actual reality of a car in another lane. I have to be mindful of this as I drive. I try to check multiple times before I switch lanes so that I am sure that I actually saw with my eyes and not just what my brain expected to be there.

I was wondering if that applies to us spiritually also. Can we go through the same motions so much that we see what we expect to see versus what is actually there? That gives 2 Corinthians 5:7 an even deeper meaning: “For we live by faith, not by sight.”

And how many times do we have miracles of Jesus healing people so they could see clearly? One of those stories is in Matthew 10 where Jesus sees a blind man and he asks the blind man, “What do you want Me to do for you?” The blind man asks for his sight and Jesus says, “Go, your faith has made you well.” Interesting!

Jesus quoted the book of Isaiah as he announced himself in the synagogue: “The Spirit of The Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of The Lord.”

Wow, Jesus. One of the first things He did was identify Himself as The One to give sight to the blind.

Surely this goes beyond physical blindness! Surely the poor, the captives, and the oppressed are more than just the physical – also the spiritually poor, the spiritually captive, the spiritually oppressed?

Science makes this even more fascinating. Problems start happening when things happen faster than our brain can process them.

Another interesting fact is that the brain will only really see things it understands. To conserve resources, our brains will process information from our eyes and fill in the details with our minds, with information it already expects to be there. This is why people become very tired when they are in new environments. Their brains are processing EVERYTHING the eyes are seeing because it is all new.

Add to that the fact that heightened emotions can cause us to narrow our field of vision. When we don’t expect things to change we sometimes don’t see what is actually happening.

Inattentional blindness, also known as perceptual blindness, is a psychological lack of attention that is not associated with any vision defects or deficits.

We always rag on the religious leaders in Jesus’ day. Saying they should have known who Jesus was. But maybe they didn’t see Him because they were expecting something different based on the mental image in their mind.

Sometimes I listen to music and I don’t want to see the music video because the pictures of the stories that the music induces in my own mind are often better than the music videos. Sometimes when I watch the music video, it ruins the music for me.

Maybe that’s how it was for the religious leaders? We know they expected Jesus to save them from their physical circumstances. They expected Him to come in full glory and free them from the Romans. Even His disciples didn’t get it for a long time.

It’s so interesting to me that with all the prophecy and information in the Old Testament, Jesus’ own people were not in attendance after His birth.

Matthew tells the story of Jesus’ birth. The first visitors Matthew mentions are wise men from the East. How interesting! The wise men knew exactly what they wanted to see. The wise men sought Him to worship Him. Imagine the expense of a travel such as that in those times! The wise men certainly sought God with all they had.

Versus Herod. Herod was the King of Judea. He should have been the leader. A man after God’s own heart. Instead He called together the religious leaders for information. Then he stayed back and told the wise men to find Jesus and tell him so he could go worship. God knew Herod’s heart. One of my favorite versus is 2 Chronicles 16:9 where it is told that God’s eyes roam the entire earth looking for whose heart is His. He promises that when we seek we will find.

Proverbs 25:2 says it is the glory of God to conceal a thing and the honor of kings to uncover it.

Matthew 13: Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says,
‘You will keep on hearing, but will not understand;
You will keep on seeing, but will not perceive;
For the heart of this people has become dull,
With their ears they scarcely hear,
And they have closed their eyes,
Otherwise they would see with their eyes,
Hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart and return,
And I would heal them.’
But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

Matthew 13:44: The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

God lets Moses see His glory and nothing else.

Romans 1: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and [o]crawling creatures.

Revelation brings responsibility. He doesn’t conceal from us. He conceals for us.

Spurgeon: “God need not seek out any method of concealment, for if he were to unveil his face among us the glory would be too bright to be beheld. Go and stand, O mortal man, and gaze upon the sun at mid-day! Canst thou do it? Would not thine eyes be thereby blinded? Yet the sun is only one of the myriads of servants in the courts of God; then what must the face of the King himself be? It needs not that he should veil it; his own glory is surely veil enough unto itself.”