Food for Thought: What Do You See?

 “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” Henry David Thoreau

In other words, looking gives the brain an impression of the scene, but seeing requires interpretation.  Knowing what we have seen involves bringing our own point of view and experience into play. This is why eyewitnesses often have very different stories to tell about what they have witnessed.

I remember a time in my own experience when, as a child in the 1950s, my brother and I were witnesses to a potential crime. We were riding home from church without parents one Sunday morning. We noticed that a strange car was backed up to the side door of our neighbor’s home. We thought it looked suspicious, and later learned that it was in fact a robbery in progress. We were each asked to describe what we saw. I thought the car was a particular shade of green and that the car was a station wagon with a back door that was open.  My brother thought the car was blue and he was pretty sure he knew the make and model of the car. If I were to guess, all these many years later, I think the truth was somewhere between. I have always had an artist’s eye for color and I think I might have been right about the color of the car.  My brother was much more knowledgeable about cars and was probably right about the make and model.  We never did find out if our accounts were of any help in the police investigation, but what that incident taught me is that we tend to see what is most important or of greatest interest to us.

The same is true in many other situations. For example, how we view other people’s behavior and beliefs. As it says in Luke 6:42: “How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye.’ When you do not see the log that is in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

What Jesus was saying is that it is too easy to judge another’s sins, and ignore our own.  Again, seeing involves interpretation, but we must guard against making snap judgments. We need to leave the judging to God and seek His wisdom to keep our own lives on the right track, and then see how we can help others do the same for themselves.