Years ago, on the old Candid Camera TV show, Alan Funt set up a bird cage in an area where it could be seen by all. In the cage was a swing and a tree branch, both rocking gently as if a bird was busily moving about. Everything in the cage suggested the bird’s presence, even the chirping sounds of a bird; BUT THERE WAS NO BIRD IN THE CAGE. It was fun to watch people search for the bird. Funnier still was listening to them describe in detail the invisible bird to others. The moral to the story, at least for my purposes here, is that people tend to see what they expect to see…what they want to see and often fail to see other possibilities and opportunities because those expectations get in the way.
At a recent Bible study, I asked those gathered to look at the wooden Christus Rex on the wall and tell me what they saw. There were a variety of responses: a cross, a symbol of lo
ve, a symbol, a tool to kill people, a sign of our faith, etc. Could it be that we saw what we expected to see? Could it be that we failed to consider other possibilities because other possibilities were as difficult to imagine as a bird cage without a bird? What if we were to ask a person unfamiliar with the Christian faith the same question. They might respond: a dead tree, a piece of art, a job for any number of people, the death of the Amazon jungle, or a myriad of other possibilities. The reality is that we can’t help but look at things through our own history…our own experience. So how do we learn to consider other possibilities? The answer is simple; we allow ourselves to experience different viewpoints, to look at things from another’s perspective, and push ourselves to read and even study contrary opinions. I have a friend that says there is no need to do this, he already has the truth and when you have the truth there is nothing else a person needs. My response to my friend is, “That’s just what the Jews said to Jesus, it’s just what the people of Lystra (Acts 14:8) said to Paul, it’s just what Rome said to Luther, and it’s just what the killers in Iraq said to Larry and Jean Elliott, the Baptist missionaries shot to death March 15, 2004.
To be well informed about complicated and challenging ideas, to have studied them and wrestled with them, and to have dialogued with others that hold those ideas as belief, is not the same as believing those ideas yourself. More often than not, a good challenge to complacently held beliefs enlivens the faith of the believer as the challenged person comes to realize just why such beliefs are so important to them. Change comes not from reading and studying only that which reaffirms the opinion one alrea
dy holds; that is where the Jews were stuck when it came to Jesus. Yet had they been willing to listen with an open mind they might have heard him saying, “I come not to abolish the law and the prophets…but to fulfill them.” (Mt 5:17) A closed mind is not the fertile soil likely to produce fruit of any quality or quantity. The closed mind is much more likely to hear, “cut it down; why should it use up the ground?” (Lk 13:6-7) The process of learning naturally brings change, and it is a journey Jesus has called us to. (Mt 11:29) “Learn from me” and keep learning from me for my burden is LIGHT, not the opposite of heavy but rather the opposite of darkness. In other words, enlightenment, the very opposite of the closed-minded Pharisees in Jesus time and the same as the closed minded of every generation.
Come Lord Jesus and dig around your Church, put manure on it…on us that we may bear fruit befitting the coming of the kingdom.
Father Bill Myrick
