Many focus on these words about faith the size of a mustard seed and having the faith to move mountains. However, maybe we should focus on another word—faith. What does it mean to have faith.

You may remember the Magic Eye craze that came out several years ago. It was a design that looked like TV static but when you looked at it correctly this undecipherable image produced not only an image of an object but it was in three dimensions. I was fascinated to discover the technology for it is over two hundred years old.

Some people could spend forever looking at the image and never see it. Others could see it immediately. The fact is the image was always there whether you could see it or not.

Faith like an autostereogram

Faith can be a bit like that. If you tried various techniques to change the way you looked at the original static-like image, you often would eventually see the actual picture offered by the magic eye.

Faith is not what some atheists say it is—believing in a fantasy or a myth. Faith is really understanding the world through a science that looks beyond the material realm as I have explained to you before. It is really to understand that our ability to perceive the world around us is limited by the nature of our biology. Let me put it this way. A person with perfect hearing can hear between 20hz and 20khz. Sound is produced by waves of energy that eventually hit a device like an ear that can interpret those waves into sound. By the way, if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one around to hear it does it still make a sound? The answer is no. Because the sound has to be interpreted by the ear. Otherwise, it is just sound waves and they without the device to interpret them do not make a sound.

Those waves also vibrate at frequencies above and below 20 hz and 20khz but we were not designed to hear them. If you watch a tree fall in the woods and the sound it makes is 35khz to you it does not make a sound.

Some of those frequencies particularly at the lowest subsonic we cannot hear them feel but we can feel them. They exist but we are not designed to hear them.

Light is the same way. The visible light spectrum is a small part of the entire light spectrum where we can see light but cannot see radio waves which are on the light spectrum, infrared and ultraviolet light, etc. They exist but we cannot see them.

Faith is understanding there is a spiritual realm we cannot see but just as the other things exist, it exists too.

That really is all faith is. Jesus comes to explain it in a way we can understand it.

Proof of God’s existence

Scientists who do not believe in God are looking to us to prove God exists. Is there proof for God’s existence, yes, but like the magic eye you cannot understand it if you don’t know how to see it. Like the tree in the woods, you cannot comprehend it if you do not have the ability to interpret the signs.  

The proof for his existence is not that you can see God. You actually cannot. The proof for this existence is that what He says comes true.

It all comes down to if God exists and what we believe is true then X, Y, and Z would happen in certain circumstances.

Why is it that a world based in science often creates great evils. Let me ask you this, where do genocides come from? They make no sense from a scientific standpoint. You cannot show me how a world that believes in better living through technology can create a genocide from an atheist standpoint. It literally makes no sense.  

Let me put it this way. Atheists are calling us to prove that God exists. We have no need. We can better yet ask the question if what we believe: humans cannot create a perfect society because of our inclination to sin and it is so intense that we need God to show us out of sin and into the fullness of humanity. If all that is not true, then why can we not only not create a perfect society, where do genocides come from?

Faith is bigger than science

Our faith is not there to have us live through a smaller understanding of reality but through a larger understanding of reality.

Take any atheist physicist at Harvard University and me and you will learn that I believe in everything I believe in through faith AND believe in everything he or she believes in through science meaning I have the larger view of reality.

That is what faith is—understanding reality at a more comprehensive level.

Do I believe in angels? Yes. Do I believe in evolution? Yes. Do I believe in demons? Yes. Do I believe in physics? Yes.

However, as we can look at the universe and understand there is so much more to explore and understand, so I can look at the world of faith and realize there is so much more to explore and understand. Our understanding of God grows through our faith and we experience God in deeper levels. We also let go of childish images and embrace newer images that do not contradict what we understand as Catholics but deepen it.

So when Jesus says if you had faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains. We can also understand this, if you understood the reality we live in both in a spiritual world and a physical world you would be able to move mountains because you would have the understanding needed to see that it is done.

It is done by asking God to show us that kind of faith.

So this week, as you pray, ask the Lord in Jesus name to show us that kind of faith that you can move mountains. You may find that it begins not with asking to move mountains but in asking Lord what he wants you to do in service to Him, even if it includes moving mountains.

photo: CanvaPro

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