They say mantis shrimp have the most complex color vision of all animals. Their 12 to 16 individual color photoreceptors enable them to receive a staggeringly broad range of electromagnetic signals. These are things that humans with our 3 puny photoreceptors build state of the art instruments to detect. But that doesn’t mean mantis shrimp see better than us: their brains aren’t complex enough to distinguish and discern meaning in all that matter. They’re only using that data to decide what the food is. It would be like using the Artemis II rocket to check your email. A lot of wasted potential there. So, were a mantis shrimp to drive a car, it would no doubt run red lights. Not because it can’t see the different colors, but because it doesn’t understand what red, yellow, and green mean.

In the reverse, if you took away all the colors and brushes from a young painter and gave him just a black crayon and a white piece of paper, he would still draw his lover. A medium can limit the message’s complexity, but not its meaning. The painter knows what his heart longs for and delights in, and he expresses that no matter what he’s working with. In a materialistic world, we can get really fixated on the mechanics of things in a way that blinds us to their purposes. So often the question is not “what can it do?,” but “what is it for?”

Likewise, there’s a kind of spirituality that says there’s some secret extra knowledge you need in order to be “enlightened.” We think we need more information, a wider education, as though there’s a mantis shrimp-level of Bible-decoding insight just outside our field of vision. But the Bible shows us that what the light reveals isn’t a doctrine. It’s an attachment. An affection far more powerful than insight, which even the most illiterate or undeveloped humans are hardwired to detect and receive. When Jesus says, “I am the light of the world,” he’s not just giving us more information to process. He’s saying, “I’m the One by which you see what and who you really love, and who really loves you.”