But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, "Lord, save me."

Matthew 14:30, ESV

 

Have you ever thought about this passage? It was the event in which Jesus came to His disciples while they were on a boat, but He was walking on the water itself in the heart of a storm. Peter asked Jesus to allow him to walk on the water and Jesus permitted it. But as Peter walked, he experienced the power of the storm and the magnitude of what he was doing and began o sink. We are all familiar with this miraculous event, but it is the non-miraculous part that I want to look at today.

 

In the passage above, it says that Peter "saw the wind." But how can you see something that has no visible substance that can be seen by the human eye? 

 

The answer to this question will help us to understand how we can believe in God Himself. When you think about this event, Peter clearly could not see something that couldn't be seen, but he could see the evidence. Furthermore, he could experience the effects. And while no one can see the wind, everyone who is paying attention can see it's evidence and feel it's effects. So, when Peter saw the waves and felt the breeze cutting through his skin, he knew that there was wind. For all practical purposes, he could see the wind in his mind's eye from the perspective of being able to assimilate the different pieces of evidence.

 

Here's another example: Suppose one day you heard the roaring and snarling of a lion. You rush outside and see lion tracks in the dirt. You come across a tragic victim who has been mangled and who is clearly suffering from his injuries, who whispers to you, "I was attacked by a lion." Though you had never actually seen the lion, you heard his roars, you saw his tracks, and you even heard eye-witness testimony that there was a lion. The only logical conclusion that you can make is that a lion had been there. 

 

The Apostle Peter wrote the following observation about Jesus in I Peter 1:8-9:

Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

 

The Apostle Paul wrote this in Romans 1:19-20:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

 

In these two passages, those who have never seen God nor Christ still have enough evidence. The evidence is more than adequate for us to draw the only rational conclusion that God and Christ both existed and we, therefore, must believe in them. Perhaps you have heard some mock at the idea of such a faith because they themselves would never be so stupid as to believe in something or Someone that they had never seen. But as the two examples above prove, there are some things which reasonable people will believe, in fact that they must believe, for they have seen the evidence and experienced the effects.

 

Every court case that a jury must come up with a verdict is based upon this very premise. In the absence of actually seeing the crime itself (or video evidence of the event) the jury is left only with the evidence that is presented to them. The prosecutor will show them the pictures of the "tracks in the sand" and will provide as many reliable witnesses as possible who "heard the lion roaring" and who actually "were attacked by the lion." 

 

As to Jesus' life, His teachings, and His miracles, we have a multitude of reliable witnesses from both inside and outside of the Bible. As to the existence of God, we behold His creation on a daily basis - from the sunrise to the sunset and everything in between, Though there will always be the sceptics who proclaim that they will never believe in anything they did not see with their own eyes, these are the very ones that God says are without excuse. The reason is that they have seen the evidence, and the only logical conclusion of that evidence is that God and Christ are real.

 

And, while it is definitely true that Peter never saw the wind itself (wind is invisible) he did see its evidence and experience its effects. So, for all practical purposes, he saw the wind. In our example of the lion attack, while the man who heard the roaring, saw the tracks and spoke to its victim never actually saw the lion with his eyes, the evidence allowed him for all practical purposes to see that the lion has been there.

 

When we talk about faith, many act as if it is an irrational and emotional response, but it is not. True faith is a reasoned conclusion from the best available evidence. The fact is that Peter would have been pretty dumb not to have believed that the wind existed, and the man would have been pretty stupid not to believe that the lion existed. What, then, can we say about those who refuse to believe in God and Christ even after seeing the available evidence? In God's own words, they are without excuse, even if they believe themselves to be intellectual and reasoning. A man who refuses to use his intellect and reason to come to an obvious conclusion cannot be seen as being either intellectual or reasonable.

 

If you believe in God and Christ, then you are not just a person of faith, you are a person of reason. If not... well, you can draw your own conclusions.