Staring at the sea yet seeing nothing

September 15, 2024

The unbeliever stumbles around in the darkness, tripping over furniture and bumping into walls while insisting there’s no such thing as light.

Unbelief is a curious thing.

Imagine, if you will, a man standing at the edge of a vast ocean, staring out at the horizon. The sun sets in a blaze of colors, and the waves whisper ancient secrets as they lap against the shore. And yet, in all his intellectual glory, our man concludes that the ocean doesn’t exist. He’s sure of it. The salty air that stings his nostrils, the sand beneath his feet, the endless expanse of water stretching beyond his sight—all illusions, figments of some overactive imagination. He congratulates himself on his clarity of thought.

This is the absurdity of unbelief.

Romans 1 paints a different picture. Paul, with his characteristic bluntness, tells us that God’s “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” (Ro 1:20). It’s as if Paul is shaking his head in disbelief at the sheer audacity of humanity. God has left his fingerprints everywhere—in the night sky, in the intricacies of a spider’s web, in the rhythm of our hearts. Yet, here we are, with our backs turned to the evidence, claiming that nothing is there.

I could almost admire the sheer dedication it takes to maintain such a stance. The mental gymnastics required to explain away the obvious must be exhausting. It reminds me of a man I once saw online who was convinced the government had planted microchips in his brain. He spent years fashioning elaborate headgear from tinfoil to block the “signals.” Any attempt to convince him otherwise was met with fierce resistance. “I’ve done my research,” he’d say as he adjusted the antenna on his homemade helmet. “You’re just too blind to see.”

In a way, we’re all like that man when we deny God’s existence. We build our own elaborate headgear—our pursuit of wealth, the idolization of self, or the worship of reason—and we use it to block out the “signals” of God’s presence. David puts it more poetically, though with no less force, when he says, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Ps 14:1). Foolishness here isn’t a lack of intelligence. It’s a willful ignorance and determined blindness.

But why? Why go to such lengths to deny what is so evident? The answer lies in the uncomfortable nature of truth. If there is a God, then we are accountable to him. We have to confront our own inadequacies, our sins, and our need for redemption. And that is a bitter pill to swallow. It’s far easier to reject the notion and live as though the ocean isn’t there, the sun doesn’t rise and set, and the waves don’t speak.

C.S. Lewis once remarked that unbelief is like being in the dark while knowing the light switch is within reach. The light is there, waiting to be turned on, but there’s a stubborn refusal to reach out and flip the switch. So, the unbeliever stumbles around in the darkness, tripping over furniture and bumping into walls while insisting there’s no such thing as light.

It’s all so terribly absurd.

And yet, before we get too comfortable in our critique, it’s worth remembering that we, too, were once blind. Paul reminds us that we were dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked (Eph 2:1). We were no different from the man at the ocean’s edge, denying the existence of the very thing that surrounded us. It wasn’t our own brilliance that opened our eyes. It was grace—unmerited, unearned, and utterly humbling.

Perhaps rather than mocking the absurdity of unbelief, we should grieve over it. We should remember the darkness from which we’ve been rescued and pray for those still lost in its depths. After all, the ocean remains vast and unchanging, whether we acknowledge it or not. So does the One who made it.

Staring at the sea yet seeing nothing

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