Perception

Jeremiah 1:11 NIV

 The word of the Lord came to me: "What do you see, Jeremiah?"

"I see the branch of an almond tree," I replied.

Are You Certain of What You See?

The very first time Mary Jo and I went out together, I borrowed a friend’s car and took her to the Robert E. Lee Theater.   This was a two story movie theater and it was the fanciest in New Orleans.  The movie we saw was quite memorable…it was the four hour “Reds”…and yes, it felt more like eight hours.  I more than made up for the terrible movie choice by getting Mary Jo nachos.  She had never before had nachos and so I felt like I had brought her to the Eiffel Tower or taken her on a camel ride through Morocco.  The nachos even had jalapeño slices on it.  Now for a year and a half we did these same sorts of things…I took her places, paid for the meal or the movie…just the two of us and we had fun together.  She didn’t go with any other guys to movies or restaurants or festivals during this time and I didn’t go with any other girls.  Imagine my surprise after a year and a half of this exclusive attention we gave to each other my discovery that Mary Jo did not think we were dating.  I kind of wondered what she thought we had been doing all this time…going on field trips…creating a review of restaurants…baby-sitting each other?  I thought, and call me “crazy”, that we had been dating the past year.  So here we were, two sane adults, experiencing the very same events and engaging in conversations together over a very long period of time, having completely different views of what we had been doing this whole time.

What is fascinating about perception is that it is a function of reality that is really real.  A wind really does blow a pine cone off a tree.  A bank really does charge you a fee for bouncing a check.  Your wife really does say, “I love you” and your boss really does warn you of potential lay-offs.  The car in front of you actually stopped and you did hit it and your mom told you that if you did not clean up your room, she would take your IPad away from you.  Really real things happen all around us but sometimes it is more important for us and for others our perception of those real things rather than the real things themselves.  One man commits suicide when his girlfriend breaks up with him but another man whose girlfriend breaks up with him finds someone else to date.  One child cries when a bully punches him but another child swings back and laughs about it afterward.  A mother frets anxiously about her son coming home late from a party; another falls asleep peacefully before he gets back.  Perception is not always reality but the two go hand in hand in determining the reality of many outcomes in life.

There is in the ancient writings of the prophet Habakkuk a case study on perception.  As the Babylonian armies began their approach toward Jerusalem it became clear to all Judea that the invasion could not be stopped.  Judah’s armies had no answer for the Babylonian juggernaut.  Destruction of Jerusalem seemed inevitable; slavery, rape and even death a real possibility for anyone still alive when the Babylonians finally overran the city.  Habakkuk faced the hard cold reality of invasion with not a hint of fluffy optimism.  His prayer to God was simple and direct.  Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet… (Habakkuk 3:17-18 NIV)  As Habakkuk writes, nothing is settled.  The invasion hasn’t begun.  The walls of Jerusalem are still intact.  The farms and ranches continue to provide food for everyone.  Yet…Habakkuk added in the space between what seemed to be coming and what was there before him.  This was where reality met perception for Habakkuk and we face it too.  How we respond to “yet” is critical to the reality that we have as it was for Habakkuk.  The “yet” for Habakkuk was, “I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” (Habakkuk 3:18 NIV)  This was the way Habakkuk saw things.  If everything falls apart and it goes from bad to worse, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.  Perception was unbending in the circumstance…crops failed or not, sheep in the pen or taken, grapes sweet and luscious or shriveled and hard, Habakkuk would see it all as “God is my Savior…I will love Him.”

In the book of Daniel is a second case study of perception.  A few years later, after Babylon had conquered Jerusalem and brought a number of the Jews back to Babylon with them, some of the captives because of their special abilities were given significant government jobs.  Three of them, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego faced a terrible dilemma just as they really got started in their careers.  The king enacted a law that whenever a traveling band came to your town and began to play, if anyone refused to worship the ninety foot gold portable idol they brought with them, those people would be thrown into a blazing furnace.  The reality was that this idol was before the three Jewish young men, the music was playing and the furnace was stoked and available for anyone refusing to worship the golden idol.  Perception of the reality was voiced by the three men who faced squarely their fate even as they refused to bow in worship to the idol. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter.  If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king.  But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." (Daniel 3:16-18 NIV)  The adjustment in thinking the three men made to the reality of the furnace and the king’s fury and the idol was simple.  Our hope is in God regardless of how things turn and we will not worship idols.  That was the perception they all had of the situation they faced.  This was how they looked at the idol and the furnace and the angry king.

The third case study we shall examine took place in a secret place where Jesus was with his disciples.  He told them exactly what to expect soon.  And he said, "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life." (Luke 9: 22 NIV)  Now we must take these two parts of the reality separately.  The first is that Jesus was telling the disciples that the religious leaders were going to reject him outright and because of this, He would have to be killed.  This had to be terribly disconcerting to them, perhaps even depressing.  And of course that is what happened.  Jesus was crucified and the disciples had to face it.  Reality was the end of dreams, broken plans and the loss of a beloved friend.  All of this Jesus told them to expect and they had it.  The death of Jesus came and it was real dying.  So what were they to do?  What perception of this were they to form of Jesus being dead?  How were they to view Christ crucified; which was very different than Christ healing and Christ teaching and Christ eating with them and potentially taking over the nation of Israel as her king?

Jesus told the Disciples two things.  He would die and He would be raised from the dead.  Those two were interconnected at every point.  The Disciples would have taken these two parts as completely different matters, at least during the three days when Jesus was dead but not raised from the dead.  Since then though, the two are never separated from one another.  The crucified Christ is reality and the raised Christ is reality and both determine perception in every single circumstance.  When the Disciples saw a bright future filled with success and happiness, Jesus saw Himself crucified.  When the Disciples saw all hope dashed and their lives crushed, Jesus saw Himself raised from the dead.  We can either perceive things as the Disciples did or see all we face as Jesus saw things.  What do I mean by that?

When Christ died, He took the Sin of mankind into His body and it was crucified with Him when He died.  The Apostle Paul tells us in his second letter to the Corinthians that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV)  In Hebrews we find a similar statement.  But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9:26 NIV)  The death of Christ did away with Sin because Sin died with Him when He died.  When this happened we became free to see things from God’s point of view.  Before, Sin corrupted our thinking and made us Satan’s fool, but, after the Cross when we are made right with God through the cross of Christ Sin is worked out of us and we can think with God’s mind and understand things.  Sin does not direct our thinking!  The Cross meant victory!  The Disciples thought it was defeat.  We with Sin see trials and troubles and hardship and unfair circumstances.  With Christ and our Sin taken from us, we see God working everything out for our good, we see our lives being put together in a perfect way.  We see strength of character building and holiness developing and love growing pure and true.  With Sin out of the way, we can reinterpret everything so we see things as they are and not as they seem.

With the Cross came resurrection.  Peter says this of the resurrection’s effect on us.  Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, (1 Peter 1:3-4 NIV)  The Resurrection is the most astounding event in the history of mankind because it was the power of God revealed in Jesus Christ.  If there is one enemy of us all, if there is any unifying force that we cannot break, it is death and with the Resurrection, death is broken and the operating system of every one of us is hope.  Hope rises above every problem we face.  If death is a shattered enemy, then what is unemployment in God’s hands…what is disease…what is divorce…what is infertility…what is injury or insult or persecution…what is failure…what is disappointment…what is rejection when it is in God’s hands?  Resurrection is the creator of hope at every point in life…hope is the bright dawn and it casts no shadows because it is built by the Resurrection of Christ and that is reality.  When Jesus Christ rose from the dead and He really did rise…over five hundred different people in many different places saw Him alive…He made hope the reality for every single situation we face.  Hope is not in resurrection, it rises from the Resurrection and we can hope and have real hope because hope is not a dream of something that could happen.  It really is what is happening because the resurrection of Christ really occurred in history and the resurrection is working through every circumstance we encounter wherever we go and whatever we face.