You may recognize the line above from the film, Tommy by the Who. You may also assume that this is another attempt to put a movie or something into my devotional/blog. However, I have never seen the movie, Tommy. I am familiar with the quasi-religious theme of it, though. This week’s subject has little to do with the subject of the film, a blind, deaf, and dumb (the term the film uses for being nonverbal—though the character does have a line—and many nonverbal people are far from, “dumb”) man with an intuitive ability to play pinball, around whom a cult develops.

The subject here is more about what we all long for. I know for me, it is not often that I have had a touch from God. It is not often that the cosmic Master of Everything has touched my world with supernatural power, it seems. Yet I know that we all long to see God, to hear God, to connect with God intimately. We all wish we could see behind the curtain and understand the reasons for this or that and know that God hears us. We want to see His love and concern, etched on His face. We all want to see for ourselves if God is not a man behind a machine like in the Wizard of Oz.

One time at a Bible study I heard someone say that we will never know all of the answers to prayers that the Lord gives. At the time, I scoffed at this, because I wanted desperately to see God in action. I will keep wanting to see this my entire life, as some kind of confirmation that I am not alone, that I am not among the most to be pitied, as per Paul (1 Corinthians 15:14). We all want to see angels fighting for us, hear the trumpet sound, feel the hugs when we need them. Some have reported supernatural occurrences like these at times in their lives, maybe you have experienced this. However, these experiences are few and far between. That is not the world that the Lord has given us, yet. In AD 70, when the Romans sacked the Temple in Jerusalem, they found nothing inside the Holy of Holies. They were not struck dead for entering. The Roman civilization eventually was, but not at that time.

The world the one that we live in is one that requires faith in God. This is not a faith grounded in a speculative flying spagetti-monster or a faith grounded on the different aspects of life like a god of war, a god of the sea or a god of the sky. Nor is our faith based on a blind and deaf person who can play pinball. Our faith is grounded on the Word of God given to a specific people at a specific time in history and if you are a Christian, on the historical person and words of Jesus Christ and those who experienced Him in the flesh. However, it does not stop us from wanting to be seen, heard, touched, and healed.

Doubt is part of belief. It is not the opposite, disbelief is the opposite of belief. Disbelief requires the outright denial of a lot of historical evidence, personal experience, and the God-shaped hole in the lives of humans that we have attempted to fill throughout our entire history, with Zeus, Odin, trees, drugs, riches, and other “gods”.

I realize that these words leave you with few answers. But allow me to leave you with a quote by the great theologian, Fredrick Buechner  regarding the importance of doubt and faith (Listening to Your Life, 1992):

Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.

————————————————————–W.