Bethlen Naptár, 1949 (Ligonier)
Respect for ideals
BETHLEN NAPTÁR 69 RESPECT FOR IDEALS II. Cor. 4:18. In our text we find one of the paradoxes in which the Bible is so rich, which, by seemingly contradicting generally accepted views, provokes thinking and, by this very fact, is eminently adapted to reveal divine truth. Jesus himself often spoke in paradoxes, as when he said: “If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and the servant of all.” (Mark 9:35.) On another occasion he declared: “Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.” (Mt. 13:12.) In the same mode of speaking the apostle Paul says: “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.” Reading the apostle’s words, we cannot help asking: What does the apostle mean? Among all the gifts which God has bestowed on us, there is hardly another which we prize so highly as our eyes, with which we can look at all the wonderful things around us. Our hearts go out in compassion at the sight of a blind person, as we think of the unestimable loss he is doomed to suffer by being deprived of his ability to see the things that we can see. Is it possible that in the estimation of the apostle it is a sinful thing to look at the things that can be seen? The created world around us, as Holy Scripture teaches, is the handiwork of God, in which, as if in a mirror, the glory of the Creator is revealed. The apostle himself states in his letter to the Romans, that whatever is invisible in God, is made manifest in the things made by Him, even His power and Godhead, and warns, that those who fail to heed the lessons so revealed, are without an excuse. (Rom. 1:19, 20.) How can we bring this statement of the apostle into harmony with the one given in our text? No less difficulty do we encounter when we direct our attention to the second part of the apostle’s words, where he tells that he looks at the things that cannot be seen. How can one, we ask, look at the things that cannot be seen? The miracles of modern science disclose many things to the eye, which had been hidden from the eyes of man in olden times, but the apostle could hardly be thinking of these when he wrote his letter to the Corinthians. What does he mean, then, when lie advises us to look at the things that cannot be seen? Not many days ago, the death of a Roman Catholic priest was reported from Berlin. Reports of his death had been given
