Before I share another portion of Thinking About God, I take time to reflect on the historical context of hearing and seeing.  Many scholars believe that, in their view, it was the ancient Semitic peoples, the Assyrians and Hebrews, who made hearing their primary sense, whereas it was the Greeks, the Indo-Europeans, who made their primary sense seeing.  While we could discuss at length the many cultural implications of this thesis, I'd like to focus on what it means for our ability to sense things we cannot audibly hear or visibly see, things like, say, God.
     We all know that some animals see and hear far more acutely than human beings.  And we also know that we tend to see and hear what we want to see and hear, and that what we see and hear is conditioned by what is in our brains, our specific cultural and neuronal contexts.  Rarely will we all see and hear exactly the same thing.  Witness the variety of responses to a particular work of art or certain musical piece:  everyone has a different reaction.
     So it is with how we might see and hear God.  Some claim that those who see or hear God do so because of what is already in their brains.  They really haven't seen or heard anything.  Others might suggest that, no, those who see and hear God do so because they really do see and hear, in some way, God.  God is as real as anything else they see or hear.
     Rarely, however, can those who claim to see or hear God produce any tangible evidence that they do.  On the basis of how their seeing and hearing God has changed or affected them, they believe that they have.  It becomes the testimony of their experience.
     What does all this have to do with the historical context of hearing and seeing?  Simply, whether we make our primary sense hearing or seeing doesn't matter as much as what we decide that we can hear or see.  And maybe that's why, when Jesus appeared on earth, the gospel of John describes him as the "Word became flesh."  For this spoke to the Semitics, who relied on hearing, that is, the word, that which is spoken.  And it spoke to the Greeks, the Indo-Europeans, for it was the visible flesh and blood person of Christ now before them.
     But unless people believed what they heard or saw, they would not see or hear anything.  Unless people determined beforehand that they would put no boundaries on what they could hear or see, they would do neither.
     How about you?