Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen

I once stood in the same shoes as the doubter, staring into the void of reality and whispering to myself: there has to be more than this. And yet, for so long, I convinced myself that there wasn’t. I sought a spirituality detached from God, drawn more to the mysterious notion of an 'unseen reality' than to any personal deity. I admired the elegance of quantum physics, the philosophical allure of Kant’s noumenal world, the poetic pull of consciousness studies—but God? No. God was a distant myth I had left on the altar of my childhood.

And then something changed.

The conversation I recently had with a friend reopened this wound—this deep divide between belief and skepticism. He said he’s open to 'something unseen,' perhaps a force, a realm, or a presence beyond the senses, but not God. Not the God of the Bible. Not the God who, in his view, committed genocide, endorsed slavery, and now stands eternally silent. He asked a damning question: What has God done recently?

That’s a fair question. It’s a deeply human question. One I’ve asked myself in the quiet, lonely nights when prayers seem to echo off the ceiling. He argued that he can be more moral than God. That, unlike God, he holds himself accountable. That God ruled by destruction and fear. That any change made by man can be attributed to man—but what can be attributed to God, today?

But I would ask this: is morality truly grounded if it floats upon the shifting tides of human culture? What is evil, really, if we define it ourselves? If you define it one way, and I define it another, and both of us shift our definition a decade from now, who’s to say which of us is right? Scripture says:

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

— Isaiah 5:20 (NIV)

God doesn’t operate on our scale. That was my mistake for years. I thought if I couldn’t understand God, then He must not exist. But I’ve come to believe the opposite: if I could fully understand God, then He wouldn’t be God.

I get the revulsion to the Old Testament stories. I once flinched at them too. The flood. The destruction of Sodom. The commands against enemy nations. They seemed harsh, maybe even cruel. But I began to realize that we cannot read divine justice through the lens of modern sentimentality. We are not God. We are not omniscient. We see the page. He holds the book.

He’s not a celestial dictator. He’s a loving Father who allows freedom and consequence. Justice and mercy. He warns before He acts. He offers covenants. He pleads through prophets. He delays judgment far longer than any human judge would. And when humanity still rejected Him, He came down—not with thunder, but with tears, in the form of Christ. He didn’t bring down fire. He lifted up a cross.

“The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.”

— Psalm 103:8 (NIV)

I understand what it feels like to live in sin and to believe that God is silent. I lived there. I lived in patterns of self-justification, sin, and shame. I lied to myself, numbed myself, told myself I was strong and wise and moral. But I was empty. I had no anchor. My sense of good was subjective and self-serving. I couldn’t stop. Not by willpower. Not by intellect. It wasn’t until I fell apart that I cried out—truly cried out—and felt something shift.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

— Galatians 2:20 (NIV)

When I handed my life over to Christ, I didn’t get a mystical light show. I didn’t hear an audible voice. I didn’t get riches or supernatural healing. What I got was clarity. Peace. A stillness I had never known. Slowly, sins that had bound me lost their grip. I saw people differently. I saw myself differently. My heart softened. That wasn’t from me. That was the work of God in me.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

— 2 Corinthians 5:16-19 (NIV)

As to the silence of God—yes, it’s hard. We want parting seas and tongues of fire. We want lightning bolts. But maybe God is speaking more quietly now, because He has already said the loudest thing He could possibly say. We are not waiting for new words. The Word already came. God became flesh. He touched the lepers. He wept over the dead. He washed the feet of sinners. And yes, He died. But He also rose.

To the objection that faith lacks accountability, I would argue the opposite. True faith brings the deepest accountability. If God is real, then I can no longer hide. I am known. Seen. Judged not just by my actions but by the motives of my heart. That is terrifying. And liberating. Because He doesn’t only judge—He forgives. But I had to confess. I had to repent. And I still do, daily.

Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

— John 3:20-21 (NIV)

The miracles may look different now. Maybe they aren’t parted seas but reconciled families. Not water to wine, but anxiety to peace. Not blind eyes opened, but hardened hearts softened. These aren’t lesser miracles. They are greater.

At the heart of it all, there is still that question: why believe in a God you cannot see?

To that, I offer the same words Jesus gave to Thomas, the doubter, the one who demanded empirical proof—the same kind of proof modern skeptics demand:

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

— John 20:29 (NIV)

That is where I place my trust. Not in probabilities or shifting moralities. But in a love so deep that it took over my life and took my place. I once was blind to it. But now I see. And even when I do not see, I believe.