Ten Million Things You Might Need to Ignore

A book I’ve been reading states that the human body boasts eleven million sensory receptors, and ten million of those relate to sight. The author also shared an estimate that interpretation of visual signals accounts for 50% of brain activity.

Reading that, my mind immediately recalled words written ages ago by the Apostle Paul:

For we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

My wife was amused to learn recently that if I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I often climb out of bed and walk with my eyes closed. (Finally, she had an explanation for those thuds and stifled exclamations she occasionally heard in the night!) My navigating with eyes closed and arms extended may seem strange to you, but given the data above, it’s perfectly logical. Even though it’s dark, opening my eyes lights up all kinds of things in my brain as it tries to interpret shapes and shadows. I simply don’t want to wake up that much! I want to be asleep. And if I can’t be at that moment, then I want to get back to sleep as quickly as I can, by limiting mental stimulation.

Now Paul wasn’t suggesting we walk around with our eyes closed, depriving those millions of tiny rods and cones in our eyes the chance to help. Instead, he recognized flesh and spirit are always at odds, and sometimes we’re tempted to let human perceptions overrule spiritual truth.

A relevant passage I’ve been thinking about lately (Isaiah 11:3) prophesied of Jesus 700 years before His birth:

And He will delight in the fear of the LORD,

And He will not judge by what His eyes see,

Nor make a decision by what His ears hear…

Jesus subjugated His senses to something greater. He only only did what he saw the Father doing (John 5:19). He didn’t perceive that with his physical eyes. The Bible tells us that Jesus often drew away to “lonely places” and prayed. I guarantee He wasn’t lonely then! That’s when He communed with His Father and came to know His heart, motivating His actions.

Walking by faith and not by sight requires our concept of reality to embrace more than what we see in the world around us (and our resulting arbitrary interpretations). It means embracing a relationship with Someone we come to know as implicitly good, loving, and faithful. We cross a threshold to trusting Him with all our hearts and we stop leaning on visual cues and limited human understanding. We look to the One who spoke everything we can see into existence and choose to constantly involve Him in our thinking (Proverbs 3:5-6). We hang on His every word, and believe whatever He says, because we hold Him in the highest esteem and we delight in Him.