For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; (Rom 1:20 KJV)Paul said that the invisible things are clearly seen. True, but sometimes we have problems with seeing the visible things too! (Explanation follows)...
The other day I was watching some optical illusions on a webpage, and it struck me that even when I knew that they were just that, illusions, they still appeared real to me. And worst of all, I KNEW that I did could not see them how they actually appear in reality! I tried hard to focus on other parts of the images, wanting to have a glimpse of how they really look. I was successful with some of them, but some of the images appeared the same way (as an illusion) no matter how I looked at them.
Then I thought: "Well, that's just how my eyes work, nothing to do about that..."
I took this thought a bit further, and I began to think about how our brains are wired. This scripture came to mind:
For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. (Rom 8:20-21 KJV)In the same way we were made subject to vanity, we were also made subject to optical illusions, an aspect of our brains which limits our senses and our understanding of reality. There are many other ways in which this is manifested too. With this in mind, it is a mystery how people claim that we have free will, when we clearly have so many limitations!! Sure, we can choose to compensate for optical illusions with glasses, by looking at them with one eye, but we can't escape from how our brain is set-up to interpret what we see.
Amazing stuff...
God bless you,
Eirik
A Hermann grid illusion. Shape position and color contrast converge to produce the illusion of grey blobs at the intersections.