There was a man who was blind from birth.  Jesus healed him.

     Afterward, the wise men and the powerful men came to this formerly blind man, to ask him questions.  I paraphrase:  Were you really blind from birth?  If so, did a physician attend you?  And if you were healed spiritually, and this is vitally important, did this man Jesus heal you on the Sabbath, in violation of our law that no work may be done on that day?

     Overwhelmed by the many questions with which this uneducated man was attacked, he became frustrated, and blurted out this simple answer:  I don’t know anything except this:  I was blind, but now I see.

     Having debated some of the topics in this book with educated men, scientists, and atheists, among others, I have often felt somewhat as this man may have felt.  However well intentioned the critics may be, I cannot always answer their piercing questions in a manner that they accept.  For, what is my wisdom compared to theirs?

     But there was a time when I traveled the road of atheistic belief, the road of materialist science, the world of their brand of logic and the tenets of their science.  And after many years of doing so, I found myself in a barren wilderness, devoid of any eternal meaning.  I was blind.

     Then one day, I had a spiritual encounter which I cannot adequately convey in words. 

     It was as if I were face down in a gutter, unable to lift myself up, and seeing no reason to do so in any case.  Then, as it were, I felt a hand on my shoulder, a hand both gentle and strong, both stern and yet caring.

      As it were, I looked up, and there was Jesus, beckoning to me in this manner.  He said, Bob, you tried it your way, and look where it got you.  Now (at long last), are you willing to try my way?

     It was not that I said “Yes,” but rather, without thinking about it, I answered, “What (other) choice do I have?”

     Then it was, in a way I cannot describe, that Jesus lifted me from the gutter in which I had mired myself.  He did so without condemnation.  And He set me no longer on my own path, but on His.

     Ever since that moment, I have tried to follow His path.  Whereas before I had been lost in a featureless wilderness, I was now upon a road that led somewhere worth going.  Whereas before I had wandered alone, now there were markers and signposts to guide me.

     I must hasten to add that this experience by no means made me a man of virtue, nor a man of wisdom.  On the contrary, I have continued to stumble and fall, to occasionally drift into dark alleys and to do things that I should not.

     But never again have I felt that I am lost.  Whatever darkness falls, I always have a light, a beacon to bring me back to the path.

     My hopes for this book are modest.  I do not expect to shake up the world of science, nor of theology.  On the contrary, I expect to be ridiculed and scorned.  There was a time when that would have been enough to deter me.

     But whenever I begin to feel tempted to shrink from this task, I always remember these words:  I was blind, but now I see.

=========================

     While scientists may ponder such mysteries as that of dark energy, they may overlook, or gloss over, the much more important question of what is consciousness.  While physics may identify the fundamental forces that govern an atom, it dismisses the notion of free will as an impossibility.  Yet, without free will, can there be any scientific study at all?

 

     In the purely physical universe, there is no color, but only photons.  There is no music, but only sound waves.  There is no love, but only hormones.  There is neither courage nor cowardice, neither noble motives nor great literature nor any meaning except that which we contrive in our own imaginations.

 

     But our experience as humans defies such a description of reality.  Our experience of reality is very different from the sterile numbers and formulas of science.  It is much richer than that.  We are not soulless, biological robots.  We cannot conduct our lives as if we were machines.  Color, love, music and moral values are at the very heart and soul of our experience.  That experience defines who we are, and why we go on with life.  Neither are we creatures of the forest, for which the only needs are food and reproduction.  We sense within ourselves a higher nature than that, and we seek to fulfill needs that are greater than mere survival day to day.  Such needs could never be fulfilled in a reality that is nothing more than an assortment of atoms.

==========================