Your nose is front and center on your face. Yet we don’t stare over or around it all day. Have you ever realized that your eyes can see your nose all the time?

Probably not, because your brain chooses to ignore it.

Don’t take my word on it though. Close one eye at a time and look at your nose. You can see it from each side. Yet when you open your eyes together it seems to vanish.

I’m realizing there are a lot of things in our lives that are like this. We have them, we theoretically know about them, but we can’t see them. We have huge biases and filters we use whenever we read the Bible or filter the news. But we often forget about them. The temptation is to believe they aren’t there and that what we see is not filtered in any way. But we all have filters. Things like your age, your experiences, your job, your training, your friend group, and many other criteria shape how you view the world.

The best hope we have is to acknowledge our metaphorical nose and grow in our humility. I think it would cause us to be far more gracious to those around us who are dealing with the same challenge as us.

This has caused me to stop using phrases like “The Bible is clear about…” Something might seem clear to me, but another person could look at the exact same verse from a totally different lens. And the longer I study this stuff, the less I feel is “clearly” stated in the text.

The problem is that there are a growing number of Christians who are developing more and more confidence in their opinions and interpretations. There is little to no room for discussion or disagreement. It’s as if they have concluded that because they cannot see their nose, it does not exist on their face.

Whenever you are tempted to argue there is obviously only one answer to the questions we ask in life, I’d encourage you to pause for a moment and consider what you may not be seeing. The future of Christianity will hinge on how we engage questions that cannot be resolved with the answers from previous decades. The obvious answers that worked for our parents and grandparents don’t seem adequate to the complexities of our world today. Science and technology continue to open new conversations that we haven’t had to deal with before.

I believe we can learn how to grow in this together. But it won’t happen if we don’t acknowledge what we can’t see. Don’t forget about your nose.

Photo by Joseph Greve on Unsplash

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