Take for example a park in your neighbourhood where people tend to hangout. Each time you go for a walk, you notice a small group of people — say less than ten — gathered around a woman who is narrating a story of some kind. One day your curiosity gets the better of you, so you decide to stop and see for yourself what is going on. After a few inquiries you are told that this person is a gifted storyteller and orator and apparently has a knack for predicting what will be the exact outcome of any situation that you may be unsure about in your life.

Naturally you are sceptical about these rumours but also a little bit curious because after listening to one of her narratives, you admit to yourself that she is indeed very gifted. As you are about to leave, you hear one of the men in the group asking for the outcome of a certain doctor’s appointment, to discuss the meaning of some x-ray results which were taken a few weeks ago, following a bout of chronic coughing. Now you’re thinking to yourself that the man probably just has some kind of chest infection but you realise that he is a neighbour of yours so you decide to stick around and listen to what the prediction will be.

The woman’s prediction is that the x-rays will show some sort of inoperable lung tumour and that he will die by the end of the week. Some of the other people gathered around the woman begin to panic and are worried about him but you just laugh this off and tell him that he’ll be fine. The woman responds by saying that he’ll be more than fine because on the day of his funeral, he will rise from his coffin and float into the skies to the place where he truly belongs. At this point everyone is laughing hysterically because they all assume that she’s joking. You simply think she’s gone bonkers.

Sure enough as the week goes by, the prediction comes to pass. Resulting in a media uproar that leaves the masses in utter disbelief.

One can only imagine the conspiracy theories being used in order to disprove what happened. This will definitely be a case of seeing is not believing as even those who were at the funeral will accuse their eyes of betraying them. Those who prepared the body for burial will probably swear that the morgue drawers had an uncanny resemblance to incubators. What about you? Were you not there when the prediction was made? Did you not laugh it off as the rantings of a mad woman? Yet you don’t believe what’s going on.

What’s going through your mind? The man had never been a popular person, in fact you didn’t know him well enough. Now you’re wondering if he was some sort of genius who was not only able to fake his own death but who was rich enough or resourceful enough to acquire an incredibly tiny, silent, powerful jetpack which he used to launch himself into the clouds. But then if he masterminded all of it, did this imply that the storyteller was in on it as well? What about the doctor’s diagnosis? Surely he can’t just stay in the sky for good, right? Where did he go off to? Is there going to be some quest for his missing body? And the questions go on and on.

Obviously none of the people who witnessed these events are satisfied by what their eyes have seen. They’re all looking for an alternative explanation. A loophole, maybe. Though far-fetched, this fictional story demonstrates that nowadays we are more keen to question what our own senses experience — and this is a good thing because it has led to various scientific discoveries. However, matters of Faith stretch beyond sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste.

Some might say that the people whom Jesus appeared to after He rose from the dead and those who witnessed His ascension were so desperate for a happy ending that their minds started playing tricks on them or they chose not to question whatever it is that they witnessed. My view is that ‘enlightened’ as we may be, we have been robbed of our sense of wonder and awe; making us more cynical and less attuned to anything beyond our five senses. As William Wordsworth once wrote¹: ‘Little we see in nature that is ours; … For this, for everything, we are out of tune; … It moves us not — Great God!’*

¹Barber, L. (2008). Penguin's poems for life. London: Penguin Classics.

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