There was a magician who came into town. Everywhere he went he would perform some magic tricks. And there was a doctoral student in chemistry who would always sit there and watch. At the end of each trick, the scientist would always say “I know exactly how you did it.”
And the scientist would always try to explain it away by science and the magician would say “no that’s not the way I did it.”
The Magician was helpless - he WAS telling the truth
But the scientist would keep on arguing and say “No, no that’s the way you did it”
Finally the magician did not know how to so overwhelm that man so that he would not be able to find an explanation for it
So one day he finally came to him and before his magic show he said to him “Excuse me but do you know the light outside your home?”
“Yes”
“Remember, know what color it is?”
“Yes, It is a red light”
“Has it always been a red light?”
“Yes”
“When you left tonight was it a red light?”
“Yes”
“What would you say if I said to you right at this very moment I’m changing that red light into a green light?”
He said “you can’t do it”
The magician says “oh yes I can, go and check it out.”
So the scientist runs over to the home, looks outside the home and sure enough it’s a green light
He comes back and says “how did you do it?”
The magician says “very simple, I just sent a couple of angels to change the bulb.”
“No, no, no, no, how did you do it?”
“I’m telling you, I sent a couple of angels to change the bulb”
“That’s not the way you did it! Tell me how you made that red light into a green light!”
The magician says “I told you! I sent a couple of angels to change the bulb!”
The man goes back home to his science lab and he’s trying to mix all kinds of concoction that, at a distance, can change a red light into a green light
And he’s having these big arguments with his sister – he’s on the verge of insanity
Finally, his sister comes to the magician and says to him, “Would you please tell my brother how you changed that red light into a green light?”
The scientist was losing his sanity to find sanity in what the magician did
The magician says to her, “Madam, I have told him”
She says “Look, the man’s going insane. As a matter of fact, I believe he is already insane. And the only thing he’s preoccupied with is how to change a red light into a green light.
She pleaded, “He’s lost all his sanity.”
The magician says “Look, I can’t help him, I’ve told him the truth.”
She said “Why don’t you tell him a lie.”
She continued, “Tell him something that’s not true, so that he will be fine again.”
So the magician created some kind of a story that has nothing to do with the truth and she goes and tells him and immediately he regains his sanity
G.K. Chesterton ends that story by saying, the irony of this all is just when he thinks he has become sane, he has actually become insane.
-Adopted from Ravi Zacharias’ adaptation of G.K. Chesterton’s “The Magician”
This story shocked me because of its utter reality in our lives today. Wherever I go, people try to question me on my views with God. Often times, those people would end up telling me “No, that’s not possible.” Or “That’s not how God did/does it.” Or “That doesn’t make sense.”
People want everything to be explained today because they have placed a lot of faith in science and the revelation it brings on the human understanding. They do not understand that science was created by God but it was not created to replace faith in Him. It is merely a way to reveal God’s glory that’s hidden from our knowledge and sight in our world today.
People revert to lies just to soothe their conscience and anxiety. It is because they do not want to believe in God that they have turned to the lies this world has conjured when in fact, they have already heard the truth a lot of times but HAVE REJECTED IT.
We have become so obsessed with knowledge that we have set aside faith and replaced it with this obsession. Faith cannot exist where knowledge is prevalent. God will not reward you on the basis of your knowledge but of your faith. Our trust in God has depreciated because of the way society puts such a high value on science and knowledge and the way it condemns faith as stupidity and foolishness.
I’m not saying science is bad or that knowledge is wrong. In fact, I love science and knowledge – I enjoy my knowledge of God and apply it to my life as wisdom and I enjoy the revelations science brings with the heavens, the stars and the creatures of this earth. I enjoy it so much because in all of this, I focus my eyes on God and say, “How great, awesome and majestic my God is.”
Life is simple. Don’t believe the lies. Face the truth even if it might not seem to make any sense.
“For it is by grace you have been saved through faith.”
Only faith in God can save you.
Only faith in God can make you accept the truth.
