Seeing the Color Blue

There were many follow ups to "the dress" intrigue that captured the internet for a day.  One of the follow ups was this piece that details something I had heard about before, but had forgotten.

Apparently ancient languages didn't have a word for blue.  There's no word for blue in ancient Hebrew, Greek, Japanese, or Chinese.  Based upon this oddity, some studies were done that seemed to show that without a word for blue, it appears that people actually do not see blue.

From the article...

A researcher named Jules Davidoff traveled to Namibia to investigate this, where he conducted an experiment with the Himba tribe, which speaks a language that has no word for blue or distinction between blue and green. 

When shown a circle with 11 green squares and one blue, they could not pick out which one was different from the others — or those who could see a difference took much longer and made more mistakes than would make sense to us, who can clearly spot the blue square.

In short, without a word to capture the reality of blue, blue seems not to be visible to people.

This made me think of how we are blind to the things of God until God opens our eyes to see in faith.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.  (1 Corinthians 2:14)

So how is it that people who are spiritually blind can be made to see?  Without a word for blue, apparently people don't see blue.  Without the Word of God, we cannot spiritually see.


But through the Word, our eyes are opened.

 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, (Ephesians 1:13-18)

Or, as Luther explains, 

I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.

So...blue might not be visible for those who have no word for it, but once given a frame of reference for that reality, it becomes visible to them.  They are blind to blue, but they don't know it.

In a similar way, the things of God are invisible to those who have not be enlightened by the Holy Spirit working through the Word of God.  However, once the Holy Spirit enlightens us my means of the Word, God opens our eyes to see how He has saved us through Jesus, how our sins are forgiven, how God is at work even through suffering, and so many other truths.

So just as it wouldn't do any good to "explain" blue to someone who can't see it, we can't "explain" the things of God to those who haven't been enlightened.  We can't convince them of the truth.

But we can speak that Word of God that does enlighten.

God's Word is our great heritageAnd shall be ours forever;To spread its light from age to ageShall be our chief endeavor.Through life it guides our way,In death it is our stay.Lord, grant, while worlds endure, We keep its teachings pureThroughout all generations.           -Nikolai Fredrik Severin Grundvig