Is it a train, or is it a trick?
With so many image editing tools available today, it's sometimes hard to know what is real and what is editing magic.
Is it a train? You can see lights, and rail tracks, and rail power lines, and maybe a hint of a rail station or rail crossing. But can you see a train? If there is a train, why can you see straight through everything to the trees on the other side of the tracks? You might surmise, hesitantly, as a 12 year-old grandson did when I showed it to him, that there is a train on these tracks. The moment I began to question him though, he doubted his initial response, assuming there was a trick hiding somewhere. Exactly the same happened with an 11 year old grandson. When I told each of them that this is indeed a picture of a train and explained how I took the image, their certainty returned. Initially they guessed the truth, but were easily prepared to doubt; now they know with a high degree of certainty because I told them and showed them.
How would anyone else know, even the regular recipients of my musings, to whom I occasionally send out an artistic impression with multiple images combined, or some other kind of editing? This might be one of my composite images, or someone else’s, or a Photoshop illusion. Is there a real train in this scene or not? What is true?
Truth: there is a seven carriage train contained within this image. That is a fact. That is true. But you can’t know that for yourself unless I tell you that it is just one image and not an edited version, not a composite. It is one photograph with no special effects, a single exposure of a night time train leaving the Mount Waverley Station in suburban Melbourne, Australia, headed towards downtown.
You most certainly couldn’t know without help that inside this rushing train composed of more than one hundred tons (tonnes) of steel stretched along the seven carriages, there are dozens of people on board, some looking out the window, others staring ahead, others reading or talking. But, because you can see some of the obvious elements, and because you have no reason to doubt my word — my testimony — about this image and the unseen elements inherent in the behind-the-scenes view, the real world view; because you perceive I have no reason to deceive you; I’m fairly certain that you are fairly certain that this is just what I say it is, a single exposure photograph of a Melbourne suburban train.1
It’s an unusual perspective of such a train perhaps, but with reasonable certainty you will accept it is what I say it is. However, not only is it what it is because I say so, its existence, its reality is a fact in itself quite independent of me and you. It is what it is quite independent of our convictions or doubts. You have no good reason to doubt me, you know that I can speak matter-of-factly to you about what I actually know, about what actually happened in those pictured seconds, what really exists as a matter of fact — as matter, and — as fact — where no fanciful theories and no faith are required, not on my part anyway; and not on your part either unless you choose for your own reasons to doubt anything and everything I say just because I’m the one who said it; there may be some persons somewhere who fall into that category, but you are probably not one of those exceptions.
So, accepting the truth that there is a train, there are many parallel truths associated with that one truth: the train does not exist in isolation, it is connected to many other facts, other truths, other tangibles. For example, either by direct experience or in some other easily verifiable manner, you know or can know that there are several rail stations back along the line from whence that train came, numerous stations ahead, hundreds or thousands of similar trains and carriages in Melbourne, and many more across Australia, and vast numbers more around the world, all of them running to rail timetables, the products of railway builders, railway schedulers and administrators, steel works, heavy industry manufacturing plants, electrical grids, electricity generation plants, mining operations, other forms of transportation to and from rail heads, roads, suburbs, cities, continents, oceans and ocean-going vessels, etc and etc, one thing leads to another.
By extension, in another direction, from a camera capable of capturing this image, our knowledge or deductions lead us to lenses and technologies that can peer into space, can peer into microscopic cells, computers capable of storing and distributing the image, across the earth, bouncing it off satellites in space; and so forth, and so forth.
One thing confirmed, connects and reveals many things.
So here’s the parallel: there are things we can’t directly see but can know or trust in equal measure because of the things we can see. We can see and read a volume called, the Bible, and therefore know or at least trust, that God is the Creator of the universe, that God has a redemptive plan for all of His spirit children, that Jesus Christ’s atonement made redemption and resurrection possible, that God has an interest in the lives of all His children, and that eventually, sooner or later, we get to become joint heirs with Christ, and so forth, without end. We can’t see all those things, but we can decide to trust them because we experience the extant nature of the world in which we live, can see the sun and the moon and the solar system at work around us, can see some of the stars, and read reports of much more, we do experience life in all its varieties … and we trust the source for answers about why things are as they are.
Each of us expresses our faith in something, or someone. Each must make their own choice in relation to whom or what they will follow. One of my fundamental personal tenets is to hold sacred for each person that which they hold sacred for themselves.
My confidence in these faith matters, as described, is no less than my confidence in my experience, my “testimony” of that train, that night, that place, that system of tracks and trains of which it is a small part. Most would agree that it would be preposterous for anyone to claim that the image, the train, and the complex infrastructure implicit in the substance of that train just came into existence without minds or hands. By the very same reasoning, it would be preposterous for anyone to claim that the order of the universe, the solar system, our entire existence, life itself, just happened without minds or hands. So who did it? Who governs? Whose intentions should we follow?
I believe that a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Bible answers those questions simply: there are many reasons to believe, to exercise faith, to hope, and given all the testimonies and all the evidences, and no good reasons to not do so.
If all the above logic requires too much stretching of the mind, here’s the simple version: it is a train; and with just as much assurance, I am satisfied that Christ’s gospel is “the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6).”
You may take my word for the fact of the train: it is a truth. With respect to Christ’s gospel, no one has to take my word for it.
Everyone, with the right lens, the right exposure, the right settings, can find enough evidences, enough testimonies, enough reasons, enough promptings of the Holy Spirit, to confirm gospel truth for themselves. Assuredly, there are no photographic or spiritualistic tricks involved, just trust in the true source. Choose a denomination. Or don’t choose a denomination. Either way, choose Jesus Christ.
Camera: Nikon D300 | Aperture: 7.1 | ISO: 400 | Focal length: 105 mm | Exposure:18.1 seconds