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Did you see the photos of the famous Roman Originals dress? They went viral on social media after being posted on Tumblr by young Colonsay singer Caitlin McNeill? The dress was worn by the mother of the bride at a wedding at which Caitlin was performing and it looked blue with black lace. But no-one on-line could agree what colour it was. ‘It’s blue and black!’ some insisted. ‘No’ replied others, equally stridently ‘It’s white and gold.’

Singer Taylor Swift tweeted ‘I don’t understand this odd dress debate and I feel like it’s a trick somehow. I’m confused and scared.’

The scientists were quick to assure us that the disagreement arose from differences in the way our brains interpret colour.  We’re mistaken if we think everyone else sees things in exactly the same way as we do, they told us. None of us knows exactly what someone else is experiencing when they talk of ‘blue’ or ‘red’ – or, for that matter, of ‘joy’ or ‘love’.

Taylor Swift’s comment about being ‘confused and scared’ is interesting. We want certainty. We want black to be black and white, white. We want to know we’re seeing things as they truly are, and it’s disturbing to be reminded that this is not always possible.

For Christians, the one great certainty is God. God, the unchanging rock on which we build our lives. God beyond understanding who self-reveals to us. We might assume that all believers have the same experiences of God as we do, but this is not the case. What we sense emotionally of God is affected by our personalities and brain chemistry as well as by our faith. Some of us experience God as a vivid joy, a tantalising sense of presence. At the other end of the spectrum some of us have very little emotional sense of God’s presence.

Our brains interpret different wavelengths of light as different colours. The light reflected from the Roman Originals dress was in the blue part of the spectrum. So the dress was blue, even though some of us perceived it as white, just as a snow-covered landscape can in twilight appear blue. We may experience God in different ways but God is unchanging. In our confusion and fear we reach out to the love we see in Jesus, and we are not disappointed.

But it’s not just God we all experience differently. We interpret situations in different ways, according to our personalities, our memories of similar circumstances, our level of faith, our mood. Some of us see dark colours of foreboding, others the gold of hope.

We see others differently: we pass someone sitting begging in the street. Some of us are critical – it’s all their fault, we say. Others among us imagine the long story which has brought the person to that point, and are filled with compassion. Some of us see dark, others gold.

We view ourselves differently from the way others do. We may regard ourselves as failing and unsuccessful, despite the fact that others assure us we are lovely, and courageous and strong. Or we may see ourselves as outstanding achievers, and ignore warnings from friends of our shortcomings.

And so the lesson of the Roman Originals issue is this. We will accept that we are different, and experience differently people, situations and God. We will be slow to judge others, because we cannot know what the experience of life is like for them.

And most importantly, we will shape our understanding not on our perceptions, but on what we know of the God who does not change. God sees situations, and people as they truly are.

God sees the mixture of dark and gold in all of us. And God gives us, on our clearer seeing days, a wisdom arising from somewhere deep in us to discern things as they truly are regardless of our perceptions.

It’s this wisdom which helps us see hope in dark situations. It’s this wisdom which helps us to love ourselves because God loves us and to love others because God loves them. It’s this wisdom which helps us to see gold where we are tempted to see only darkness, or darkness when our emotions are bathed in a deceptive golden glow.

According to the Bible if we love God and are open to God’s wisdom we enter God’s ‘kingdom’ or ‘house’. This means – and this is radical stuff – that at the same time we exist in two dimensions, in the physical dimension of life on earth, and in an unseen spiritual dimension where we are at one with God.  And that’s why, though we live in the blue and black of our ordinary lives, at the same time, people can expect to see in us glimpses of white and gold.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 12th March 2015)