BRUCE LICHT
FOUNDER OF MY ELEVATOR PITCH FOR GOD, ENTREPRENEUR, AND AUTHOR
Bruce grew up in Lafayette, California and received a BA in Political Science from UCLA as well as a Graduate Gemologist degree from the Gemological Institute of America. After graduating, Bruce operated his family’s 100 year-old retail fine jewelry business for twenty-two years. Bruce had a passion for computers and graphic arts, so he changed careers and joined his best friend at a national technical publishing company for seventeen-years as the company’s Publisher, where they invented the modern labor law poster industry, including the first “All- On-One Labor Law Poster” and “Labor Law Poster Compliance Plan.”
Aside from being the Founder of this website, My Elevator Pitch for God, Bruce was the co-editor of the book titled, Elevator Pitches For God: Volume 1, and author of the cookbook titled, Immediate Chef: No Previous Experience Required.
Bruce’s goals for this website are: To introduce more people all around the world to God and strengthen the faith of those who already believe in a non-political and non-religious way, to bring people together, find common ground between different faiths, create meaning in people's lives, and start to move the world in a better direction.
You can help by sending this website to friends and family and posting it on social media!
You can also connect with the website project’s LinkedIn page below:
The Blurry Bigger Picture
BRUCE LICHT
Cows spend their entire lifetime with their gaze fixed on the ground, never lifting their sight towards the sky above. If it were possible to ask a cow, “What do you think about the sky today, and what do you think of heaven?” the cow would respond, “Been alive for years. Never seen any evidence of a sky or heaven.” That’s a cow’s perspective. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. The cow just has to take the time to look upward. (1)
Likewise, fish spend their entire life submerged in water. If you could ask a fish about the existence of air, it would argue, “I have been swimming around here my whole life and have never seen any sign of air." Yet, a vast reality lives just beyond the water's surface of which it has absolutely no conception.
Partial perception is not restricted to animals. Take the classic tale from ancient India where a group of blind men are asked to describe an elephant by touching it. The first man touched its side and exclaimed, "An elephant is like a wall!" The second man felt a tusk and declared, "An elephant is like a spear!" The third man grabbed the trunk and asserted, "An elephant is like a snake!" Each man's perspective, based on his limited experience, was somewhat correct, but none of them could envision the full truth of what an elephant is.
Similarly, Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” from The Republic, shows how human understanding is restricted by ignorance. Prisoners chained in a cave see only shadows on a wall, mistaking them for reality. When one escapes and sees the outside world, he realizes the shadows were illusions and true knowledge lies beyond appearances. Returning to share the truth, he’s rejected by those still inside, who cling to their familiar shadows. The allegory represents the philosopher’s journey from ignorance to enlightenment and the difficulty of revealing truth to an un-awakened society.
Other examples that demonstrate our narrow perspective, constrained by what can be seen and personal experience, include:
How we can only see visible light, which is a small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. A vast collection of radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, and gamma rays exists, but it remains invisible to the naked eye, without technological aid.
How the physical reality we perceive is solid and stable, yet at the subatomic level, matter is mostly empty space with vibrating energy. From our perspective, a table is a solid object, but from another viewpoint, it is a complex field of energy and forces comprised mostly of empty space. (2)
These examples demonstrate that one's inability to see a wider truth isn’t proof of its non-existence, but a testament to the constraints of our perspective. Therefore, to assuredly insist that God does not exist simply because He cannot be empirically observed is manifestly short-sighted. Faith, when illuminated, is not a leap into the unknown, but an act of beholding a wider horizon, beyond the murky shadow-play of our current existence. (3)
Footnotes:
1. This idea, of a “cow’s perspective,” was expressed to me by Rabbi Yaakov Wolbe from Torchweb.org in Huston Texas.
2. Another example includes how before Copernicus and Galileo, humans believed the Earth was the center of the universe based on what they could observe with the naked eye. Those who offered a more expansive view of the cosmos were initially dismissed, as they challenged a deeply held perspective.
3. Drawing from the analogies above, it’s clear that basing reality solely on our limited awareness is a profound fallacy. The universe, in its incomprehensible vastness and complexity—of which our senses can only capture a fraction—points to a reality that extends far beyond what we can see. By spending just five minutes a day contemplating the awesomeness of this world—what we can and cannot see—our lives can be changed forever.