Bastiat’s ‘unseen’ identifies the valuable things that don’t happen at all because of an unwise policy – like the jobs that never get created because of a wasteful expenditure, or the things that never get made because the material resources are being consumed elsewhere, or the sale that never happens because of a regulation.
St. Paul had something to say about a Christian rendering of the ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’ too. He insists we don’t fix ourselves on the temporary ‘seen’ things, but instead fix ourselves on the ‘unseen’ things – promising us that the unseen destination is where we’ll enjoy eternal glory.
Perhaps the equivalent to Bastiat’s political observation is that when it comes to knowing Christ there is an awful lot going on in the ‘seen’ realm of the world that easily distracts us from the more valuable qualities of the ‘unseen’ realm.