Blindness VI

Don: The participants in the story of the man blind from birth provide insights into the human condition. They portray the spectrum of Man’s experience before God. Some of us are like the blind man himself, with no spiritual context whatsoever, isolated from an experience, a relationship, a framework with God; yet, in an instant, an encounter with God makes him real and personal, and changes our lives forever.

Some of us are like the blind man’s neighbors, confused and skeptical about the information provided to us and demanding more answers—in particular, an answer to the question: Where is God?

Some of us are like the blind man’s parents, limited to our own interests and protective of our only spiritual context (in the case of the neighbors, it was their standing within the synagogue). Jealous of their traditional view about God, they will countenance no other view lest it tears at their spiritual roots. To them, more information would be disabling.

Some of us are even like the disciples. Despite their years of learning at the feet of Jesus, listening to his teaching, and seeing his ministry daily, nevertheless they subscribe to a concept about a hierarchy (“Who shall be greatest?”) in the kingdom of heaven. Their concept is that goodness and evil (“Who sinned? This man or his parents?”) can be measured. The disciples—and those of us who are like them—perhaps have the most to learn from the story of the blind man.

And some of us are like the Pharisees, blinded in a way by our (supposed) knowledge of God. Those of us raised and educated in a church tend to be full of teaching about God and claim to possess the truth about him, intricately but neatly and tightly woven and packaged. We defend our prejudices with confidence, based on our preconceived notions, so that when God himself appears to us outside of that box we not only fail to recognize who he is but even reject him as a sinner. It is a sobering thought that our insight into God leaves us falsely identifying ultimate Goodness as Evil. Which leads back to the Garden of Eden and the topic of discrimination.

The central theme of the story is that all of Mankind is blinded by the cataract of sin. We are blind to our own condition, to that of others, and to God himself. All those types of blindness are represented in the  story. Jesus came to open the eyes of those who have no spiritual context, no concept of God; as well as the eyes of those who claim deep knowledge of God and deep spiritual insight. The only condition for healing is to recognize our blindness.

The scriptures refer to two kinds of light and darkness: God’s, and Man’s. God’s light seems to be Man’s darkness, and vice versa. The claim to possession of the things of God, to see things from God’s point of view, to speak for God is to proclaim the light of Man—which is darkness to God. On the other hand, to recognize our inability to see, to humbly recognize that we cannot even assess our own condition (as Adam could not when he hid in the Garden because of his self-assessed nakedness, and as the Pharisees could not when they asked Jesus if they were blind) is to admit that our self-assessment is utterly false; that we are neither as bad nor as good as we think. We are what God says we are: His children.

We can no more assess others than ourselves, and even less can we assess the ways of God. A humble recognition that our vision is partial, incomplete, seen through a glass darkly, will bring us to the condition described in Isaiah:

“I will lead the blind by a way they do not know,
In paths they do not know I will guide them.
I will make darkness into light before them
And rugged places into plains.
These are the things I will do,
And I will not leave them undone.” (Isaiah 42:16)

Accepting our blindness leads us along paths we do not know but which have been prepared by God, our guide:

“I will go before you and make the rough places smooth;
I will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through their iron bars.
“I will give you the treasures of darkness
And hidden wealth of secret places,
So that you may know that it is I,
The Lord, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name.” (Isaiah 45:2-3)

He seeks to open our eyes to his light, not to the light of Man. The distinction between the lights of God and of Man is made in scripture:

Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.”  (John 8:12)

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (John 1:5)

Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works [thus, the light is God’s], and glorify your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16)

…for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light (Ephesians 5:8)

For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves;… (2 Corinthians 4:6-7)

This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.  (1 John 1:5-7)

The concepts of vision, sight, insight, light, and darkness are brought together in Luke:

The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness. If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays.” (Luke 11:34-36)

Where do we fit, individually, in all this? Is there a “stages of faith” sort of progression in the various actors in the story of the blind man? Do we individually suffer all the various forms of blindness?

Most of all: What does it mean to retreat into blindness? How does it happen? People with PTSD say their trauma left ineradicable images deep in their minds. Once seen, these images cannot be “unseen”; they cannot be discarded. But we seem to be required to humbly retreat from our vision of God. Can we, and if so, how?

David: The parallels with the stages of faith seems obvious. It adds to my understanding of the stages in showing that the stage 4 person—the blind man, who in fact has insight—should not only not claim to have it but should not even know that s/he has it. The blind man did not claim insight; all he knew was that (thanks to Jesus) he could see, where before he had been blind. It seems there is no more (and no less) to insight than this. I’ve tended to think of the stage 4 person as a sage, a guru, a person who has acquired insight through a lifetime of ascetic study, like the Daoist sages of old. But even this seems to be a form of blindness. The ultimate insight is that we really have no idea! The only potentially valid claim to know anything at all is to claim, from faith, that God exists.

Don: The blind man went from no spiritual context to the enlightened recognition that Jesus was God. When Jesus asked him “Do you believe?” he said “Who is it, that I might believe?” and Jesus answered: “You have both seen him, and he is the one speaking to you.” The man then confessed his belief and worshipped him. It was a very simple transition from no context to full acceptance of God.

Jay: It’s curious that instantaneous enlightenment came to the man who had always been in darkness—the man blind from birth. He’d had no opportunity to create his own spiritual understanding and its inevitable biases and prejudices. The removal of his blindness enabled what appears to be a very simple and instantaneous enlightenment.

We just read that:

The eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is clear, your whole body also is full of light; but when it is bad, your body also is full of darkness. Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness. If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays.” (Luke 11:34-36, emphasis added)

This kind of light and enlightenment is not about knowledge and discernment. It’s a different light, a different sight. It’s not about understanding God: As the blind man’s story shows, it’s about belief.

Anonymous: If the light inside of us is darkness, it seems that there is something wrong with the lamp—the eye.

Jay: For me, it reveals the spiritual trap of discernment and judgment. Spiritual (in)sight is not about them.

David: The most fundamental thing to discern is God. But to discern God, we have to be able to discern Evil as well. Before the Fall, Adam and Eve could not discern God. They were a part of God, united as one with him. They had no self-awareness. Their awareness of both God and their own nakedness began only after they separated from God. So it is confusing that the blind man benefited by being made aware of God, when Adam and Eve sure did not! It seems that the ideal, the pre-Fall condition, is to be united with God and not know it!

Jay: From the Garden story, it seems that discernment is the result of sin—the choosing of our will over God’s. Discernment is a curse, yet we crave more of it above all things. It is in the (fallen, sinful) nature of Man. If we can understand and accept that without knowing why it is, then perhaps the curse is lifted and life is better…?

Anonymous: So spiritual teaching—at home, school, church—should end. People should live any way they want. We can’t change our nature.

Jay: If we could learn to understand in our progress through life that discernment is not about right and wrong, good and evil, perhaps we might go some way to reversing the Fall and creating a much nicer community.

Don: The Pharisees in the story of the blind man would have spent their lives seeking—and claiming to have found—knowledge and enlightenment and understanding of God. Yet when God appeared, in the flesh, before their very eyes, they denounced him as evil! That they would conclude that Good is Evil is a remarkable failure of discernment.

Jay: And this failure was repeated many times in the history of Jesus’s ministry. Whenever Jesus performed a miracle, he was denounced as the devil.

Michael: I think that over time, our faith in our ability to discern is increasingly shaken through “mini-shocks” that cause us to question our discernment. It began with Adam, when he was challenged by God to say how he knew he was naked. But I don’t know how we can be open enough to see all of a sudden that our discernment is entirely wrong.

Don: It’s certainly not a natural thing to do.

Michael: It can be frightening to admit that one is wrong—the more wrong we are, the more frightening it is to admit it. And to be wrong about God is huge. By being wrong about God, I don’t just mean believing or not in him; I mean our whole existential attitude. To admit one has been wrong about God is to admit that everything one has believed and stood for throughout one’s life is wrong. And that is terrifying.

Jay: It’s less frightening if we understand that we cannot, even in principle, be right about God. It seems to me we can never have a full understanding of God and his Truth. Any understanding we have will be incomplete and prone to error. It may well be wrong. Knowing that, then it is less worrying, it seems to me.

Don: We see through a glass darkly, and that seems to be the condition of humility that God wants us to be in. He does not want us thinking we can see through the glass brightly, clearly; because that leads to evil. We need not fear the darkness God want us to be in because he is there to guide us (Isaiah 42, above). This is how we can walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

David: How humble is it to admit to knowing only a tiny fraction of the truth about God? It is not humble at all! We must admit to knowing nothing about God; we must, as Don said, “un-see” the image of God imprinted in our minds, we must humbly retreat from our vision of God. We must rely on God’s grace and on his hands to guide us through the darkness. Is that the ultimate terror or the ultimate peace? I don’t know, because I’m not there.

Jay: That is the pre-Fall condition, before discernment came and messed up the picture.

David: My problem is that in not wanting us to discern Good and Evil, God did not want us to discern him, since he, after all, is Good. It seems it is not good to discern Good! How can one have faith in a God one cannot discern? It makes the agnostic position the most honest!

Don: Here is a definition of faith:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)

Anonymous: If we discern, we see; then, there is no faith.

Don: So is this the end or the beginning of religion?

Anonymous: I think all God wants us to know is that he is the Creator. He is in charge of Creation and therefore of our hopes for our part in it. If I have faith in my Creator then I have faith that in his Creation my hopes and my dreams will come true.

Don: What did the blind man discern?…

Jesus heard that they [the Pharisees] had put him [the healed blind man] out [of the synagogue], and finding him, He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “Who is He, Lord, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have both seen Him, and He is the one who is talking with you.” And he said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped Him. (John 9:35-38)

Anonymous: He discerned nothing. He simply believed.

David: Why did Jesus say he was the Son of Man? Why not the Son of God? The blind man cannot have studied the theology of the meaning of “Son of Man” (whatever it is!) so it was an easy thing to believe in. I myself am the son of a man—don’t you believe me?!

Michael: What is the relationship (if any) between discernment and reason? Can we reach an end to our own individual reason?

Anonymous: If we knew nothing about God then we would trust in his reasoning. But if what we know about God contradicts reason then we are in trouble.

Michael: What if we reach an end to our own potential for discernment—we reach a point where there is nothing left to discern?

Chris: If I don’t need to discern God, that’s a huge weight off my back! Perhaps the kingdom of heaven is a place of blissful ignorance of God and Man; a place of simply being!

Anonymous: Would that be a life filled with loving relationships? Wouldn’t it be something even better than that?

David: In our blissful ignorance, we not only cannot know the truth about God, but also we cannot know the untruth about God! But since the Fall we no longer live in the blissful ignorance of the kingdom of heaven. We can and do discern Good and Evil, right and wrong. It seems that’s a bad thing.

Jay: God would say it’s a bad thing because we can’t discern perfectly.

Don: Maybe we can’t even do it well.

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