I Am and the Light VII: The Blind Man

Don: Here is the scriptural context for our continuing discussion of God as Light:

“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)

In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. ( John 1:4-5)

Healing the Man Born Blind
As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.” When He had said this, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes, and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is translated, Sent). So he went away and washed, and came back seeing. Therefore the neighbors, and those who previously saw him as a beggar, were saying, “Is not this the one who used to sit and beg?” Others were saying, “This is he,” still others were saying, “No, but he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the one.” So they were saying to him, “How then were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man who is called Jesus made clay, and anointed my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash’; so I went away and washed, and I received sight.” They said to him, “Where is He?” He *said, “I do not know.”

They brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind. Now it was a Sabbath on the day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also were asking him again how he received his sight. And he said to them, “He applied clay to my eyes, and I washed, and I see.” Therefore some of the Pharisees were saying, “This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath.” But others were saying, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And there was a division among them. So they *said to the blind man again, “What do you say about Him, since He opened your eyes?” And he said, “He is a prophet.”

The Jews then did not believe it of him, that he had been blind and had received sight, until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight, and questioned them, saying, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?” His parents answered them and said, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but how he now sees, we do not know; or who opened his eyes, we do not know. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. For this reason his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

So a second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him, “Give glory to God; we know that this man is a sinner.” He then answered, “Whether He is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” So they said to him, “What did He do to you? How did He open your eyes?” He answered them, “I told you already and you did not listen; why do you want to hear it again? You do not want to become His disciples too, do you?” They reviled him and said, “You are His disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where He is from.” The man answered and said to them, “Well, here is an amazing thing, that you do not know where He is from, and yet He opened my eyes. We know that God does not hear sinners; but if anyone is God-fearing and does His will, He hears him. Since the beginning of time it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, He could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you teaching us?” So they put him out.

Jesus heard that they had put him out, 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. And Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” (John 9:1-41)

This is an interesting story with some drama in it. It is a story about a man being brought to see the light—both physically and spiritually by seeing Jesus as the light of the world; and it is about people (in this case, Pharisees) who blind themselves to that light. But it is also a story about judgment and grace. Jesus came to this world to reveal justice through his light. The story starts with the disciples seeming to want to know how to judge people with a disease or disability: Is it their own fault or their parents’ sin that causes them to be disabled? Neither, said Jesus. It is not a matter of whose fault it is. The important thing is that God gave him (and will give us) grace when he needed it. The blind man’s testimony essentially passes on the grace to those who read and are literally “graced” by it. He is formally excommunicated from his religion and his church—his synagogue—and almost simultaneously enters the kingdom of God through God’s grace and by accepting Jesus as his savior.

Jesus himself may have committed three transgressions against the Jewish law in this story; first by giving non-emergency medical treatment on the Sabbath, second by “kneading” on the Sabbath (mixing the poultice for the man’s eye), and third by sending the man a distance more than the distance permitted to be traveled on the Sabbath (to Siloam, which is some distance from Jerusalem.) Some Pharisees said a being that violated the Sabbath could not be the Messiah; but others asked how could anyone other than the Messiah have cured blindness. They were somewhat divided.

It is noteworthy that three times the blind man professed ignorance, until near the end when he confesses his belief in Jesus. He told the Pharisees he did not know where Jesus was, he said he did not know whether or not he was a sinner, and when they continued to probe him he said “I already told you!” His spiritual vision improved, he was enlightened, as the story unfolded; whereas, in contrast, three times the Pharisees grew more spiritually endarkened and increasingly ignorant about Jesus. They said Jesus could not be from God because he did not keep the Sabbath; that they knew him to be a sinner; and that God had spoken through Moses but not Jesus.

David: For once, the Bible is refreshingly clear in this story. It reads almost as an attack on religion (in general, not just Judaism). As a believer in the inner light, I am sympathetic to attacks on religions that try to replace the inner light with an external light they claim resides in their scriptures and dogmas. Through this class, I have come to interpret the New Testament and especially the life of Jesus as making this essential point. Compared to what one believes in one’s inner self, it seems to me that religious documentation is irrelevant. To me, this is what the blind man in this story came to comprehend.

Ben: It is less clear-cut to me. I marvel at the blind man’s apparent lack of wonder at the amazing world he can suddenly see. It doesn’t seem to affect him in the least. I also fail to derive any meaning from Jesus’ statement “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”

Charles: Like most stories in scripture, there are many different layers. I am struck by the metaphor of the condition of the blind man for our own fallen, spiritually blind condition. His healing took place outside of the temple—outside of where God was supposed to live. He was blind from birth—and we are all spiritually blind from birth. His physical and spiritual condition could not be cured by human intervention. Hereditary blindness is an undertone in the story, and even today it is not something science can fix. I am sure science will get there, eventually, but I think the notion is valid that there are some conditions that Man will never be able to fix.

The blind man was a beggar. He was humble. Part of the lesson is that the cure for our blindness is not going to be earned: It is going to be given as a gift. I think the statement whose meaning Ben questioned is related to the humble profession of ignorance (as shown by the blind man) and arrogant, prideful profession of knowledge (as shown by the Pharisees, who thought they understood the law and God). The blind man’s confessed ignorance is true knowledge; the Pharisee’s arrogant assumption of knowledge of God is true ignorance. The blind man could see; the sighted could not. But there is logic in the syllogistic reasoning of the Pharisees: “Men of God keep the Sabbath, Jesus does not keep the Sabbath, therefore Jesus is not a Man of God.” Keeping the Sabbath was the law, but Jesus taught that the law is intended only as a mirror to show Man his shortcomings. Strict adherence to the law is not the way to God’s kingdom—the way is only through Jesus. The beggar was able to acknowledge through his humility that he was blind and thus was open to receiving the light.

I think it is a powerful story, though I wonder about Jesus’ statement: “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.” It seems to suggest that Jesus did not come (as many seem to think) only to provide spiritual guidance, to set an example; rather, the actual years he spent and the specific things he did on earth were vital to our salvation. He didn’t come just to set an example—he came to accomplish some very specific objectives that were part of God’s plan.

David: The “judgment” question that puzzles Ben is one of many such statements in the Bible that are impossible to interpret. We tend to just gloss over them. Perhaps it meant that he came to show us how to judge. But then the Bible also says “Judge not, lest ye be judged”. It could also mean simply that Jesus came to judge. The point is that there is no reliable interpretation of fundamentally unclear statements.

Don: I would put the two verses together:

“For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.” … Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, “We are not blind too, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

Blindness is associated with innocence, ignorance, and humility. The religionists who make claims about their knowledge of God are in untenable positions. To me, one of the meanings of the story is that those who are closest to God have the least to say about it.

Ben: Three points: 1. It all could have been said or written without so much ambiguity (so why wasn’t it, one wonders); 2. The story does seem to pit the Old against the New Testament; and (3) To leave out of the story of a blind man given sight the things that he saw is an unlikely way for such a story to be told. People want to know what he saw. To say he saw the light seems not very satisfactory. Suddenly he can put the sound of a stream together with a picture of running water—these are marvelous things, but they are not marveled at in the story. I wonder why?

David: I think it’s simply a matter of the focus being on the reversal of spiritual blindness and the all-important seeing of the light—of the divinity in Jesus. Visions of pretty colors, etc., while astounding enough, are just not the point of the storyteller.

Ben: It still leaves a lot of questions: What is the light? What is divinity? What exactly does the man see?

Don: The mixing of clay and spittle takes us back to the formation of Man out of the dust of the ground at the Creation. Maybe that creative power and creative nature of God are aspects of the divinity that the recently blind man now sees.

Ben: The man was blind when Jesus mixed the clay. The Pharisees were questioning the one witness who could not tell them what happened because he could not have seen it happen!

Charles: It’s hard to understand scripture from its parts. Each gives some pointer to God or tells some aspect of the human condition, but the whole is far greater than the sum of these parts and no one part, no single story, can reasonably be seized upon as invalidating the whole. Somewhere in John’s gospel he says that what was written (miracles, and so on) was only a fraction of all that happened during Christ’s ministry. He pointed out that those that were written down were written down in order to highlight certain aspects. The story of the blind man highlights that nothing is beyond the power of God; that a new body is promised us all; and that salvation comes through Christ. In Mark, there is another healing of a blind man and that does mention what the newly sighted man physically saw. In the story of the paralytic there was also some focus on the physical changes and not just the spiritual changes.

Ben: The Pharisees got it wrong because they were following the law of the Old Testament, then.

David: The story has a lot to say about the absence of divinity in the judgment of the Pharisees in contrast to the divinity of the judgment of Jesus. I repeat my earlier thought that this is a pretty thinly veiled attack on religion and its laws. The judgment of Jesus seems pretty clear to me to be that self-righteous religion is wrong and bad and self-abnegating sinners are good and right. What I like about Jesus is the way he keeps turning everything upside down: “Hey! It isn’t what you’ve always thought / believed /read / been told! It’s the opposite!”

Don: It is a very humbling warning, especially to those of us who value religion. We should recognize that we have no special insight and are in no position to pass judgment on others. The knowledge of good and evil—that fundamental question the disciples were asking when they wanted to know who was at fault for the blind man’s condition, and the Pharisees were answering in their certainty about the law. It is an indictment and a warning to those of us who value religion and like to study scripture. What one needs for spiritual understanding is a very liberal does of humility and willingness to understand that whenever we think we have judged correctly we are probably wrong.

Charles: Before the Fall, life was easy. It could not have been more simple. There was only one rule: Let God’s will be done, But pride and willfulness crept in and down we went. Then Moses came along and again God laid things on the line for him, but now instead of one rule there were ten. Life got more complicated by a whole order of magnitude. By the time of Jesus, the law had become so complex (Man’s doing, not God’s) that Jesus had to come down to simplify it, as he did in this story of the blind man.

Human willfulness and arrogance, our desire to be God, gets us into trouble and keeps us separated from God. This story reminds us of that, too.

David: The Daoist “bible”—the Dao De Jing—is all about humility, about admitting one’s ignorance. And it does it in far fewer words than the Bible! 😉 Charles would make a good Daoist. 🙂

Ben: I understand the need for humility but I would be careful of the definition of “pride”. The emotion of pride can be beneficially used as a tool.

I also wonder: If the New Testament is an attack on the Old, is the New Testament itself vulnerable to attack by a Newer Testament?

Charles: By “pride” I mean “willfulness” in the sense of pitting one’s will against God’s—of acting like God. With respect to a Newer Testament, it’s notable and instructive that the old New Testament hasn’t changed in 2,000 years.

David: That’s because they burned people who even hinted at it. It took 1,500 years and a few martyrs burned at the stake just to get it translated into English!

Don: To be continued!

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