Can You Really See?

By Carol Wollaston

One of our most precious gifts is sight.  All of us at one time or another have reflected on how we would cope if we lost the ability to see.

Yet in reality many of us are already blind in a different and devastating way – spiritually blind.  Jesus highlighted this when He walked on the earth.  He told many of His hearers that they were blind, and they became offended because they felt they had perfect vision. Jesus said several times that offences ‘must come’.  He Himself was called the Rock of offence (1 Pet 2:18) and a stumbling stone.  Those who are blinded by their own stubbornness will stumble over His Word because it does not agree with their own agendas. 

The Pharisees and Sadducees are examples of spiritual blindness.  Busily keeping the law, they eagerly ticked the boxes of their own self righteousness and judged others to be less worthy of approval.  Their eyesight failed them when it came to recognizing the Messiah.  ‘Blind guides’ and ‘fools and blind’ is what Jesus called them.  Matthew 23 reveals the true nature of their spiritual blindness.

All of us can be just as blind, self righteous and judgmental as the Pharisees.  Christians can be  busily concerned with splinters in the eyes of others while they themselves have planks in their own eyes.

So how do we put off our religious blindfolds so that our eyes are opened to reality?  We are not looking for the spiritual equivalent of corneal transplants, but rather to be given the eyes of  Christ.  When we cease to be the source of our own life and validity, and it is Christ who lives in us, then we can view the world and others with His eyesight.  Our view of ourselves will be more real and we will more readily see our need for change. 

In the account of the healing of the man born blind, Jesus refused to focus on what sin may have caused his blindness, but on the restoration of the sinner’s sight. (John 9)  He was doing the work that He was sent into the world to do - to bring ‘recovery of sight to the blind’.  The blind man heard the Word of Christ to him and did not stumble over it.  In his own words: ‘I went, and washed and I received sight’.  The Pharisees tried several times to trap him, but he would not co-operate.  He simply  responded, ‘this man restored my sight…I have told you this already and you did not listen…If this Man were not from God, He could do nothing.’

The Pharisees ridiculed his answer and cast him out of their temple, but in so doing they, themselves, were cast out of the Kingdom of God.  Meanwhile, a humble blind man found acceptance and inclusion because He allowed Christ’s eyes to be his eyes so that he could claim with great joy, ‘one thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see!’