denial

When Jesus healed the man who had been blind from birth, he caused a crisis. The man whom an entire village seemed to know as the blind beggar was looking them in the eyes. It was a conspicuous miracle impossible to ignore and it was a disruptive miracle for those whose faith was grounded in predictability and order. Who is this man sho opens the eyes of the blind with seemingly little effort and complete disregard for the way we do things in our congregation?

We all have to face this man, and it is as hard for us today as it was for people back then. We like to be in control of our lives and our faith. We become frightened when Jesus forces the issue by showing up without warning and opening eyes. Like the Pharisees, we like to be in charge of what we and others see. We think that denial is safety. We think it will protect all that is dear to us.

But denial is an addiction. It is an addiction to blindness. We shut our eyes and claim to see. We build walls which we reinforce daily in order to keep out the light. We clutch the railings we have erected in order to navigate in the dark. Who needs to see when the way of godliness is securely marked out for us in our traditions, our rules, our methods, our categories, our systems, and our terminology? The better blindness works for us, the tighter we cling to the railings and resist any breakthrough of light.

Blindness was working for the Pharisees. Their lives were thriving in the dark. They had money, prestige, and power. They had all the answers. They defined the church’s mission. They praised those who benefitted them and banished those who did not. Blindness works in this world if you are committed to it. In the dark, the powerful can rule and the fearful can be led.

Perhaps this is why suffering is a gift. The blind man ached for light. Because of this, the genuine work of God was revealed in his life. What is the work of God? To open the eyes of the blind. Through this man’s blindness, Jesus revealed himself as the light of the world who gives sight to those who want to see. Through the Samaritan woman’s thirst He revealed himself as the Source of living water which eternally quenches the souls of those who want to drink. Through one man’s death he revealed himself as the resurrection and the life who raises the dead and gives eternal life to those who want to live. This is the pattern we see in the Gospels. The work of God is to heal, fill and impart life to needy souls. He forgives all the sin of the guilty, he lifts all the burdens off the backs of the weary and heavy laden. He liberates prisoners, restores sanity, and casts out the demons that have been oppressing tortured souls. Best of all, he loves unlovable sheep. He is the Good Shepherd who has lain down his life to rescue us from the wolves who hunt in the darkness.

The problem is denial is familiar. It feels safe. We prefer the darkness where we can hide to the light where we can be healed. But when we become in some way desperate enough for something better than darkness, we discover the wonder of his light. God’s radiant, holy love enters our souls and illuminates his beauty. We see reality as it is: We all of us are lying on the side of the road, beaten, bloody and robbed. And Jesus is the Samaritan, our imagined enemy, the one who seems too base for us, and who turns out to be the only One who can heal us.

My teenage daughter and I have been studying the kings of Israel and Judah. She asked me why a king would not want to worship Yahweh. I reminded her of the enormous pressures these kings were under. Their hold on power was only as strong as the loyalty of their wealthy advisors and military leaders. A king ruled a small country surrounded by powerful enemies. The economy was fragile, dependent upon the weather and the good will of the surrounding nations. Like today, a king’s approval ratings were based upon the visible, tangible benefits that people experienced during his reign. So much was out of his control. The king must have felt pressure to form alliances with those who could promote his popularity and help secure his power. I’m no ruler, but I understand these kinds of pressures. False gods give us the illusion of being in control. I do my part, publicly, and I’m not to blame if things go wrong. I do what it takes to get the results I need. I’m on the same page with the surrounding culture and gain the security of their approval. I’m not alone, on my own, forsaken, abandoned, and lost.

If a king worshipped Yahweh he had to trust Yahweh to love him because he was giving up all his props. And that is the very thing that is so hard to do. The Lord’s promises are on paper; our enemies are in the flesh. Our own wisdom screams for us to act, to do what it takes to secure our safety. Seeking God’s wisdom, waiting patiently for Him, trusting him in the midst of the cruel circumstances that He Himself has brought about requires confidence that He sees us and cares about us. And He does. We can let go of denial. We can let Jesus illuminate our darkness because He will do it with compassion, kindness, humility and gentleness. God is love. Love is the very thing that cannot be found in the dark. There are alliances but not love. There can be efficiency, production, success, wealth, fame and power. There can be social niceties, polite gatherings, and even friendliness. We can gain approval through our performances, but the love we ache for does not live in the dark. We were made for something better than denial.

Jesus knows about darkness. He, himself, was cast into complete darkness where there was no comfort or relief. He was utterly cast out, forsaken, and abandoned so that we will never have to experience that. And by his self sacrifice, he defeated the one who uses our fears to seduce us into darkness. Jesus will lead us out of the darkness and into the light where we can see the One who loves us, who calls us by name and leads us as a Shepherd.

Seeing is an ongoing process. The Gospels give us these accounts so we can know who Jesus is, what he is like, and what he can do. But when we read the Bible as a whole, it is clear that our final healing will not take place until the day we see him face to face. For now we see through a glass darkly which at times feel most unsatisfactory. If we seek to cope by being strong in the dark, we lose what little light we have. But if we fix our eyes, as dim as they are, on Jesus, putting our tiny mustard seed of faith in him, trusting him to love us and to see us through to the end, our light brightens a bit, sometimes quickly, mostly almost imperceptibly. I do not know how all of this works. There certainly is no gimmick or quick fix in it. But I do know that in Jesus we have an Advocate who loves us, who is patient and kind, and who sticks with us through our stumblings, rebellions, confusions, griefs and pain. He cannot do otherwise.

Each day and several times a day there is a choice laid out before us: denial or light. On one path we have all the answers and remain in control. We know our way in the dark. On the other path we have few answers because we have surrendered control. We follow a way that we do not know. On any given day it can be hard to observe which path we are on. But over time we seal our commitment. Either we are comfortable in denial, controlling or being controlled, or we are beginning to see what we have never seen before.

¹⁸ The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn,

shining ever brighter till the full light of day.

¹⁹ But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness;

they do not know what makes them stumble. (Proverbs4:18–19)

² The people walking in darkness

have seen a great light;

on those living in the land of the shadow of death

a light has dawned. (Isaiah 9:2)

John 9 The man born blind.

In the beginning of this account, the disciples are passing by a blind man and wondering whose fault it was. This is a correlation we all tend to make: if your life is going well, you are righteous, if it is going bad, you have sinned. This was not an Old Testament teaching. We only have to look at Job, or Jeremiah to realize that suffering comes to the best of us. But it is our default mode, I think, to look at how our life is going and determine God’s favor based upon our circumstances and how we are handling them.

I remember listening to Tim Keller preaching a sermon after 9/11. I highly recommend listening to it; you can download it from the Redeemer.comwebsite. It was the only time I recall hearing Tim get emotional. So many Christians were declaring that the terrorist attack was an indication of God’s judgment on the sinful city. Tim asked, “Can we get Biblical for a moment?” He said, in essence, that if we want to know if we are pleasing God we need to ask ourselves two questions: Are we loving God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind? Are we loving our neighbor as ourselves? The Bible does not teach us to look at our circumstances, but at our hearts and our actions. When we do this with any sincerity, we will not be anxious to condemn those who are suffering.

In Psalm 73 describes the psalmist’s struggle. The wicked were prospering. They were healthy and everything they did prospered. Nothing went wrong for them. Therefore, “pride was their necklace…they scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression.” They are “always at ease, they increase in riches.” Meanwhile the psalmist was in misery. “…all day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.” The rest of the psalm describes the recovery of the psalmist’s perspective. The disciples had the same mindset as the psalmist in opposite circumstances, and it led to an appalling insensitivity. We double the burden of those who are suffering when we believe that their misery is a sign of God’s judgment.

As a mother who has raised children with special needs, I know that temptation. While I did not believe that my child’s disability indicated that I had sinned, I did believe that my inability to handle suffering with a smile and daily fortitude was sin. Perhaps this reflects our modern culture: It is not a sin to experience extraordinary suffering, but it is a sin to falter under its weight. If we falter, we reveal that we are sick and sinful. We feel like outsiders in the community of healthy and righteous believers.

I had a simplistic belief that God only gives special needs children to special mothers. I was not that kind of mother. I informed God that he had made a mistake. I was not the kind of mother who could handle this kind of suffering without feeling miserable, confused, irritable, guilty, tired, depressed, driven, impatient, frightened, cross, and angry. I do not have what it takes to deal calmly with the pain of my child’s chronic needs and the suffering they bring me. In a way, I was like the man born blind. Whose fault was it that I was so conspicuously handicapped? Why was I so hyper, fearful and reactionary? Why couldn’t I get out of bed? Was this my parents’ fault or mine? Who sinned to make me such a failure?

Well intentioned Christians from different faith perspectives came to me with offers of quick fixes. If I had enough faith my child would be healed. If I had confidence in the Gospel I would not struggle. If I used a holistic medical approach we would all become healthy and normal. I ran after quick solutions because I hated being such a conspicuous “sinner” whom others could stare at and shake their head. We are like the disciples. The suffering of a fellow human being becomes a topic for theological discussion. Why is he there begging? Why do these things happen? Help us get this straightened out in our minds so we don’t have to look human misery in the face.

Jesus, however, had a different perspective. Jesus used this man’s blindness to transform him into the only one who had eyes to see what really mattered. By the end of this account we realize that everyone else was blind except this man. Each year of his blindness prepared him for the moment when Jesus opened his eyes. Surely this man’s life did not feel like a preparation for anything. He was a man like any other man. He wanted to be productive, not stand on the side of the road and beg. He wanted to use his muscles to work and to use his mind to create. He wanted to belong, to have friends to work with and to laugh with. He wanted to have a wife and children. He wanted to take his place in his community. Instead he was an eye sore that others pitied or judged. Surely the disciples were not the only ones who had asked that question within earshot of this man. From birth this man was excluded and the assumption was that it was his own fault or his parents’ fault. His parents did not seem to handle the accusations very well. They distanced themselves from their son, leaving him alone to beg while they went on with their lives.

What went on inside this man to prepare him for Jesus? Perhaps it was simply that he had no escape from his suffering. He was locked in. It is a terrible moment when you realize that your life will never be what you wanted it to be. I remember the first time I felt an impenetrable wall between me and everything I had hoped for. I was locked into a life I did not want and there was no escape. I tried to charge my way through that wall, but all I got were bruises. It has taken decades to realize that Jesus has been using that wall to give me eyes to see.

Jesus’ answer to the disciples can seem trite when we first hear it. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (John 9:3) Did this man suffer all his life simply to be God’s trophy? Jesus can heal blindness, come and see! Sudden healing does not make up for all the lost years that he cannot get back.

No. This is not the way of Jesus. The whole account reveals this one truth, if nothing else: Spiritual sight is worth a lifetime of suffering. Jesus ought to know. Jesus’ suffering differs from ours in this: His pain was not for his own healing. He suffered to give us the sight he already had. He put himself inside the impenetrable wall of His Father’s will. And that wall had a door. At any time he could have opened it and walked away from us. But he didn’t. In the end he died in darkness. He became blind so that we could see. There is absolutely nothing trite about Jesus.

The glory of God in the blind man’s life was not his physical healing. It was the miraculous insight he possessed and retained in the face of fierce resistance. When the Pharisees caught wind of his healing, everyone backed away from him, just like before. He stood alone before the angry, oppressive religious leaders who had the power to banish him at the very moment he was able to take his place in his community. He did not flinch. He saw what no one else was able to see. God had come to him through this man, Jesus. Nothing else mattered. He could see.

I know what it means to be given spiritual sight. I had a sudden, miraculous healing when I was 20. Since then I’ve gained what little eyesight I have through suffering. That is God’s way. When we strive to remain whole, to avoid the suffering that comes to us all, we end up like the crowd that watched this man’s trial. We escape his suffering and walk away blind. But when we face a wall and there is no escape, we begin to see what we were unable to see before. God has come to us through this man, Jesus. Suffering is painful. It feels like thick darkness. It feels cold, purposeless, unfair, eternal. We are crushed, angry, miserable, alone. People stare at us. We feel like a spectacle. What possible good can come out of this?! Yet we survive one more day and then another. And one day we notice that we can see. There are no bells. No fireworks going off. No riding off into the sunset. But we see Jesus in a new way. We wonder if our new sight is real, if it will last, or if it will make any difference in the long run. It’s a mustard seed. Years later we discover that the sight we have gained through our suffering is worth every moment of pain. This is the work of God which was displayed in the blind man’s life and in ours.

John 9:39 (NIV)
39 Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”