Stone-Blind

By A.J. Mattill, Jr.

According to John 9:1-41, Jesus restored the sight of a man born blind. Yet the Pharisees refused to believe in Jesus. On the other hand, the man born blind who received his sight confessed his faith in Jesus as Lord and knelt down and worshiped him. Jesus said to him, "I came to this world to judge the people. I am here to give sight to the blind and to blind everyone who can see" (9:39). Now let us focus our attention on the blind man, the Pharisees, and Jesus.

The Blind Man. As we have noted, this man was physically blind but Jesus restored his physical sight—no doubt 20/20 vision. The man was also spiritually blind; but he received his spiritual sight when he confessed his faith in Jesus as Lord (9:38).

The Pharisees. The Pharisees enjoyed physical sight and thought they had spiritual sight. They claimed that they could see (9:41) because they believed that God spoke to Moses (9:29). But when they rejected Jesus as Lord they rejected the light of the world" (9:5) and became spiritually blind. In effect, Jesus blinded those who thought they could see.

Jesus. Jesus claimed to be "the light of the world" (9:5), the Son of Man (or the Son of God, according to some ancient manuscripts, 9:35), and Lord (9:38). As such, Jesus was convinced that he possessed both physical and spiritual sight.

Conclusion: How unfortunate that the blind man, the Pharisees, and Jesus himself were less enlightened than Charvaka, a rationalist of India who lived half a millennium before Jesus. If Jesus, the blind man, and the Pharisees had had 20/20 spiritual vision, they would have said, as did Charvaka, that there is no Supreme Being. Charvaka pointed out that there is no proof that a God exists, for he cannot be proved by the only valid means of knowledge—sense perception, since he is supposed to be devoid of tangible form. Here we think of Jesus' statement that God is Spirit (John 4:24).

Or if Jesus, the blind man, and the Pharisees had not been spiritually blind, they would have asked with another ancient Indian, Buddha (563-483 BC/BCE): "If God made everything, why didn't he make it a better world without the profound miseries in it? If God rules the world, why is the world full of injustice, cheating, and lies?" Had Jesus had perfect spiritual vision, he would have called upon his followers, as did Buddha, to live a self-reliant ethical life, without worship, prayer, or dependence on any kind of divine being. Compared with such perceptive, farsighted thinkers as Charvaka and Buddha, Jesus appears to have been stone-blind!