“Listen, you foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but don’t see and ears but don’t hear”—Jeremiah 5:21(CEB).
Around age 10, I was diagnosed with extreme nearsightedness and astigmatism. I began wearing eyeglasses, the kind some call “Coke-bottle glasses.” In the 60s, technology hadn’t advanced to the point where people like me could wear glasses so thin you’d never know the extent of someone’s eyesight problems. Mine were serious.
I recall getting my first pair of glasses. After putting them on at the doctor’s office, I arrived home where I exclaimed to my mother, “I didn’t know our kitchen floor had spots.” The vinyl tile was dark green with flecks of black and white. Before corrective lenses, I couldn’t see the tiny specks. The detail with which I could now see expanded my world.
Of course, I didn’t really like wearing glasses. I had no choice since my eyesight was so poor. I suffered the same taunts as most youngsters who begin to wear glasses, with the most familiar one being “four-eyes.” Throughout the years, I tried different types of contact lenses. My allergies led to discomfort. I decided it wasn’t worth it.
After I underwent cataract surgery in 2015, I was able to see sharper images and colors. I had each eye done in separate surgeries. While waiting for the other eye to be fixed, I could really appreciate the difference between the before-and-after surgeries if I closed one eye and peered out the other.
How often are we prone to closing our eyes, not literally, but spiritually? An old proverb says, “There are none as blind as those who will not see.”
According to the Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings, this proverb has been traced back to 1546, but in fact this phrase echoes prophet Jeremiah’s earlier words.
Jesus tells His disciples in Matthew 13:13, “That is why I use these parables, for they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand.”
The Pharisees couldn’t see. Blind to spiritual truth, they constantly denounced Jesus, trying to prove He was wrong. These super-religious church leaders thought they knew everything. They thought they could see and comprehend every spiritual truth when, in fact, they knew nothing.
But the Pharisees weren’t the only ones who had trouble seeing. Even the disciples had a spiritual blind spot. After seeing a blind man, they asked Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?”
Jesus answered, “It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was in order that the works of God might be displayed in him.”
John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in California, says, “So, the world is divided into two groups: Those that are in darkness, the spiritually blind; and those that have sight, the spiritually seeing. There are only two kinds of people. There’s no half sight. There are no partially blind. You either see or you are totally blind.”
What kind of person are you: spiritually blind or spiritually seeing?