To this they replied, "You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!" And they threw him out. (John 9:34)
The religious leaders interrogated the once blind man at length. They probed and they prodded. They desperately looked for the smoking gun, the incriminating evidence that would prove once and for all that Jesus was a dangerous crackpot. The progress of their investigation has an increasingly desperate air about it. They ramp up the pressure on the man to give them what they want - just cause to rid themselves of this pesky Rabbi.
The spiritual blindness of the Pharisees more than matched the physical blindness of the healed man in its destructive power. Before Jesus healed him, the man was closed off from much of the physical world. In their obstinacy, the Pharisees could see the physical realm, but were blind to the things of God.
Like the religious leader of the 1st century world, our culture is filled with enlightened people who nonetheless are spiritually blind. They cling desperately to their particular 'ism' (atheism, secularism etc,), refusing to believe that any truth could exist outside the nice, neat ordered world they have constructed. But then, perhaps the most dangerous form of spiritual blindness is suffered by good, observant, religious people like the Pharisees. The conservatives of their day, they had in some ways reduced the mystery that is God down to a set of burdensome rules and rituals. In the church we can do the same. And so Lord, open our eyes that we might see you in your holy perfection and us in light of that perfection - people who like the man born blind, are in desperate need of your healing power.
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