"Spiritual Blindness"

When you think of the word blindness what comes to your mind?   Being in the darkness, mobility, not being able to get around, aloneness, a burden to others.

There are the physically blind and then may I suggest there are those who are spiritually blind.

Readings:  Job 42: 1-6, 10-17, Psalm 34  Mark 10: 46-52

We heard two stories this morning that suggest there are two kind of blindness, not one but two.  There is physical blindness as in the case of Bartimaeus but in the case of Job, we find a great example of spiritual blindness.  

Bartimaeus was physically blind, he had no sight, but medical science tells us that if we lose one or our senses often other senses kick in and become more acute.  With physical blindness hearing and the ability to listen usually improve considerably.  Just recently science has discovered that the blind have sonar abilities were never completely understood before.  They can with training, actually detect objects and there position by using clicking sounds. Their hearing is so acute to sound that they hear an echo our ears are not trained to hear.   Some have gotten so good at it they can tell you the size and description of the object and it distance.  For the blind often scents and odors become more alive, more distinct, touch or taste more sensitive, they become more open to others. Listening for them opens up new possibilities.  May I suggest here that listening better, just may help many sighted persons? Do I hear an Amen?   The opposite occurs with Spiritual blindness.  The lack of spiritual awareness can cause people to become desensitized to their neighbor, their surroundings, nature and to presence of God in their lives.  People who suffer from spiritual blindness can easily become paranoid, more fearful, more self-centered, narrow in their thinking, reluctant to change and new possibilities.   These conditions exists not only with individuals but within groups, governments and even some religions.  Ecologists, theologians and environmentalists are suggesting today that many of those who hold the power within governments, religions and science have the blinders on.  That they are misleading us with their untruths, personal agenda, or personal ideologies.   Spiritual blindness is causing us to use up all our resources faster than we or nature can replenish them.  This kind of blindness can lead us into a world of protectionism, chaos and eventual self-destruction.   

Bartimaeus’ blindness was considered by the people of his time to be a curse from God because of some sin that he or one of his family members committed.   This way of perceiving God, a God who punishes sin with affliction is still being preached in some religious circles today.  Jesus exposes this non truth by reaching out to heal both physical and spiritual blindness.  If you allow Jesus to touch your heart, He can heal both kinds of blindness in you.   God heals because God is a God of rescue, a God of unconditional forgiveness and love not a tyrant who punishes.   Not trusting that God has our best interest in mind, regardless of our personal circumstances helps to add to our Spiritual blindness.   When we commit to personal sin or miss the mark as the Hebrew would say, unleash both conscious and unconscious consequences.  God doesn’t need to punish us, because God gave us the ability to punish ourselves.  It’s built right in to your choices folks, it’s called consequences.  Do something bad to yourself or to others behold consequences.    On the other hand, do something good to yourself or to others and behold consequences.  One might say that the first is spiritual blindness and the other is spiritual awareness.     

Take a long hard look at the Old Testament stories and your blinders will began to be removed.   Jesus isn’t trying to heal or save us from God’s punishment, Jesus wants to heal and save us from that which can become our worst enemy, ourselves. Is that not at the true core of salvation where We can be our own worst enemy as we create our own Hell.    Job is one of the stories that can help us with this deadly form of spiritual blindness. 

He was a righteous man whom loved God, yet God doesn’t stop misfortune, or disease from befalling him.  Yes even good people have a human nature that causes trouble in their lives.  Spiritual blindness allows us to think like Job’s friends.   That we are puppets on a string, that God manipulates us with a system of rewards and punishments.   Job’s friends wrongly assume that suffering always comes as a result of something we had done to upset God.  Job knows this is not so and maintains his faith no matter what the devil throws at him, even though he can’t understand the workings of God.  Spiritual blindness here makes us question the goodness of God especially when our expectations are not met or when we have to endure suffering because of a choice we or someone has made.  God’s wisdom is greater than our understanding.  God has allowed our human nature and our minds the ability to choose.  God doesn’t force control over our human nature but with Jesus’ help we can.   Here we need to remain faithful regardless of our circumstances, trusting, believing and relying on Him.     Spiritual blindness allows us to think that we can figure out and understand the wisdom of God.  Let me remind you of Isiah 55: 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

God is God and we are just his children no matter how mature we think we have become.  Spiritual blindness allows us to think we can be Gods ourselves.

Listen to these lyrics:  “The Spirit Song”

Many people today make the claim that they are not spiritual.    I believe that Jesus would disagree with them because that suggests that only some of what God created is spiritual.  To be human, to be part of creation is to be spiritual.  You can’t separate the two.  Everything in existence is spiritual.  God breathed into existence everything by the spirit.  According to the Gospel of John 1: everything in the cosmos both in heaven and on earth were created by the Word, and the word was light to the world.  In verse 3 we read “ through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life” and that life became a light to the world, it brings spiritual awareness, to a world full of darkness, full of the spiritually blind.   Therefore we could conclude that everything in life that has ever existed is sacred and spiritual.    If we have eyes to see, and ears to hear, all things, the rocks and trees, the flowers, and the bees, the oceans and all of its contents, the land, the insects and animals are all spiritual.   We humans are special, we are not like anything else that was created and we were given spiritual awareness and stewardship over all things in creation.  Stewardship seems to have lost its meaning for church folk today.  If you are not sure of it meaning, may I suggest that you google it when you get home or look it up with Webster’s.

Many feel this special spiritual connection to each other and to our world.     Many of us feel this connection when we commune with nature, or with certain people.  Our spirits seems to be on the same wave length, and there is a sense of peace and contentment when we are in each other’s company, even if you do not have to agree with each other’s perspective you still sense the connectedness.  Spiritual blindness can prevent us from experiencing this unexplainable joy and oneness with others, with Jesus, and with nature.   Let us pray