There is a story found in the Book of Mark that may be the New
Testament’s strangest miracle:
”
Some people brought a blind man to Jesus, and they begged him to
touch and heal the man. Jesus took the blind man by the hand and
led him out of the village.
There is a story found in the Book of Mark that may be the New Testament’s strangest miracle: “Some people brought a blind man to Jesus, and they begged him to touch and heal the man. Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village. Then, spitting on the man’s eyes, he laid his hands on him and asked, ‘Can you see anything now?’ The man looked around. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I see people, but I can’t see them very clearly. They look like trees walking around.’ Then Jesus placed his hands over the man’s eyes again. As the man stared intently, his sight was completely restored, and he could see everything clearly” (Mark 8:22-25).
Usually when Jesus healed a person, the healing was immediate and complete. For example, when he healed someone of blindness, their vision went immediately from 0 to 20/20. But in this instance, Jesus’ healing came in stages. After Jesus’ first touch, the man’s vision went from 0 to 20/200 or so. He could see people, but they looked like trees.
In this sense, the blind man was just like the people who said they wanted to follow Jesus. Their lives had been touched by him, but their vision of who he was and what it meant to follow him was fuzzy. Those would-be followers needed just what the formerly blind man needed: a second touch from Jesus. They needed to more clearly see who Christ really is and what the cost would be to follow him.
Now, if you are real honest, you may decide you don’t want a clearer vision. Maybe you are quite comfortable with where you are and what you can already see. Maybe the Christianity you now practice is a good fit for you and something else might really rock your gospel boat.
Many Christians are like a man named Virgil, who is described by neurologist Oliver Sacks in his book, “An Anthropologist On Mars.” Virgil had lived his entire life as a blind person and had been quite content. He had a balanced and safe daily routine. But his contentment was destroyed when, at the insistence of his fiancee, he underwent a surgery that enabled him to see.
While you and I would see this as a great blessing of modern technology, Virgil saw it as a curse. His whole world changed, and he was completely disoriented. As Dr. Sacks described it, Virgil’s problem was that “one must die as a blind person to be born again as a seeing person.”
Much in Virgil’s new world of sight contradicted the assumptions he had held as a blind person. Could it be that you have become contented with a sort of 20/200 vision in a spiritual sense? You’ve become satisfied with offering a few occasional prayers and some church attendance and just enough Christian symbolism to allow you to live like the rest of the people in the world while avoiding feeling guilty about your lack of genuine commitment to Christ?
I am convinced that much of what passes as Christianity today is far different than the life Jesus prescribed for his followers. The word “Christian” once signified someone who actually lived out the teachings of Christ in his or her daily life. But what does that actually mean here at the beginning of the second millennium? In the coming weeks we will explore what Christianity should look like in the 21st century.
