My eyesight is not as good as it once was. And that affects many things in my life. Astigmatism has distorted my vision since I was a boy, and cataracts do no help. In Matthew 6 Jesus compared eyesight with spiritual vision.
Matthew 6:22,23
“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
Let me point out a few distortions that plunge us into spiritual darkness.
Worldly Eyes
If your focus is only on this world, even for your church or your ministry, you have been blinded to ultimate reality. Many people do this deliberately. Others of us are simply distracted by the worries and desires of this life. If you live as though this life is all there is, all meaning is reduced or eradicated. Your body becomes your soul, and time becomes eternity, the church becomes a club, and life becomes meaningless.
Lustful Eyes
Do you look at others with lust in your heart? Lust distorts people into fleeting pleasures. This shallow vision is soon reinforced by glandular drives. However, lust can be broader than physical desire. The word translated lust in the original language of the New Testament is also used to translate covetousness. If your vision is distorted by anything that you want, you will never be able to understand why things do not satisfy. In Luke 12:15 Jesus warned us to be on our guard against all kinds of covetousness. We have to watch out for it because we seldom recognize it in our own lives. When you cannot even see that you are blind, how deep that darkness is indeed.
Prideful Eyes
These are eyes that see everything in the light of yourself. Pride does not just see yourself as better than others. It pushes you to claim the most prominent position. Pride studies, not to learn, but to impress. Pride dresses, not comfort, or even beauty, but for success. Pride looks at a home or a car as a means of intimidating others. Pride is blind to anything and anyone beyond yourself.
Selfish Eyes
The previous two eye problems are self-centered. But I think we need to see selfishness as a separate category. First, it is always in competition for what you want. Selfishness sees love as a means of personal fulfillment rather than commitment. It treats other people as means to its own ends. And also because it tends to self-pity, this malady turns everything into resentment. It often seeks friends, marriage partners and sometimes even counselors who will reinforce your resentments.
But what can you do about spiritual blindness? In one of my books a doctor tells about a patient who got a thorn in his eye. (In The Wilderness, https://www.amazon.com/WILDERNESS-David-Young-ebook/dp/B00BLNMUIA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1539279887&sr=8-3 ) He pointed out that the natural defence mechanism in humans kept him from removing the thorn. That is also true of our spiritual blindness. We need God in His tender care to correct our diseased eyesight. To some extent our perspective is transformed at our conversion. “All things become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) But God also puts us through a process of therapy to enable us to see more and more as He sees. And ultimately, we will see as clearly as we ourselves are seen by God. (2 Corinthians 13:12)
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