He replied, ‘Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!’
Then they asked him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’
He answered, ‘I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?’
Then they hurled insults at him and said, ‘You are this fellow's disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don't even know where he comes from.’
The man answered, ‘Now that is remarkable! You don't know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’
To this they replied, ‘You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!’ And they threw him out.” (John 9:24-34 NIV)
When I first became a Jesus-follower, my mother thought I had joined some sort of cult. She saw the sudden changes in me, and good though they were, they frightened her. I was talking about the Bible and about praying, things never discussed in our so-called Christian home. My mom was a churchgoer, but her understanding of a Christian and what she saw in the young man she raised were quite different. And it scared her.
Jesus miraculously healed a man and it was a proven fact; yet the religious leaders were scared. Jesus didn’t fit their understanding of the Messiah. He didn’t show them respect and He went against their long-held traditions such as observing the Sabbath. So they persecuted the man who was healed. It doesn’t make sense unless we understand how easy it is for us to reject out of hand anything that doesn’t conform to our view or experience of things.
Before I became a follower of Jesus, I thought true Christians were strange. My friends and I referred to them as “Jesus freaks.” They often carried Bibles, prayed together, and lived very different lifestyles. Even after I became a Christian, I thought people who raised their hands in church were strange. I judged them in my heart. Why? Because I was scared. It was different and I was uncomfortable with it. Judgment quite often is the result of fear.
We see this in the religious leaders. How could anyone decry a miracle, particularly one that ended the long suffering of this man? Yet their fear led them to judgment.
The story of the man healed from blindness is in one way a sad one. In it was the opportunity for the religious leaders to be set free from their own blindness and fears. Yet, they rejected it in favor of clinging tightly to what was familiar.
Today, consider what fears may be preventing you from experiencing what the Lord has for you. What we are comfortable with is not necessarily what is best for us.
© Jim Musser 2014
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