“And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?”” Mark 8:23 ESV
Reflection: how do you seek spiritual clarity?
It is pretty funny, actually more scary than funny, how you can through a short conversation determine which TV channel people watch. You might have noticed. There is the classic MSNBC crowd, the CNN crowd, and the Fox News crowd, depending on where you are at on the political spectrum. And, in the last few years, more independent journalists have become quite popular, across the political and spiritual spectrum. Bring up a couple of hot topics, people will quickly echo “talking points” from what they have heard repeatedly from their favorite channel. And if you dig a bit deeper, you find that these points are not necessarily conclusions they have come to from their own research. So, in a way, the media programs we watch act as a “programming tool” for the networks.
It can be used for propaganda as we know from the past, and recently and painfully learned through the pandemic. It is very effective.
Around 2018, my wife and I decided to stop watching the news, including the cable news. Not that we stopped paying attention to what is going on, of course, but we decided not to take in “the nightly dose” of programming. At first, it was admittedly difficult, as I had my routines with programs and personalities I liked to watch. People that seemed to be pretty aligned with my opinions and beliefs. I honestly missed watching them at first. And, I have always enjoyed a great debate on some current hot button topic. But what I had started noticing was that even the channels and programs I enjoyed the most also had a significant influence on my thinking, and took a lot of my time. And, they were not always aligned with my beliefs, especially aligned with biblical views. And, in hindsight, I can now see that they actually had a significant influence on my thinking in a pretty subtle way.
There is a subtle, but curious point in today’s verse and story. Easy to miss. We read from the beginning of an encounter Jesus had with a “blind man”. “And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him.” Mark 8:22 ESV. A blind man, but what does that mean? You might remember what we looked at yesterday, where Jesus was using the miracle of feeding thousands with a few breads, giving the disciples a lesson about the power of the bread from heaven and effect of the poison, the leven, of the Pharisees teaching. It wasn’t just about the physical bread, but about the spiritual bread. So, keeping that in mind, perhaps there is a deeper lesson here also about the blind man. Let’s see.
In the first part of the focus verse, we get a clue “And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village,” Mark 8:23a ESV. Why did Jesus choose to take the blind man “out of the village”? Meaning, away from everyone? Once they were alone, away from the crowd, Jesus “spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?”” Mark 8:23b ESV. The man started gradually getting his vision back, getting a perspective, “And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.”” Mark 8:24 ESV. The message here is clearly beyond healing of just physical blindness, because Jesus could have done that immediately inside the village. But there is a much deeper point here. We read “Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.” Mark 8:25 ESV.
His eyes were “opened”, physically and spiritually, and he could see again.
The last verse in the story of healing this blind man underlines the importance of not getting our spiritual eyes tainting by the world. “And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.””Mark 8:26 ESV. So what about you and I? Are we in a “village”, so to speak, getting our information, our programming from a source other than the word of God? Who is influencing us, or even worse, who might be causing us blindness? One idea is to try to “fast” from the “village” for a couple of weeks, only with the Word of God and prayer, to see if our vision becomes more clear.
