Reading the Bible Without The Veil of Dogma: The Father Sickens, Jesus Heals
If there is an omnipotent being, is it really that marvelous that he can cure blindness?
There is something blinding about reading the Bible as sacred text. You read without reading. You record without analyzing. You see and yet fail to perceive.
There is something blinding about reading the Bible as sacred text. You read without reading. You record without analyzing. You see and yet fail to perceive.
For eight years, I most looked
forward to Holy Week; I spent hours listening to the chanting of the Biblical
text and was lulled into such a stupor that I failed to see the nakedness of
the emperor.
One such text was the Johannine story
of the healing of the man born blind from birth:
As he walked along, he
saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him,
“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus
answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that
God’s works might be revealed in him. We must work the works of
him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of
the world.” When he had said
this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on
the man’s eyes, saying to him,
“Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent) (John 9:1-7)
In the Christian tradition, this
story is an icon of the revelation of the revelation of God in Christ. Jesus is
the one sent and this is emphasized by the Gospel writer through the use of the
pool of Siloam, which means sent. How clever!
Jesus uses the very stuff of creation
to heal the blind man, the stuff of his mouth, and combines it with the Earth
to make mud—the very material that recorded in Genesis to create humanity. In
doing so, Jesus takes part in the creative process; he shows himself to be God.
Like much of the Gospel of John, it
is filled with irony. It is not ultimately a story about physical blindness,
for in the Bible, physical ailment is but a minor inconvenience. It is rather a
story about spiritual blindness; it is the blind man who actually sees:
Jesus heard that they had
driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of
Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus
said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him. Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment
so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Some
of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind,
are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not
have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains (John 9:35-41).
At the risk of taxing your atheistic
patience, I share all of these to reveal the questions that fascinated me for
so long and to showcase the intellectual and moral blindness that it ensued.
Why Jesus’s revelation of his divinity
should have so captured my imagination seems strange to me now. What an
uninteresting bit of data, especially, when one considers the more salient
questions the story raises.
Let us consider the first question
posed by Jesus’s disciples. Who sinned
that this man was born blind?
The question reveals a certain
assumption by the universe and the deity who governs it. It tells us that the
disciples believe in a God who is just. If he allows a person to be afflicted
and reduced to begging for his sustenance, it must be because there is some
cosmic debt to be paid.
Of course, there are many problems
with this assumption. First, how could a child have sinned sufficiently to deserve
blindness? Secondly, would it be just to punish a child for the infractions of
his parents?
Admittedly, this view of justice
deserves much refinement and we should all be grateful that Jesus is recorded
as having said neither. Imagine how Western medicine would have been impacted
by Jesus implying that illness is the sufferer’s just dessert.
Nonetheless, Jesus’s response does
not do much to buttress our confidence in the justice of his father. Let’s look
at it again.
Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor
his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in
him.”
So, why did this man spend decades of
his life deprived of eyesight? To create the conditions necessary for God to
heal him. The father caused him to be born blind so that Jesus can show off his
power to heal.
According to this story, after Yahweh
spent all those centuries telling the children of Israel that he is one, and
should not be cast in any physical form, he casts himself in physical form to
amend the very important Jewish shema: Hear,
O Israel: The Lord
our God, the Lord
is one (Deuteronomy 6:4).
Actually, I am not one, God decides
to finally tell us. I am a mystery (ahem, self-contradiction), and I have had a
son all along. Yes, all along. He is eternal, but still my son. And you know
this is true because I caused someone to be born blind and now, I am sending my
son to heal him with mud.
Is it really surprising that the
people who best understood the Hebrew Bible found this unpersuasive?
Moreover, let’s us imagine that all
of this is true. Is awe the most appropriate response to this kind of deity? Do
you even feel safe in a universe run by such a being?
This is a universe in which the
supreme being can withhold valuable information for centuries, and cause
illnesses so that he can use them in order to reveal that which he could have
revealed all along without using sentient beings as pawns.
The father and Jesus are like an
arsonist and firefighter tag team. One sets the fire and the other takes it
out. And we are all supposed to be impressed that someone can set fires and
another can take it out.
If there is an omnipotent being, is
it really that marvelous that he can cure blindness? Wouldn’t that go without
saying? Would we not want to know more important aspects of his character, such
as whether he is good or a sadist who doesn’t even have the virtue of being
creative?
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