Are you presuming to teach us?

March 14, 2010

The Man Born Blind is Healed

There's so much in this story, the gospel today about the man who was born blind and healed only to be cast out of the Temple. What has always struck me is the question to Jesus, was it the blind man or his parents who sinned that he was born blind?

Wow. Blaming the victim used to be our way of life. Tangible signs of God's disfavor were once our answer for why bad things happen to good people. It lets us off the hook for helping him, let him stew in his own punishment, but the really tragic thing about that mindset, to me, is the way it brings reward and punishment down to earth and says that this is all that there is. All that there is to bring you closer to God is earthly achievement, which is a sign of His favor and thus your grace. And it will be continued in the afterlife just as it is here.

That is depressing. And perhaps why Jesus had to explain so very many times: no, it's the MEEK that shall inherit the Earth, blessed are the POOR, the pharisee who flaunts his own piety has his reward already, the servants of God will be cast out of the world for they do not belong to it.

Religion should never be used to reinforce the current system of government, because that system is always, to one degree or another, oppressing some of His people. Whenever religion becomes a tool of those in power, it has lost sight of God. Because He is about setting the captives free, and reinforcing the patriarchy and the class system and the oppression of the downtrodden is the last thing that God would be doing to us. If low social rank is punishment for our sins or the sins of our parents, then it's all right to beat your slaves. They deserve it. If our gender is determined by our relative worth, then telling women to be silent and cover themselves is just prudent policy. If non-heterosexuality is a sign of a deviant soul, then we can relegate them to the fringes of society forever and spit on them to boot.

No one wants to live in that world. Do they?

Over and over people cling to it, the sins of the father and the sins of the self - blaming the victim so that the world doesn't have to change. Why?

And then when they rise to tell us the truth, we have a reason not to answer. You are uneducated, you are a sinner, you dare to talk to us who are blessed by God? An excuse to close our minds to revolutionary ideas, to things that force us to reexamine what we think we know about the Deepest Mysteries - as if we have those all figured out. Shortcuts. Elaborate rules about whom we do and do not listen to.

They didn't just do it then, before Jesus came down and tried to explain. Before he went among the poor and the humble and the blind, healing their wounds and giving them the power to show the world what they have always been able to see. The man born blind spoke beautifully and eloquently, declaring in his own strong voice the truth that he knew, what he had always known but never before been in a position to say.

His parents could not do it. Perhaps they believed the harsh and cruel doctrine of the Pharisees. Perhaps they spent their lives since the birth of their son atoning for sins they didn't fully understand. Perhaps they were as radical in their thoughts but not so alive in their courage. Perhaps they had merely thought all of the things their son was saying, deep down in their bones, but been afraid to let them come even into their thoughts.

I wonder how many times the blind man argued with the Pharisees in his head before he gained the strength to speak. I wonder if he was ready with the arguments or they came to him from the first moment his eyes were opened by God who walked among us. I almost prefer to think, however, that Jesus freed his tongue when He opened his eyes, and now the man who was born blind could speak what no one would listen to before.

And they never listen to what they don't want to hear. We're still doing this same shit now - two thousand years after Jesus explained that it was backwards and wrong and gross - and we don't want to hear it. But there are people who stand and speak up, and they are not called prophets anymore, because they do not rail warnings of punishment down upon us. We are all redeemed, we are all saved, a hail of fire is no longer appropriate.

It's a shame we still don't act like it. If we are all redeemed, and all of these problems people have are just that - problems that good people endure but don't have to - well, then, a lot of things would have to change, wouldn't they?

But who am I to say? Certainly nothing so remarkable as that man who was born blind, born into shame, who spoke so proudly and beautifully, probably not even fully realizing that he always could have. God gives voice to the downtrodden, and He lifts them up. We've seen it happen so many times. You'd think we'd have recognized the sight of it.

I'm just the person who's blind to so much, looking back and weary of how many times we have failed this test as a people.