Wednesday April 6, 2011

John 9:13-17

"They brought the one who was once blind to the Pharisees. Now Jesus had made clay and opened his eyes on a sabbath. So then the Pharisees also asked the man how he was able to see. He said to them, 'He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and now I can see.' So some of the Pharisees said, 'This man is not from God, because he does not keep the sabbath.' (But) other said, 'How can a sinful man do such signs?' There was a division among them. So they said to the blind man again, 'What do you have to say about him, since he opened your eyes?' He said, 'He is a prophet.'"

As the Little Black Book says in the meditation for today: "Nobody really wants to put themselves in the shoes of these Pharisees." True. But in keeping with my apparent mission with this year's reflections of defending those the Little Black Book casts as failed listeners or "the bad guys," I must confess that I have sympathy for them here.

Because if the foundation of your life - like Javert in Les Mis - is a rule of law, then it can be very hard when a good person is on what you have decided is the "wrong" side of the tracks/penal system/religious doctrine. If you'll forgive me a story, I don't think that the onscreen debate really is balanced or a good depiction of how real people have this argument, but I keep thinking about an episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip that had an argument about a comment that a character had made about homosexuality. Her comment was, "The Bible says homosexuality is a sin but it also says judge not lest ye be judged." Her boss/love interest was calling bull on her straddling the line and basically judging the hell out of her for wanting to be tolerant while believing that homosexuality was wrong and should make people second class citizens. And I always wanted to tell him that while Harriet is wrong in a whole host of ways about this issue, her go-to approach on this issue is to express her bewilderment in her attempts to reconcile a Bible verse of God's revealed Word with the all-loving and forgiving God she has known in her life. Far better than the go-to reaction that her boss/love interest had, "Hey, I love the women, but more power to them!" in endorsing only after distancing himself.

Because I think that being willing to engage this issue is the first step. It's how you know you're not just confirming what you really think all along and finding reasons to confirm your beliefs in Scripture. That you are really seeking answers. And in a moment, of course, the Pharisees will take any excuse they can get to ignore the problem and brush it aside - to make the facts that threaten their view of the world disappear. But in this moment, when they encounter a miracle of God that flies in the face of their received wisdom, I think that the courage to put the two together and ask for guidance on figuring out how to reconcile them shows more courage and more open-mindedness than flipping instantly to "then the law must be wrong about this!"

I think we need to have the courage to put contradictory ideas together and see which one gives. Not espouse one so much that we would bend the other out of shape, but truly let God show us the answer when we put our seeming paradoxes before Him.

And, yes, I think that the side we'll usually come down on is, "how can a sinful man do such signs?" and therefore perhaps our vision of sin is not God's, I think that the only way we really grow is to be able to put the contradictory things that we believe into conflict and have the courage to resolve it. To find the real truth - to let the the basis of our moral system be stripped away to accommodate a higher truth. To acknowledge the fact that we have two things we believe that contradict each other and if we discover only one of them can be true, then we must be willing to let something we have clung to pass out of our lives in order to grow in truth and wisdom.

I know the Pharisees are about to chicken out of this, show that really they would prefer if the conflict would just go away rather than give them the rare and beautiful opportunity to find a deeper and higher truth, but in this moment, standing in the Pharisees' shoes may be just what all of us bend over backwards to not have to do - but it is one of the better ways to grow and refine the places where you are spiritually blind and blind to your fellow man.

Dear Lord, help me to seize every opportunity to grow closer to You and to grow in understanding. Help me to understand where I have misjudged and where I misunderstand, give me the courage when confronted with a paradox to allow the truth to emerge even if it hard. Be my strength, Lord, and help me to follow in Your ways.