David Bahn – Reflections

Mark 8:22-26

And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. 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?” And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.”

Tertullian (an Early Church Father from Carthage-see below) said, “Two kinds of blindness are easily combined so that those who do not see really appear to see what is not.”
There is the blindness of being incapable of seeing. This is the blindness of the man from Bethsaida whom Jesus heals on this occasion. He lived in a land of milky sameness, darkness, or light – Mark does not tell us which. But he could not see. When Jesus heals him we learn that he must have once been able to see, for he speaks of seeing men who look like trees walking. He apparently knew what a tree looked like and had, therefore, some frame of reference to describe his initial although incomplete healing.
His initial healing, however, reveals the second kind of blindness: seeing things that really and truly are not. Trees were not walking, but that is how he described what he did see. Thankfully he was able to realize that he was not seeing clearly, and did not settle for a world of walking trees.
The reality of our blindness may be lost on us without some means of comparison to reality. Unless we have a clear revelation of the way things are, we will walk around in a world of our own creations. That world will not last. Any world we contrive based on false understandings of reality is doomed.
The worst blindness of all is that which fails to see/understand its own limits. This is the spiritual blindness of the world and our flesh. Unless God’s Spirit awakens a deeper awareness of what truly is we will be eternally lost in that blindness. But just as Jesus broke into this man’s physical blindness and healed him, the Holy Spirit breaks into our lives and opens our hearts to true truth or real reality.
Once healed, however, Jesus does not transport us out of this world – just as he sent the man home. He sends us into our homes and work places now seeing. The blinders are gone. So are the rose-colored glasses. We don’t suppose to see things that are not, nor do we ignore things that are. Jesus’ presence opens eyes and sustains us in our daily encounter with the world around us.

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian, was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He is the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature.
Born: 160 AD, North Africa
Died: 220 AD