Various degrees of blindness

Everybody suffers various degrees of blindness.
Blindness can be physical. Our vision is impaired to different severities and we wear eye glasses to remedy. Some are more serious and need to undergo surgery.
Sometimes, blindness can be psychological. There are cases in which the patients, whose eyes are perfectly normal and healthy and yet due to some traumatic experiences, refuse to see. These are cases of hysterical blindness. Today, in the gospel, we read of spiritual blindness. These cases are similar to hysterical blindness in that the patients refuse to see the truth. That is why Jesus passes the following judgment onto his contemporaries.
Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind.”(John 9:39)

This verse puzzles me a bit because early in the gospel, John made a comment that God sent the Son not to condemn the world but to save it (John 3:17).
And in a subsequent occasion, Jesus contradicted 9:39 by saying the opposite.
If any one hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. (John 12:47)
That is why I felt a bit uneasy when I heard that Jesus came into this world to judge it. Of course, in reading the Bible, we should always be aware of these built-in tensions. The Bible is not doctored, not harmonized. Readers have to put in efforts to maintain these apparent contradictions and  tensions. The other day when the Catholic teachers were Deuteronomy 6, Donna raised an objection against the language of the Old Testament. Not to mention the contents, the language itself is already very offensive to modern ears. She felt that the God of the Old Testament was barbaric, brutal and very much unlike God the Father portrayed by Jesus in the New Testament. She wondered why we still keep the Old Testament. An image popped up my mind. It was a beautiful green plant. Therefore, the New Testament and even the Church today is the green plant. But its roots draw nutrients from the soil, the dirt below. The Old Testament is the root of God's revelation. We have not exhausted its full meanings yet. Therefore, we cannot simply throw the Old Testament out of the window. Otherwise, the New Testament is rootless, groundless and the Church will withered. The "puzzle" we find in the gospel of John above demonstrates clearly that even in the New Testament, the readers have yet to learn to maintain the tension, to harmonize the contradictions.

Let us return to the spiritual blindness discussed in John 9 in which Jesus cured a man born blind. Traditional Jewish thinking would ascribe this blindness to the sins of the man or his parents. Blindness was God's punishment. Jesus disagreed.
Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him." (John 9:3)
Not only did Jesus rectify the wrong concepts of the Jews, he also gave a new meaning to our sufferings. Our sufferings can be meaningful in many ways. They can be sacrificial and benefit others. Here, Jesus points out that the works of God might be made manifest in those who suffer.

When we turn to the reactions of the neighbours after the cure, we see two different approaches to life. Some are more receptive to miracles. Others shut them out. Which one is a more probably explanation, that a miracle had taken place on the blind man whom they had known or that the man they were seeing was a different person who looked like the blind beggar? If you think the second explanation is more scientific and more probable, think one step more. If there had been such a man with a similar look as the beggar, why had they not seen him before? The beggar had been around for many years. Under pressure, his parents said that he was of age (at least 13 years old). He would speak for himself (John 9:21). Nay, long before the the dawn of scientific revolution, the hearts of the people had already shut God out of their equations of life.

Now, it was the Pharisees' turn. There was a division among the Pharisees. Some argued that the miracle worker could not possibly be a man from God because he did not observe the Sabbath. Others argued that no sinners could perform such a miracle. They remained legalistic. Of course, both arguments are flawed. If we accept that miracles are the works of God and that God does not have to observe the Sabbath, the first argument is down. The second argument also does not stand because God is free to choose His instruments, be it a saint or a sinner. The ability to work miracles is no proof that the worker is not a sinner. I appeal to the mercy of God to prove both sides wrong. Both parties were blind to the love of God. What was worse, they did not want to credit Jesus with the cure despite the fact that the beggar had earlier explained to his neighbours that it was Jesus who cured him (John 9:11).

The blind man was courageous in bearing witness to Jesus. For the first time in his life, he was able to see, to see the world and to see the truth. Yet, this ability to see the truth brought him persecutions as bearers of the truth always do. No wonder so many people prefer remaining blind. It would be more comfortable to remain blind. But remaining blind proves fatal, more so spiritually than physically. If you are physically blind, you make your other senses keener in order to survive. If you are spiritually blind, most likely you are stubborn and refuse to see the truth. Then only God's mercy will redeem you. That is why Jesus made the following remark to sum up the whole incident.
Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains (John 9:41).

Throughout the story, we see how helpless sinners are. The blind beggar could not cure himself. The Pharisees could not free themselves from their stubbornness. The parents were pressurized not to defend their son. There is nothing they can do on their own to obtain salvation. Throughout the story, we see how Jesus took the initiative to seek out to save the blind man. As for the Pharisees, he could only pass them judgment to warn them of pitfalls lying before them, just as God had warned Cain before he killed Abel (Genesis 4:7).

Dear Lord, open our hearts. Cure us of our blindness. Let us taste Your mercy. Amen.