I wrote earlier this year that Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift of Gulliver's Travels did not originate but made famous the saying, "there are none so blind as those who will not see." This saying comes to mind in John 9's display of willful spiritual blindness of Brobdingnagian proportions.
Jesus heals a man born blind. The Pharisees conclude quite naturally that because this Jesus fellow doesn't follow their Sabbath rules and is from the wrong part of Israel, he can't be from God. To validate their conclusion they interrogate the Formerly Blind Guy and his parents. The parents are terrified of saying the wrong thing so they say "ask him, already". The FBG gives back as good as he gets so the Pharisees curse him and toss him out. Not exactly "rejoice with those who rejoice," huh?
In the final Chronicle of Narnia, "The Last Battle," Aslan and his friends offer food, wine and flowers to a pack of rebellious Narnian dwarves. The dwarves perceive these gifts as dirty straw, trough water, and donkey filth.
Sometimes I ask myself, do people not trust Christ because of my poor witness or because they just won't? And sometimes I answer, "yes."
Jesus pronounces the moral of the story: "if you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains."
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