IT’S IN THE BIBLE: The Story of the Man Born Blind [Sat, 3-21-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

[You don’t have to read the CIW for March 19 to understand this one, but it would help. You can just scroll down to it.]

I had gone to Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in the first place because I had lost my mind over Phyllis and just wanted to be near her. I would have gone to Sikh or Wicca meetings if she were there.  She was kind to me but understood that we were not a match and so steered me into the arms of Uree, so smoothly I didn’t even notice. Uree was a passionate and devoted IVCF girl, and so I continued to go to the IVCF meetings. Little by little, though, I began to feel uncomfortable.

My discomfort came to a boil one night when the only guy I have ever known by the name of Lionel was leading the Bible study and pronounced that God did not hear the prayers of sinners.

“Well, who does God hear, then?” I asked. “Isn’t it sinners who need to talk to God most? And aren’t we all sinners?”

Turns out apparently that not everybody there was a sinner. In fact, it began to look like there was only one, and everybody else knew who it was, because they assured me they would put me on their prayer list.

I was confused. This didn’t make any sense, I protested. That was my problem, they assured me. I was trying to make sense, use my brain, be rational. Instead we were just to trust God. God moved in mysterious ways. The best Christians were those who believed the least believable stuff. That’s how we proved our faith.

I went back to my dorm in a sort of daze. Then I began to get mad. Surely the Bible didn’t say that!

Remember, I was only 20. Even though I had been preaching for a year, I had no theological education. The only Bible education I had came from Sunday School and reading from a box of Harry Emerson Fosdick sermons that my District Superintendent had given me. But I remembered that Lionel said this statement was in the New Testament. I at least knew where the New Testament was, so I started reading.

God does not make things easy. No, it wasn’t in Matthew or Mark or Luke. Not until the 9^th chapter of John, in the story of the man born blind, the one Jesus healed. In an attempt to discredit Jesus, his foes said, “God does not hear the prayers of sinners,” meaning Jesus himself was the unheard sinner and so had no business healing people.

It was midnight, but I called Lionel. “Yes, that phrase is in the Bible,” I said, “but it means the exact opposite. They’re calling Jesus a sinner…” and I went on in that rational argument.

He was not swayed. “It’s in the Bible,” he kept saying, like the Bible was a bucket of unrelated maxims and you could just reach in and pull any one of them out at random and it had as much credibility as any of the others, regardless of its context.

I knew I didn’t believe that, couldn’t believe that. I didn’t know this phrase then, but I knew its truth: “Christ died to take away our sins, not our minds.” I came to understand that I was a Word Christian, not a words Christian, a story Christian, because you have to hear the words and Word in context, a Christ Christian, not a Bible Christian. I rejoice in the Bible, not because it is the Word of God, but because through it we come to know the Word of God.

Strangely, IVCF gave me a great gift. I learned that I wasn’t just a heart, soul, and strength Christian. I was a mind Christian, too. [Mark 12:30] I got to the place I felt pretty good about that.

John Robert McFarland