Seeing but not perceiving, hearing but not understanding

"Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again: "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn that I should heal them" (John 12:40)



We just finished studying chapters 40-57 of the prophet Isaiah--by far the most quoted prophet in the New Testament. I have also just finished reading the prophet Ezekiel in my own course of readings and what has struck me in both these prophets is their use of blindness and deafness as a willful spiritual quality of human beings when they are confronted with God's truth. It doesn't matter whether we are speaking of the ancient Israelites, or the Pharisees of Jesus' day or the purportedly Christian leaders of our society today--when confronted with an inconvenient truth that goes against the prevailing cultural prejudices they choose blindness. It isn't that they can't see--they choose not to see.

For instance, our self avowedly Christian president chooses to ignore the massive preponderance of pro-life teaching in both the Old and New Testaments in order to support a woman's right to "choose" to destroy her child before it is born. All the prophets cite one of the most heinous crimes of Israel before it was finally punished with exile into Babylon was the killing of innocent children. Why were these murders committed in Israel? In order to assure the well being of a household, a community, a harvest--in other words for the same reason the murders are being committed today (a woman's future, education, vocation, emotional health, earning power, independence--and also for a man's freedom from responsibility, independence, earning power, and so on). The justification for the immolation of infants in ancient Palestine was psychologically and spiritually exactly the same as it is for the immolation of infants today. But our "Christian" leaders choose to blind themselves to the facts and to deceive themselves into pretending not to understand.

But, like the guilty child slayers of Israel, they cannot really get away with it. They must either admit in the end that they support one of the most unspeakable crimes of all--the wanton destruction of innocent children, or they must altogether abandon the pretence of being Christians. The good news, if one can call it that, is that it is becoming less and less important to pretend to be a Christian in this society and I suspect that politicians will soon feel free to abandon such pretences altogether. So we wont have Presidents and members of Congress who fell obliged to tell us they are Christians while defending the most horrifying of all the crimes an adult can commit. It will be safe to just come right out and say that they understand very well what they are doing and can see very well where it is leading and they don't care one way or another about what Christianity and the Scriptures have to say about it. They will then have attained the refreshing honesty of the communists and national socialists of the last century who were willing to say they were hard hearted s.o.b's and be proud of it.

It is better for the Church to have to contend with sworn enemies than to have to endure the wolves in sheep's clothing who have been tearing apart Christ's flock for the past two generations.

Oh, yes, but when they finally go down--as they most assuredly will--you can bet they will say with all the good national socialists, "we didn't know what was happening....we were deceived...we didn't understand where it would lead...."

In the end, God is a respecter of freedom of choice....all choice....and He will permit the wicked to go to the uttermost extreme of their wickedness in order to manifest His righteousness, mercy, and truth. But no one can say--or at least no free adult in this country can ever say, "we didn't know....we didn't see....we didn't understand what was happening around us."

I would rather that the wicked would repent and be saved and that our civilization would turn itself away from the path we are taking. But if we will not repent then I pray that our leaders will stop pretending. One of the gifts of the current regime is that that day is fast approaching. The convenient mask of Christianity is fast being dropped in the face of a revolutionary attempt to co opt what little remains of an overtly Christian culture. The voices of the false prophets of atheism, abortion, euthanasia, and every perversion will finally attain their place as not only acceptable but true. And no one will have to be ashamed to be blind anymore--until the whirlwind comes.