too much of a scientific title? well, the following essay is written by my researcher friend, a good friend of mine. i thought i will share it here too. i pray it truly opens our spiritual eyes to see, and if we've seen, let us learn to really see :3
Have you ever wondered how does it feel to be blind? Moreover, have you ever wondered what will happen to someone, who were born blind, when she/ he received an eyes transplant?
Interesting question isn’t it? Will that person recognise whatever/ whoever in front of him/ her? If your answer is a yes, well sadly, you do not understand the gravity of the situation. This person was born blind so how could she/ he identify anything that she/ he never seen before? As a matter of fact, this is not a hypothetical experiment. A gift of vision to someone who is visually impaired is no longer a fantasy. Many research have been done in this area and, believe it or not, a prototype which relies on grafting electrodes into parts of the eye, which can allow signals to be sent to the brain and be interpreted as visions, is being developed at the University of Melbourne. It is called project bionic eye. Granted, this is more like an implant rather than transplant (google the definition for both to see the difference). However, with the rapid expansion in technology, wouldn’t you think it is possible to make the blind see in the future? Personally, I think it is possible!
Now, let’s come back to what will happen when someone see for the first time. Put yourself in that blind person perspective. You have been living blindly, literally, for 25 years. You open your eyes for the first time. You see an image, a vision.. of something, or maybe someone. You see that the thing is moving towards you. You can see the part of the thing is moving and you can hear something coming out from the moving part. “Welcome to the real world” is what you hear. You have no idea what that thing is. You, however, recognise the voice as the doctor that has been treating you. You bring your hands towards the moving part. You start touching it, feeling it. You move your fingers around and realise that you are touching the face of the doctor. Suddenly, you realise that it is really the doctor that has been treating you for the past couple of months. Now, you begin to relate the vision and the touch, a process which every baby goes through at their early stages of their life. Congratulations!
So far, so good. Now that you can see. Then what? You need to start learning. Alas, learning is not fun. You have been so use to identifying things with your sense of touch and hearing; vision is so weird. As much as you enjoy looking at everything around you, you do not know what they are. You cannot even identify your loves one without your sense of touch or hearing. You need to touch and see things at the same time and memorise the name of the things that you see.
You begin to lose faith in your vision although it has been the greatest gift in your life. You begin to think that life is much easier when you were blind. You can manage your way around your house or even the streets better with your sense of touch compared to your newly granted vision. You begin to be feel frustrated..
It is up to you how you would like to continue the story. Would you take the easy way out and live your old ways of life using the sense of touch? Or would you rather persevere with your new gift?
Well, I hope that I have given you a glimpse into a life that, hopefully, none of us has to endure. Maybe you start asking why am I telling you this story. The point of this story is to illustrate the similarity that the Israelites felt when they came out from Egypt as detailed in Exodus. I have a confidence that most of us know the story of Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt into the Promised Land, Canaan. Throughout the journey, we read that the people of Israel keeps complaining. They complained that the life in the dessert was harsh. They complained that God had forsaken them, when in fact He did not. They even built an idol and worshipped it, although God gave a clear message that they must not worship any other Gods. They did all these despite the Grace of God that had given them a freedom from slavery. At one point, they even started asking Moses to led them back to the Egypt; to the slavery.
The mentality that the Israelites had back then is what I called the slave mentality. They had been enslaved for too long that they did not know how to treasure freedom. Think back to my example of the blind person, that person too has a slave mentality. He has been enslaved by the blindness for too long that he could not treasure the gift of vision. In both cases, the Israelites and the blind person thought of going back to their old ways of life; throwing away the gift of freedom that God has given them.
I pondered through these illustrations when I was in a car on my way back to Melbourne from Lakes Entrance. Suddenly, I realised that we, too, have the slave mentality. Alas.. I know that none of us has been enslaved by disabilities or physical slavery but ALL of us has been enslaved by sins until we accepted Jesus in our life. Interestingly, we were enslaved by sins without even realising it until we met Jesus in our life. He liberates us from sins through His death at the cross. He gives us the promise of His salvation. He promise an eternal life for those who believe in Him and do His works. However, very often we prefer not to obey His command. Very often we succumb to the very sins that Jesus has died to free us from.
We often make excuses with God; excuses that lead us to sins, i.e. those that we have been enslaved with. Our slave mentality often lead us to think that we cannot escape sins. Let me tell you this, if we cannot escape sins, Jesus death at the cross would have been in vain. His death would mean nothing because He could NOT beat sins and deliver us from eternal death. You see the reward of sins is death and yet, we still commit sins. Such a contrast. And, this stems from our slave mentality. A mentality that dictates us to live the way we live before. A mentality that says small sins is fine. At least I am better than those non-believers, or so you think. Well, guess what, sins are real and those who commit it would still reap its punishment. Take a look at David’s life. He is a person of God. He loves God and God loves Him. However, when He committed adultery, the punishment was still there. Another example is Moses. He committed something which many of us would consider “minor”. He struck the rock with His staff to provide water to the Israelites when God asked Him to speak to it. Despite everything that he had done for God, God punished him by not allowing Him to enter the Promised Land. Can you imagine how sad is that? Put yourself in Moses’s perspective. He was old. He had spent at least 40 years in the dessert because of the Israelites did not obey God, a sin that He did not commit. He had to put up with the complaints from the Israelites through all those time and yet, one small sin (an act of disobeying God for the first time) prohibited him from seeing the fruit of his works. Sadly, in other words, knowing and accepting God in your life does not mean that you are free to commit sins. The purpose of Jesus death is not for us to use as a credit against every sin that we commit.
I am NOT perfect! I am not writing this article because I am perfect and start pointing my finger at you and condemn you and your way of life. The reason I am writing this article is to remind each and every one of us who reads this article that the devil can work in a very subtle way. In fact, it can be so subtle that we may not realise it until we are drown in sins. That is why I am going to leave you with this verse from Psalm 4:23: Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Remember people, always guard your heart and do not be careless with it! Lets repent from our way of life that is wrong in God’s eyes and start living the way He wants us to live. He still loves us. If not, we would not have sacrificed His only Son to liberate us from sins.
I pray for those who read this article (including myself) will be blessed by God and step closer into His Kingdom.
S.T, 2011
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