John
9:1 As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth.
9:2 His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
9:3 Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him."
As mass-attending Catholics know, the above text is the opening lines from the Gospel passage on March 2nd. As I sat in church listening to the reading, I was struck by a new meaning to these words I've heard so many times before in my life. The typical interpretation of the phrase "he was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him" is that God made this person blind so that Jesus would heal him and we would all see how wonderful God is as a result. It's passages like these that have always turned me off from the Church and from God. God caused this man to suffer for 30 years so that Jesus would have a prop for his show.
It seems to me that Jesus and the Christian God would ascribe to themselves the Kantian view of moral philosophy which is that you are not to use others as a means to an end and that you have a categorical imperative to do the right thing in each instance, regardless of the downstream consequences. Certainly the anti-abortion crowd uses several arguments from this viewpoint and actively discourages utilitarian considerations in most contexts.
But the common interpretation of this text violates that philosophy. Putting this person on Earth so he could be part of Jesus's show is using this person as a means to an end. In that interpretation, the true end is that everyone sees how glorious and wonderful God is and the blind man is supposed to feel blessed he was allowed to be part of the show. This has always been repugnant to me. The idea that God needs anything from us, like our worship or our praise, doesn't make sense. And the idea that we're all here as pieces in God's play is even more upsetting.
For some reason, I was struck by an alternate interpretation to the text. To me, God's works are loving works because God = Love. I believe that what Jesus meant was that the reason people are created with challenges or disabilities is because those disabilities give us a chance to love that person and give that person a chance to be loved in a special way. But everybody has their own disabilities and imperfections, even if they're not the kind of thing that gets you special protection through the Americans with Disabilities Act.
I began to see the brilliance in God's plan. If we were all perfect and had no defects, there would be no opportunity to love one another. It is through these imperfections we all must suffer through that we have the opportunity to experience love. I have a much greater level of respect for human life now. Though I'm still pro-choice, I think I can finally understand why people are pro-life. They view every human life as precious, because we are all facing defects and though they may differ in degree or kind, we all need love to get through the day. And without the potential suffering there can be no love. It is only because we have failed to love each other enough that pointless suffering exists.
I'm sure this isn't coming across as being as profound as it was to me when this all occurred to me. But there are so many policy implications to my realization, to me it's the kind of thing you could build a political career on. Unfortunately, even to many of the most devout Christians, charity will continue to be seen as the means used toward the end of glorifying God rather than as the end itself. God doesn't need our glory, He needs us to live out the plan He envisioned when he decided to create each of us with our own imperfections.
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