THE THIEF COMES TO STEAL, KILL & DESTROY (PART VII)

“And the Blind Man Stood His Ground”

By Akin Ojumu

Self-preservation, often referred to as the survival instinct, is the inherent tendency of living organisms to take actions that enhance their chances of survival while minimizing potential harm. This instinct manifests in various ways, such as seeking food to satisfy hunger, escaping from dangers, or avoiding threats. The survival instinct is foundational to many behavioral traits observed across species, including humans, where it historically influenced responses to hazards through mechanisms like the fight-or-flight reaction (Source: EBSCO).

Driven by the instinct to survive, we read in John 9:22 that the parents of the blind man who was made to see for the first time in his lifetime chose to play it safe. Fearful of the possibility of getting expelled from the synagogue if they confessed Jesus as the Christ, the poor parents did what any of us would do, they opted for self-preservation. They would not acknowledge the Lord Jesus as the Christ in front of the religious leaders. 

John 9:22

“(His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.)”

The serious threat of reprisal forced the parents of the blind man to invoke their right against self-incrimination. Instead of getting themselves excommunicated from the commonwealth of Israel, they pleaded the fifth, as the Americans would say.

Understandably, many modern-day Christian may not fully comprehend the ramifications of excommunication. It’ll be helpful to put into perspective what getting put out of the synagogue means to the average Joe living in the land of Israel at the time of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here’s how the Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers, courtesy of Bible Hub, describes it.

The Jews distinguished three kinds of excommunication, namely:

(1) The lightest continued for thirty days, and prescribed four cubits (i.e., about 12 feet) as a distance within which the person may not approach anyone, not even wife or children; with this limitation, it did not make exclusion from the synagogue necessary. 

(2) The severer included absolute banishment from all religious meetings, and absolute giving up of intercourse with all persons, and was formally pronounced with curses. 

(3) The severest was a perpetual banishment from all meetings, and a practical exclusion from the fellowship of God’s people. 

Luke 6:22

“Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake.”

It has been sometimes supposed that the words of Luke 6:22, (a) “separate you,” (b) “reproach you,” (c) “cast out your name,” refer to these gradations of excommunication.

While his parents escaped the cruel punishment of excommunication by the Jews, that would eventually become the fate of the blind man. Shortly after his parents’ refusal to incriminate themselves, the religious leaders would soon turn their ire on him and banish from the commonwealth of Israel.

John 9:34

“They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” And they cast him out.”

Tossed out of the synagogue like a piece of garbage the blind man must have been devastated. Just when he thought his life had taken a turn for the best, having been delivered from a lifetime of blindness, the poor man was kicked out into the wilderness by those who were supposed to be shepherds of Israel.

What the blind man suffered in the hands of the religious leaders was probably the severest form of excommunication. By banishing him to the fringes and outer limits of society, after living most of his life in pitch black blindness, they wounded the soul of the poor man even further.

And what was his offense, exactly? He dared to challenge the opinions of the religious leaders and had the temerity to question their man-made commandments. Just as we find today, the religious establishment in Jesus’s day did not take kindly to dissent. With them, it was either their way or the highway. 

Because the apostate religious leaders and their followers thought they were the spiritually enlightened, and everybody else was ignorant of the truth, they frowned at anyone who questioned their interpretation of Scriptures or proffered an understanding of the Torah different from the prevailing view.

In 1974, the German political scientist, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, propagated a social science theory she termed, the Spiral of Silence. The theory seeks to explain the tendency for people to remain silent when they feel that their views and opinions are in the minority. According to the theory, human beings have a “sixth-sense” which allows them to know the prevailing public opinion. We all have a fear of isolation and know what behaviors will increase the likelihood of being socially isolated. Therefore, we are reluctant to express our minority views out of fear of being isolated. However, when we believe our opinion is more in line with the majority, we are more inclined to express such in public. The louder the majority expresses their opinion, the more unlikely it becomes for us to express our own minority opinion, and thus we go into a spiral of silence.

Unlike his parents who, fearing the wrath of the Jews, were cowered into fear, the blind man refused to be coerced into the spiral of silence. Unfazed by the threat of excommunication, he was more than willing to face the consequences of telling the apostate religious leaders that the man who healed him was from God. And for that the Jews followed through on their threat. They threw him out of the synagogue.

Thankfully, the story of the man born blind did not end in spiteful rejection. His testimony was not defined by malicious ejection. Shortly after getting kicked out of the synagogue, the Lord Jesus found him again. It was this divinely orchestrated second meeting that would eternally define the healed blind man.

John 9:35-38

“Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, Sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.”

While the blind man’s first encounter with the Good Shepherd resulted in the healing of physical blindness, the second encounter with the Light of the World brought about the healing of his spiritual blindness. From the moment he chose to believe in and follow the Light of the World, he received the light of life, and he ceased to walk in spiritual darkness.

What’s instructive about the story of this blind man and his miraculous healing is the fact that as at the time he was healed, he did not even recognize the Person who healed him as the Messiah. His healing wasn’t conditioned on his faith in Christ, and the restoration of his eyesight wasn’t predicated on his belief that Jesus is the Christ. When the Lord Jesus healed his blindness, the blind man hadn’t even received Jesus as His Lord and Savior. It was only after getting ejected from the synagogue and Christ finding him again that he subsequently came to believe and worship the Lord Jesus as Christ.

I don’t know about you, but that, to me, makes his refusal to bend to the demand of the apostate religious leaders to renounce the Man who healed him all the more heroic. While he was still in the dark as to who Christ is, he stood his ground on his conviction that the Person who healed him must be of God. Even at the risk of being excommunicated, the blind man refused to disavow the person who healed him. Such was the strength of the conviction of a man who hadn’t even been born again.

We’ll take a pause here and continue next time.