“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” – Matthew 6:22-23
“They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand.” – Isaiah 44:18
How well can you see? Not literally, but spiritually. Are you overwhelmed by “spiritual cataracts” that cloud your vision and your perspective on life and faith? Is your view of others distorted? Do you glimpse only a small glimmer of what faith is (and can be)? In Matthew 6:22-23, the Greek word for “body” meant more than one’s physical anatomy. It meant what we today might call one’s total personality. Keeping this in mind, we could paraphrase Jesus’ words as follows: “The eye is the lamp of your total personality; or in other words, it is the way you see things, the way you look at things, basically your whole perspective on life and faith, even in how you look at others.” The parallels between physical and spiritual cataracts are important to discover in order to avoid any distortion of our vision of Jesus! (2 Corinthians 11:1-5)
Many physical cataracts begin as small spots or specks on the lens of the eye. These spots interfere with light rays that pass through the lens to be focused as an image on the retina in the back of the eye. The greater the number of specks the more obscure the image, resulting in a clouding over of the lens of the eye which causes distorted vision. These specks can become so dense that the entire lens becomes milky white, and the light rays can’t pass through the lens, resulting in blindness. It is interesting to note that the light is still there; it just can’t pass through the lens of the eye. There is no pain; the loss of vision is gradual: it sneaks up on you. Cataracts, if left uncorrected, will eventually result in complete blindness.
Spiritually, little specks of sin can begin to cloud our vision of the light of Jesus. (John 8:12) These spiritual “specks of sawdust” may seem inconsequential at first, but can grow into “planks” that totally obscure our spiritual vision. (Luke 6:41) Two popular spiritual “specks” that can cloud our vision of Jesus are insensitivity to sin and false doctrine. Recently, I have seen first-hand the impact of these “spiritual specks” at one of the most prestigious college campuses in America, Columbia University, currently ranked #4 in the nation according to the U.S. News & World Report. The opportunity to lead a campus ministry in New York City is an incredible honor, as well as an enormous challenge. There are over 125,000 campus students in the New York City area, with thousands of new students entering every year. Sadly, many of these students leave the protection of a sheltered family environment and proceed to engage in countless acts of sexual immorality, debauchery, and drunkenness. While becoming intellectually “wealthy”, they are becoming morally bankrupt.
Spiritual Cataract #1: INSENSITIVITY TO SIN
“They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.” – Ephesians 4:18-19
My insensitivity to sin was a huge cataract that nearly blinded me to the point of no return. To this day I am grateful to God to have escaped from my sexual immorality without fathering a child or contracting a sexually transmitted disease during the first three years of my undergraduate schooling. Despite my success in academics and leadership, I was prideful, deceitful, and morally destitute. My love for pleasure so blinded me that I became totally insensitive to impurity, and instead, had a “continual lust for more.” Despite growing up in a “religious” household, I deceived myself into thinking that my self-imposed ignorance was better than outright hypocrisy.
My exposure to mainstream Christianity through the years had disgusted me to the point of nausea, as I served as an organist in several denominational churches throughout high school. I saw the emotionalism and superficiality of Pentecostal and Evangelical churches, as well as the guilt and obligation imposed by the Catholic Church, and consciously decided to give up hope in discovering the truth. By the time I arrived at Cornell University, I was done; done with the hypocrisy I saw in “churchgoers;” done with the church choirs filled with people that had been immoral the night before; done with preachers whose boring messages did little to challenge or inspire me. By the grace of God, I found the truth of His word during finals week of my junior year and was baptized into Christ! It took brothers getting into my life and gently peeling back the layers of self-deceit to root-out my sin with the Word of God.
Sadly, I believe my life parallels the life of many campus students. Freshman year, students are thrown into the deep waters of secularism and humanism. Their feeble religious foundations easily give way in the face of rampant peer-pressure and promiscuity. Since arriving at New York City last July, we studied with scores of campus students and shared our faith with hundreds resulting in our newest baptisms, Edwin & Carolina, freshmen at the City College of NY (CCNY) this past month! As we talked with the students, it became clear that the “religious” groups on campus were lukewarm due to their lack of sensitivity to sin. This dullness discouraged students who wanted to be radical. Despite engaging several “Christian groups” on various campuses at Columbia, NYU & City College, the message of total commitment is foreign in a land of tolerance and disunity in regards to race, life and doctrine.
How sensitive are you to the sin in your life? How urgent are you to deal with the sin that may be blinding you spiritually from being like Jesus? Are you sensitive to your cowardice, unbelief, and impurity? We must remember that liars go to hell as well! (Revelation 21:8) “Spiritual cataracts” affect both Christians and non-Christians in the same way. So often our sin can blind us to the point where our outlook becomes so jaded that almost nothing can help. The moment we begin to lose our sensitivity to the sin, our spiritual cataracts will continue to grow until we are blinded by our own dullness and inability to act.
This very condition occurred in the lives of many in our former fellowship. They “grew weary and lost heart” through their “hurts,” hardships and disappointments. (Hebrews 12:3) In fact, this bitterness – which manifests itself in anger, criticalness, depression and spiritual numbness – can only be healed by repentance. (Luke 5:31-32) Like Jesus, one must extend forgiveness to all – “[enduring] the cross” and “[enduring] opposition from sinful men.” (Hebrews 12:2-3) Otherwise, they will be forever disheartened, “their eyes…plastered over [from bitterness] so they cannot see, and their minds closed” to God working in a new movement.
Spiritual Cataract #2: FALSE DOCTRINE
“For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears what to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” – 2 Timothy 4:2-4
C.S. Lewis used the term “a great cataract of nonsense” to describe how people use a modern idea to misconstrue a Biblically sound practice. Probably the best example today is a false conversion method called “The Sinner’s Prayer.” It is also popularly known as “The Four Spiritual Laws.” Instead of obeying the Bible’s plan of salvation which demands belief, repentance and baptism, hundreds of millions hold to the notion that one can pray Jesus into one’s heart and that baptism is merely “an outward sign of an inward grace.” (Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38, Romans 6:3-5, 1 Peter 3:18-21) This false practice began in 19th century America, some 1800 years after the first century church began. When someone seeking salvation looks at the Bible through the lens of what he or she has been taught instead of discerning correct Biblical doctrine, their blind obedience to traditions of men “nullify the Word of God.” (Mark 7:6-9).
Campus Crusade for Christ, or “Cru”, an interdenominational “Christian organization” that began in 1951 through the well-intentioned late Bill and Vonette Bright, sadly is guilty of this false and incorrigible practice. Thousands of students around the world have been sincerely deceived into thinking that praying a prayer without any repentance can lead to their salvation. I still remember the day that my wife went to the Campus Crusade website in order to show the absurdity of such a position. She simply clicked on the button to accept “The Sinner’s Prayer” and was told she was now a “Christian” and should join a local church. I must confess my indignation that so many sincere “believers” are so blinded by their sentimentality through relationships. “They gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear, [turning] away from the truth.” Pray for us to call every “Christian organization” on campuses such as Columbia, NYU and City College to be united in obedience to the Word of God! We will soon be hosting a Christian Evidences series entitled, “Christianity: Biblically Defined” that will expose the false doctrines present in mainstream Christianity and challenge students to discover what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus!
After examining these spiritual distortions, how is your spiritual worldview? Just as they are dangers in delaying surgery for cataracts too long, there are also dangers in delaying repentance. Our spiritual cataracts will build up, a little bit at a time, until we become spiritually blind; and as the Scriptures teach, “Without vision the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18 KJV) Therefore, perform a spiritual eye exam – sanctify yourself by the Word of God – and may your vision of Jesus always remain pure as you put your trust in His Word. The age-old adage has never been more true: “Seeing is BELIEVING.”
Andrew Smellie
Evangelist