I heard a fascinating story this morning on NPR Morning Edition about a man whose blindness was corrected by doctors, but who still can’t see very well. As it turns out (and this really should come as no surprise), sight not only depends on hardware (your eyeballs) but has a pretty significant software component as well (neuron pathways in the brain). This man had lost his sight at the age of three, and, by the time it was restored at age 43, he had lost many of the neuron pathways necessary to drive the sight experience. Based on his hardware, he should have 20/20 vision, but, because of the state of his brain, he can make out only vague shapes and movement, but no detail. To really cure blindness, it turns out, we’ll need to figure out how to restore all those pathways in the brain.
The reason this story fascinates me is that I’ve recently been reading a lot about the kind of new birth Jesus talks about in John 3:3 where he says that we must be born again or we cannot see the kingdom of God. Elsewhere the new birth is compared to God opening one’s eyes so they can see him for who he really is and accept him by faith. The implication I see from this story is that, in our sinful and dead state, not only do we need new eyes, but a new heart, mind, and soul. We need to literally be reprogrammed or we cannot have our eyes truly opened. I think this is what second birth is really about. Of course, there are also accounts of Jesus literally healing the blind in the Gospels, and I see implications in this story for those accounts as well. God is the great physician, healing the whole person, hardware and software, able to perform miracles modern medicine and science can only speculate about.
You can read and listen to the story on NPR’s website: “Treating Blindness Takes More Than Meets The Eye” (listen). 