So I've been thinking about this one Gospel account of Christ's healing. It's fairly unique in the recorded history of his ministry. In Mark 8:22-25, Jesus heals a blind man:
"They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, 'Do you see anything?'
"He looked up and said, 'I see people; they look like trees walking around.'
"Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, and he saw everything clearly."
Weird, isn't it? I don't think there's any other instance in the Gospels where Jesus touched someone twice to heal. It's stuck in my mind since I was little. What did it mean? Did it not work the first time? What was going on?
In Annie Dillard's chapter on seeing in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she talks about people, blind from a very young age, who received their sight due to advances in medicine. They had a hard time dealing with seeing; their conception of the world had nothing to do with vision, and oftentimes they voluntarily reblinded themselves (through blindfolds, or shutting their eyes) to get around.
Applied to this passage in Mark, the twice-touching indicates something a little different. Not failure to heal the first time, but two different healings entirely. My guess is that the first touch healed the physical aspect of blindness: His eyes worked. But his brain couldn't interpret what he saw. The feedback from the optic nerve was still "blind," so that to him, people looked like trees (leading me to wonder if perhaps the upside-down/right-side-up switcheroo aspect of his vision hadn't been yet corrected, and people's legs, perceived upside-down, looked like tree branches.) So the second touch healed his perception. His brain could make sense of what he saw, preserving him from disorientation and craziness.
Just a thought. I listened to a sermon recently that kind of demonized science, but I've always viewed science as enriching our understanding of Scripture.
And it's awesome to think that Christ's power, and God's healing, go much deeper than redeeming just the physical. The human body, the human brain, the human mind, the human spirit pose no mystery to God.
6 comments:
I wonder if Jesus were to tough my nose or ears, would I have the same level of perception with those senses that a blind person develops because they lack sight?
So, you'd have the olfactory perception of a shark, combined with the hearing prowess of a member of the House of Usher?
Or do you just have a really bad cold? :)
Interesting thoughts. That had never occurred to me before.
very thought-provoking. I enjoyed it.
(I got here from allan's page)
Here's a question.
Was the man blind from birth or at a later date? Because, how does he know what trees are? I'm not sure where I'm going with that, but as soon as I read this post, that's the first thing I asked myself.
Heh, I imagine he'd know from having bumped into a few of them, or leaned on them all day. That was always my guess. :)
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