Field of Vision

My friend Tommy loaned me a pair of "drunk goggles." They simulate the effects of drunkenness. He worked with the DARE program in the schools and let youth put them on to see the disorientation high blood alcohol levels created. Wearing those goggles is a great metaphor for how many see the Christian faith. Many see Jesus through an unclear or distorted field of vision.

I've been watching some "man on the street" videos where the interviewer asks random people what they think about Jesus. Most, when asked who Jesus is, said, "I don't know." My favorite one was a woman who was asked, "Who is Jesus Christ?" and she laughed and said, "Oh, my God." And then she laughed again and said, "That's my answer." Nice. Another person said Jesus was the "man upstairs watching down on us" because he was bored. Many of the people on the street said they just don't think about who Jesus is. He is not someone many even care about. Others saida he lived a long time ago and the stories we have are stories that got bigger over time and aren't really true. Some said faith is just mental wrangling invented by humans and Jesus was just one of the chapters in the history of that wrangling.

I am reminded of the man named Saul who had a clear idea about Jesus. He thought Jesus was a threat to his beloved Judaism. Everything that Saul believed about what was true and right and good was undermined by Jesus. It was not a far stretch for him, as a first century Jewish leader, to bless the arrest, persecution and killing of the first Christians. At least until he met Jesus on the road to a city called Damascus.

God blinded Saul for three days. When he regained his sight, his field of vision had changed completely. He had fresh eyes with which to see the world and a change of heart. It was a 180 degree turn for him. It was Christ of the Christians he would now serve. It was Christ's followers who would become his closest friends. He was a changed man. He had been wearing the spiritual equivalent of drunk goggles that distorted his vision of reality.

My field of vision of reality is often distorted. I get tunnel vision at times, not seeing the bigger picture. But, like Saul, in the matter of Jesus, whatever fog or dark clouds were blocking me from seeing him as God, my field of vision has been cleared. To borrow from singer Johnny Nash, "I can see clearly now the rain has gone...gone are the dark clouds that had me blind." I say what that woman in the video said, Jesus is my God.