Who Sinned? (The BAD)
“1Now as Jesus was passing by, He saw a man blind from birth, 2and His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him. 4While it is daytime, we must doa the works of Him who sent Me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
In the early 1900s, people falsely believed that eating ice cream caused polio. So, because kids were prone to too much sugar, they became infected. (You know this assumption is false, right? I hope you do! Also, put down that ice cream spoon.)
Whether it’s plagues or cancer or tragic car accidents, we have the tendency to look at the BAD in the world and ask “who sinned?”.
This story in John’s gospel gets at a really deep tendency that we have.
It’s the long history of BAD=SIN. The existence of plagues and personal ailments and diseases must mean that someone sinned. Notice, this question was asked by his own disciples. Friendlies, not enemies. But the question the disciples asked was on a lower plane. Jesus said that something higher was going to happen.
In music, we have a tendency to truly dislike dissonant chords. We like everything to be lined up and in order and explainable. We don’t like messy chords.
We also have a tendency to add consonant notes to chords/facts/stories. We don’t enjoy a misplaced note and we don’t like a misplaced fact.
When a tragedy happens we say, “He died, but I heard he was a terrible person.”
And surely this BAD couldn’t have just happened.
The challenge is to live in the tension of the current BAD with the promise that “the works of God would be displayed in him.”
To trust that, with the Lord, that the BAD is going to be endowed with purpose. (Notice the BAD is not all tidied up immediately. And question marks still remain through this story. And not everyone was satisfied. There were misunderstandings about who sinned before his healing, but then people denied his identity after he was healed. I suppose to these people, the consonant cognitions were actually that he was blind and always would be.)
And the challenge is to hear bad or otherwise troubling news and not jump to the conclusion “Who sinned?”
This story gives us hope to actually look in the direction of the blind person or the trouble spots and pray and hand it over in prayer. What if “this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him”?
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