Not All Questions Want Answers

Many questions do not want answers. It may sound strange at first, but questions can be a subtle form of deception, of trying to lead others to believe that one is authentic and seeking to know the truth while all the time the questions are intended to direct attention away from the truth.

Questions are a very effective way of staying in control of a conversation, of steering the direction of a conversation, of preventing uncomfortable issues from surfacing and even for suppressing the facts. While heart-felt questions are in short supply, intellectual questions biased by prejudices are often used to confuse and mislead. So just because a person asks a lot of questions does not mean they really want to get to the bottom of things and come to know the real truth. Very often questions are used to go in quite the opposite direction.

Just ask a lawyer. But then again, that might be futile, for lawyers are all too often steeped so deeply in deception themselves that they have too often destroyed their own capacity to be authentic. Jesus never had anything positive to say about lawyers and for good reason. Lawyers are the purveyors and practitioners of the world's system of so-called justice that is a counterfeit of heaven's ways of true justice. Lawyers are generally taught, trained and mentored to appear to search for truth while much of the time manipulating facts and people to create an illusion of reality designed to justify their desired outcome.

But this practice of manipulating facts to produce an alternative reality is certainly not confined to the craft of lawyers. It infects nearly everyone on the face of the planet and causes all of us to live in confusion about reality and to assume that God acts very much in the same way our system operates. Religious leaders and teachers often fall into this trap of manipulating facts to support a predetermined assumption and act very much like lawyers in many ways. Jesus had to deal with this deceptive way of thinking many times in His interactions with both the lawyers and most of the religious leaders of His day.

Many times Jesus found Himself sparring with authorities who used questions to try to entrap Him and condemn Himself. And though Jesus also used questioning to unveil truth many times, His opponents tried repeatedly to use questions to obscure truth, to intimidate witnesses and to try to steer conversations away from admitting truth or giving any credence to overwhelming evidence of truth.

The story I am now meditating on is full of these examples. John 9 starts out with a question by Jesus' disciples that already has embedded within it false assumptions commonly embraced by the religious people of their day. This assumption was so deeply entrenched in their belief system that the leaders felt greatly threatened when a miracle of Jesus directly refuted this foundational pillar of their 'faith'. But rather than admit that maybe they needed to reexamine their religious assumptions and consider an alternative view of God, they went to ridiculous lengths to try to prop up their false beliefs by trying to force everyone involved to support their preconceived ideas rather than face the obvious new light.

When Jesus stated in verse 4 that it was time to work the works of God while it was still day, I believe that at least in part He was speaking of God's intent to expose the false notions and deep-seated beliefs that we all have about Him by introducing truth in the life of Jesus. The whole purpose of Jesus coming to this earth to begin with was primarily to reveal the truth about God and expose the lies about Him that still permeate our thinking. And one of those lies about Him involved the notion that God is eager to punish people for their sins. This contradicts the reality that there are natural consequences to sin and that it is never necessary for God to impose penalties for sin except as training measures for immature people who need instruction until they grow up to live in reality. God is not the arbitrary judge looking to hand out sentences and rewards as most make Him out to be. Rather, He is a passionate and loving Father who is so intense that His very presence is dangerous to any who are out of harmony with the principles of reality that define Him. He gives us warnings and instructions to guide us through a healing process to prepare us to live in His presence if we are willing to be transformed. But believing in a God of arbitrary rewards and punishments plays into the mindset of the counterfeit system designed by the great deceiver.

In this story of Jesus healing a man who had been blind from birth, there are a number of running themes that emerge throughout this account. One of them is the issue of identity, how people try to label this man who suddenly becomes a lightening rod for the controversy swirling around the identity of Jesus. Repeatedly throughout this story the religious elite try to suppress the truth both about Jesus and about the obvious evidence that so incriminates their insistence on disbelieving His claims. By choosing to heal this unique type of blindness Jesus strikes at one of the deepest held traditions supporting their dark view of God. Because it was so closely linked to a belief they were unwilling to challenge, they could only react with intense defensiveness and silly attempts to cover up the evidence.

Part of their ploy to refute the light that Jesus was bringing into view was to use questions to intimidate any witnesses who could corroborate the truth about Jesus. This was not hard to do with many for they were quite used to being intimidated by the religious leaders. These men were not only religious leaders but also had great political influence and thus could make life quite miserable for anyone who failed to stay in line with the status quo as they defined it. These leaders to a great extent had power to define reality for the masses and to determine who would have advantages and who would be marginalized and suppressed. Thus, with a few well-placed insinuations and leading questions they could usually intimidate anyone through veiled threats to support and maintain their control.

But Jesus presented a real problem for these leaders because He was never susceptible to their threats and intimidations. They could not deprive Him economically because He was already the poorest of the poor. They could not threaten Him religiously because He always depended directly on God for His sense of identity and value. They had a difficult time threatening Him physically because each time they did somehow He miraculously escaped their attempts to kill Him. About all they could do was seek to discredit Him, to smear His reputation as much as possible, and the only way they could do that was to create lies and spread false rumors about Him and twist His words to imply that He was not what He claimed to be.

The spirit of truth and openness and honesty that Jesus displayed was starting to create real problems for the establishment because Jesus was spreading these notions far and wide and others were becoming infected with them. His disciples were being mentored by Him to think radically different than what was taught by the leaders and enforced by tradition. More and more people were beginning to get interested in embracing this new way of seeing God and their whole system of government and control was under serious threat. The foundation upon which all these traditions and systems of control were based was the dark view of God taught and reinforced by those who stood to benefit most from these oppressive systems.

Take a look at the pattern of manipulation and intimidation throughout the questions and statements used by these men so desperate to maintain control and keep in place the false assumptions about God that propped up their false system.

v. 15 – they ask this man how he received his sight. Further examination reveals that they didn't really want to know the truth but were trying to figure out how to discount it. Note that when they received a truthful and plain answer they adamantly refused to accept it.

v. 16 – they immediately jumped to the assumption that Jesus was a Sabbath-breaker and by implication a terrible sinner as revealed in later dialogue.

v.17 – they begin their harassment of this former blind man by asking his opinion about Jesus. As seen rather quickly they didn't really want to know that to discern truth but rather wanted his opinion so as to use it against him. The very next verse states plainly that they didn't believe him.

v. 19 – they bring in his parents and begin to intimidate them immediately with leading questions. They insinuate in their questioning that the facts about this man and his relationship to them were in doubt. They pressured these people with fear into obscuring the truth and had more success with them than with their son. The consequences of not supporting the status quo were spelled out clearly in verse 22.

v. 24 – they flat out stated their unbelief in Jesus by claiming that God and Jesus were incompatible with each other. This actually has a great deal of truth in it if you measure the life of Jesus against the picture of God held by these people. Jesus was very much incompatible with the concept of God as taught by religion and that problem is still very much true yet today.

v. 26 – after a simple but irrefutable testimony by this healed man that could not be controverted, they resorted to desperate attempts to confuse him by repeating their previous questions. Obviously their questions had no intent of gaining better knowledge of what had happened but rather were designed to intimidate this man as they had successfully done with his parents. But as a newly appointed apostle of Jesus freshly sent with powerful evidence of the truth about Him, he was not willing to give up the joy that he had so recently acquired but clung firmly to the truth as he now had experienced it personally.

Over the next several verses these unbelieving leaders find themselves on the receiving end of some very perceptive questions and implications. This man was willing to risk everything by exposing the hypocrisy and pettiness of the logic they depended on and exposed their foolishness before everyone. But rather than admit the obvious truth and repent, these men resorted to rage and force and even more insinuations to try to defend their status as credible religious authorities. They invoked their claim of authority by trying to depend on their connection to Moses and the his writings that they claimed to believe and live by.

Finally, these leaders gave up altogether using questioning or threats and simply resorted to force to punish this man who refused to support their facade. They banished him from worship in the temple, but in doing so they actually led him to reconnect with God Himself as Jesus looked Him up and let Him worship Him directly. The Jews assumed that the temple was the most important thing about religion and used access to the temple as a means of controlling the religious life of the masses. But Jesus came to show that the time had come when the temple had lost its prominence in religion and its keepers could no longer control or intimidate people by limiting their access to it.

Not long before this Jesus had had a discussion with a woman about this very issue of where and how to worship. Most people assumed that the place of worship was the dominant issue in religion and all sorts of abuses and confusion had emerged as a result. But Jesus addressed that issue head-on when He revealed to this Samaritan woman the real truth about how God feels about all of that.

But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. (John 4:23)

v. 40-41 –The last question posed by the Pharisees in this story opened them up to have their foundational lies about God exposed even more. When they asked Jesus if He was implying that they were blind, they thought maybe they might make Him look silly. But instead of being trapped by their question, Jesus exposed that in truth their assumptions about God in relation to sinners were completely backwards and upside down. Rather than physical blindness being a punishment of God for sin, the really serious problem of blindness was a result of one's own choices to reject the light of truth. And even worse, when we choose to indulge in unbelief and try to evade the light of truth that makes us uncomfortable, we not only choose to be blind but also choose to remain in a state of sin.

Am I Blind Too?

Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, "We are not blind too, are we?" (John 9:40)

I think this is a very relevant question that all of us would do well to ask. One of the biggest obstacles for the Pharisees of Jesus' day to accepting and embracing Him as the One sent from heaven to deliver them, was their deep-seated assumption that they understood religion and that they knew what God was about and what He wanted. So when Jesus showed up acting and living and speaking differently from their definitions of righteousness they saw no alternative but to label Him as a counterfeit and a sinner.

I look back over this chapter to see how blindness might be revealed in the attitudes of these men and several things come to my attention. But far more importantly I sense that I too need to ask the same question of Jesus and allow Him to open my own eyes to all the things I assume I am right about but in reality may still be very blind. If I am not willing to have my own blindness exposed by the light of Jesus then all of my study and profession of faith is just as hypocritical as these men who rejected Jesus over and over again.

• These men assumed and taught that when bad things show up in people's lives that it is God who is punishing them for sin. They believed that this blindness from birth was a sign of God's intense displeasure over some sin, an offense against God either in this man's life (how could that be if he had not even been born yet?) or in his parent's lives.
• His neighbors and pretty much everyone around him viewed and labeled him as 'that beggar who sits and begs'. They also seemed to assume that because of his incurable blindness that he would always be 'that beggar'.
• A new but rather awkward label that appears in this chapter is that he was the man 'who was formerly blind'. Interestingly the only identity that people gave him had to do with keeping him attached to his past condition.
• The religious people who were supposedly experts at knowing what God was all about determined that Jesus could not be of God because He did not follow the traditions of men regarding how to keep the Sabbath properly.
• Because the evidence in front of them about Jesus was so compelling and yet so conflicting with what they insisted on believing, the religious leaders began to indulge in a desperate denial of the facts. They insinuated that his parents were lying about his birth in an attempt to prop up their own theories about reality. They resorted to using intimidation to try to force others to deny the facts of reality and the obvious evidence in favor of Jesus.

Is this starting to look like something that could be called blindness? Desperate denial of reality in the face of overwhelming evidence, it seems like this qualifies as some sort of very serious blindness to me. But then I find myself convicted of falling into the very same condition all too often.

• These religious professors pressed the issue even further by emphatically declaring that Jesus was a sinner. But in doing so they were backing themselves into a corner of having to explain away the powerful evidence in front of everyone to the contrary. They were thrashing around trying to suppress or intimidate the positive testimony of anyone involved in this incident and attempted to get everyone to accept their false charges about Jesus as fact by threatening anyone who might dare to disagree with them.
• They claimed to be loyal disciples of Moses while trying to distance themselves from Jesus (who was the very One who had led, mentored and taught Moses personally).

• They stated categorically that they believed God had spoken to Moses, yet they were unwilling to admit any similarity between what Moses had taught and what Jesus represented.
• After this 'former blind man' had shared an irrefutable and compelling testimony in favor of the obvious truth about Jesus before these skeptics, their only response was to shame him and disfellowship him and bar him from participating with others in worship of God in the temple. They tacked on him another label of one who was 'born entirely in sins', even though their primary basis for that claim was now obviously missing.

When Jesus looks up this man who had defended Him before these virulent skeptics who professed to know God better than His own Son, He speaks a profound truth to him which was overheard by some of the Pharisees nearby who may have participated in the recent exchange. In essence, Jesus took the assumptions of the religious establishment about the relation between sin and blindness and turned it totally upside down. And in doing so Jesus called that 'judgment'.

I have always been puzzled by the statement Jesus made in response to this question until a friend of mine recently pointed out the connection between the beginning and the end of this chapter. When these men asked if Jesus thought they were blind, His response revealed that their assumptions about people born blind were actually backwards and that real blindness is something that people choose themselves, not something imposed by God as a punishment.

Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, 'We see,' your sin remains." (John 9:41) This is referring to the attitude that a person has about their relationship with truth. If a person is truly ignorant of true reality as defined by God because they have not yet had opportunity to know it and embrace it, then God can easily address that handicap just as He healed this blind man and ordained him to be an apostle and a powerful witness for Him. But when people have had repeated opportunities and advantages and have been exposed to abundant evidence of the truth about God and keep rejecting or distorting it, then their unwillingness to admit their blindness is itself a sin that blinds them even more as it hardens their hearts.

Every time I, as a professing Christian, resist living out the things God has shown me as being true, principles of reality that conflict with the traditions of religion, then I am bringing blindness onto my own soul and am damaging my capacity to see clearly. When I have received wonderful insights from the Spirit of God and have been blessed with rich resources from the Word of God and yet remain content to live in the shallows of acceptable religion as practiced by those around me, then I am inflicting blindness on my own heart and damaging my spiritual eyes and am in serious danger of causing permanent blindness for eternity if I do not repent.

I want to listen to the answers that Jesus gives me when I too ask if I am blind. I don't want to ignore the overwhelming evidence from all sorts of events and people in my life as to the reality of grace and the immutable principles of heaven that cannot be violated without eternal danger for my destiny.

Father, keep me from presumptuous sin. Open my eyes and heal from from voluntary blindness as well as inherited blindness.