Eye Problems

Do you not say, 'Four months more, then comes the harvest'? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. (John 4:35 NRSV)

Perception. Assumptions. Experience. Factual determinations.

I am facing a major problem that is being exposed here. I know I am not alone in this, but the resolution of this problem, as far as where I am, must first begin to happen within myself in cooperation with God's convicting Spirit.

Jesus' disciples had a serious perception problem. They, just like me and so many around me, were in the habit of interpreting the circumstances and information of their lives from the traditional way of viewing things, the traditional values and priorities, the familiar and the accepted. Because of these severe limitations they found themselves incapable of perceiving very significant things taking place right in front of them. They were unaware of vital elements of reality like food and water and timing of harvest and other things that come up in this story.

Jesus was clearly living in relation to a very different way of seeing things. When He came into contact with people He did not see them the way the disciples perceived them. But that is not acceptable. It was what was happening, but it was still not acceptable. Jesus was mentoring them, was demonstrating radically new ways of seeing reality that He wanted them to live in and relate from. The disciples took a long time to begin catching on to how Jesus thought and felt and viewed the world around Him. In fact, it was not until Pentecost that they began to finally comprehend many of the things that Jesus was plainly presenting to them from very early on in His ministry.

But I really don't think it is completely necessary for everyone to take that long to learn how to view the world through heaven's eyes. Many of us take much longer than the disciples, but it seems reasonable that some of us ought to be able to learn from the mistakes of others and be open-minded enough to come up to speed a little quicker. If not, then what is the use of recording all of these stories in the first place? And it seems that these Samaritan's were waking up quicker than the disciples.

In this verse I see Jesus openly challenging common assumptions. Yes, He chose to do it using an analogy, but analogies are used for a very significant purpose and can be quite effective in helping us understand important spiritual dimensions if we are willing. In very literal terms, Jesus was not trying to say that a literal harvest of wheat or barley was actually already ripe in some field nearby and the disciples had failed to notice it. No one reads this and comes to that conclusion.

But is the real point as clear as we assume that Jesus was trying to make? Of course it is easy to point critical fingers at the disciples and wonder at how dense they were about what was really taking place. It is also very easy to condemn the actions and attitudes of the Children of Israel wandering around in the desert for 40 years with Moses. But it is a very different thing to take what seems so obvious in all of these stories and admit that we may have the exact same problems and blind spots. But if I do not allow the Spirit to convict me fully of my own tendency to blind spots that seem so evident in others, then my blindness remains in place and I am blissfully ignorant of my own ignorance and faults.

Jesus in this verse is emphatically insisting that it is not safe to rest on our assumptions or our familiar formulas for figuring out what God may be doing. While God has set up the seasons and cycles of life that are so familiar to us, God is not bound to work within those restraints like we too often assume. Just as surly as Jesus did not have to plant seeds, wait for months for grain to mature and then grind grain into flour to make bread to feed thousands of people on a hillside, neither is He restricted by the methods and formulas we have figured out from our own past experiences about how God goes about bringing more children into His family.

So long as we cling to our ways of seeing other people and our methods of evangelism and our traditions of how to do church properly, we will remain just as clueless as these disciples as to what is really going on all around us. I am saddened and frustrated as well at the intransigence of so many so-called believers who refuse to believe that God can do what He claims He can do in human hearts. We are so deeply infected with unbelief and prejudices from the culture around us and traditions that we cling to as if they were commands of God that we cannot see through all the clutter of religion to perceive the real harvest that is so ripe all around us that it is falling off the stalks.

One aspect of this problem comes to mind. What is the first reaction you get from most people, Christian or non-Christian alike, whenever you start talking about Muslims? If I am not completely off the wall, I suspect and have observed many times that the first reaction is one of suspicion, mistrust, fear and deeply ingrained prejudice that is intensified by the slanted and constant propaganda of American media and government. It is popular to forward slanderous and insinuating emails to each other incriminating anything to do with Islam or Muslims. It is simply assumed that if a person even looks a little like a Middle-eastern person that they must be under suspicion and watched carefully.

Our whole attitude toward Muslims is commonly that of fear and underlying hatred that we help to pass along and reinforce in various ways. We either actively promote such messages in our discussions and writings or at best we fail to stand up and protest against the unfairness of such profiling activities. But ironically in a day when it is no longer in style and is even legal to promote prejudices against blacks or other ethnic groups, it is now becoming wildly popular to fan hatred and suspicion against Muslims or gays or other such groups that we decide are a threat to the world or to morality.

But this attitude is exactly the opposite of that which Jesus displayed when He came to this earth to reveal how God feels about us. Jesus never once exhibited a shred of prejudice against anyone. And that lack of conformity to the popular prejudices of His time earned Him the ire and fire of those who promoted these prejudices in the name of national protection and religious purity. Things really have not changed much at all, have they?

We like to glibly quote texts about God's equality and complete freedom from discrimination, but at the same time we are unwilling to allow Him to convict us of the many words and practices that seem so comfortable for us to use when it comes to people we don't particularly like or that we view as a threat to our lifestyle or preferences. We justify many of our prejudices with proof texts or popular one-liners that we believe support our views, but God sees things very differently than we see them.

God refuses to evaluate any person based on the labels that we have artificially created and force people to live under. We say that we believe in freedom and equality, but our actions and attitudes and treatment of others betray our hypocrisy and lies. We are unwilling most of the time to admit that our prejudices are just sinful and are pockets in our lives that we refuse to surrender to the control of God's Spirit within us. We justify ourselves by using patriotism and religious fervor which only further confuses the issue. But in heaven's eyes we are refusing to love those whom God has created in His image and whom He sees many times as more honest in heart than we may be.

I suspect that many of us will never give up our prejudices. We are going to cling to them like the false gods that they are in our lives and ultimately die with them in the end. But some of us are going to allow Jesus to expose our pride and selfishness and prejudices for what they are and allow Him to cleanse us from all of this unrighteousness. If we allow God to do this – and it needs to be done very soon – then we are going to be shocked at what our opened eyes will be able to see and what our opened hearts will be able to experience.

But when that begins to happen another intense reaction is also going to take place among those who refuse to surrender to the convicting Spirit of God. These people are going to feel threatened by the love and openness and acceptance that will be seen among those who have put away their differences and have come together in love. All those who resist the true working of God among everyone who responds to that love are going to be filled with intense resentment and hatred of Jesus' followers and are going to accuse them of all sorts of things that are false and will to label them as terrorists, extremists and dangerous people that need to be put away or exterminated. Just read the book of Acts.

This is how the controversy between Jesus and Satan is going to come to a climax. It is not a battle over doctrines, although that will be part of the external arguments; it is going to revolve around the credibility of the authenticity of the spiritual connection with God held by those who dare to think differently than the popular assumptions and prejudices of society around them, no matter what country or culture they may find themselves in.

I foresee a time coming very soon when God's true children, those who are listening to the voice of the true Spirit, are going to quickly gravitate toward each other as the Spirit leads them to link hearts with each other. These true followers are going to be very different than what most people expect them to look like. There are going to be millions of Muslims among them, millions of Jews and millions of Christians as well as people from all other religions and non-religions alike. Jesus said very plainly that there were many sheep that were not yet in His fold but they would hear His voice and would follow Him.

The sad thing is that the majority of people who assume that they are Christian – which by definition means a follower of Christ – are not really listening to the voice of Jesus at all. They are following leaders that claim to know God's will and that lead them in ways that seem right, that feels right and that is based on Biblical passages. But they have not taken the time to learn how to study for themselves and have not invested the time and effort and emotional vulnerability to listen to the voice of the Spirit sent by Jesus. The spirit that they are listening to sounds so religious and convincing that they assume it is God's Spirit but they have failed to discern between the true and the counterfeit.

This can happen in any church, in any denomination, in any group of people anywhere. Jesus said that the wheat and the tares are going to grow together until the harvest. Then the differences will be much easier to see when the full maturity of their choices becomes plain to all who can see with heaven's eyes. The fruit that is matured for harvest is the attitudes and the spirit of each person and is determined by the character that has been developed through the many choices they have made day by day.

Jesus says that harvest is ripe and ready. We look around and can't see anything but opposition and enemies. If we can't see what Jesus sees, then it is time to go and have some serious eye work done with an Expert who knows how to heal the eyes of the blind and repair the hearts of the hurting.