Sometimes Facebook juxtaposes just the right pair of posts, just the right images to startle me awake, to catch a new glimpse of truth. Today I saw a such a pair.
Post #1, a video: colorblind people see color for the first time with innovative new glasses. Now, I’m going to let you roll that around in your mind for a minute before I hit you with Post #2. A stream of people unable to distinguish red from green, trapped in a world where everything is a muted, muddy brown, suddenly seeing all the great glory of a simple garden, overwhelmed. You see them see colors and suddenly you’re seeing color through their eyes, and you realize how much we take for granted, how much beauty overload we live in all the time. You wonder what else we can’t see, what else is hiding in plain sight.
Now. Post #2: women at the March on Washington hold a sign proclaiming “If Mary had had an abortion, we wouldn’t be in this mess.” And it’s a kick in the gut, one of the few statements left that still has power to shock. Really? And it’s a flood of horrifying thoughts, one struggling to top the last—you’d trade the Christmas story for a coat hanger? Jesus’ death on a cross wasn’t awful enough? You have that level of hate for the Savior of the world? You lay the blame for all that’s wrong at His feet—at ours?
But then I understand. Post #1 is the explanation for Post #2. There is rampant blindness in our culture, like a population struck with scarlet fever. I am not exempt.
We do not see the beauty of Christ, because we are dazzled by rhinestone substitutes.
We do not see the Great Story of the world, because we are sidetracked by our own little dramas.
We do not see the long stretch of eternity, because we are caught up in the vapor of now.
We don’t see the struggle and pain of others (but stub a toe and we’ll nurse it all the day long.)
We don’t see the glory of people Not Like Us, because we’re too busy gazing in a mirror.
We miss the rich tapestry of the races.
We miss the quirky strength of the genders.
We can’t see the value and dignity and perfection of the disabled, the bent and twisted ones, the elderly, the mentally challenged, the helpless, unborn human beings whose presence causes us discomfort or inconvenience or shame.
We are so very blind. And I wonder what it will take for us to see, like Neo to wake up in the Matrix. But like our colorblind friends, we have been given a pair of nifty glasses; all we have to do is put them on.
So let me pop those puppies on, let me remind myself of Truth.
Back in the very beginning there was a Trio of Oneness, an everlasting symphony of Love. And this Love, this triune God, His creativity and laughter and yes, love, bubbled over and made the vast and spectacular universe, from Milky Way to micro-organism. And there in the middle of an extraordinary garden (red and green included in all their shades), He put a pair of people, and He called them very good. But a snake slithered in, and the world was broken, and instead of choosing light, we craved the darkness. All that is broken and hurting and wrong in the world traces back, back, back to that choice, that moment, leaving us crying out, “Vanity! Vanity!”
But still He wasn’t done, and Love came down into the muck to be spat upon, mocked, beaten, rejected, and finally murdered. But still He wasn’t done; He burst the bonds of the grave, defeated death, and made a way for blind eyes, my eyes, to see.
He is beauty. All that is good and right in the world shines because He breathed on it, shines because it bloomed out of His imagination.
Those women, the ones with the sign—they were dreamed up and fashioned out of Love. There is grace for them just as there was mercy for me. And the babies they’d just as soon dispose of? Each one a wisp of smoke that never was? No. Each one was painstakingly designed, seen, and adored.
Let’s be the people of color, the people who dole out compassion, joy, forgiveness, and kindness, who lend others our lenses and help them want to see.
Dostoevsky said beauty will save the world. Thank the Lord, He already did.
sense of otherworldly beauty, there can be no hope, and the best we can settle for is facing despair head-on. But leaving Eden left a vacuum in the human heart, which our jaded culture attempts endlessly to fill. And so while Christians seek transcendence, our neighbor lives for his appetite, a gloomy proposition of ever-diminishing returns.
