What is the question?

The story of Jesus healing the blind man (John 9) that is in this week’s Christian Science Bible lesson has become a favorite in the last couple of years. What really did it for me was reading Peterson’s paraphrase in The Message Bible, especially the first five verses:

Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, "Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?" Jesus said, "You're asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world's Light." (John 9:1-5)

I love how in this edition, Jesus really turns around the disciples questions – makes them realize that they need to change the basis from which they are perceiving this man and making their query. And why even look for a cause, since the cause they were looking for was a popularly held theological belief: Something is wrong with this person so someone must have sinned. And it might not have even been this person who sinned. Maybe God was taking it out on the son of the sinner.

To me, it’s like Jesus is saying you are starting from the wrong premise – you need to start with God as I am showing Him to you – God as Life, Truth and Love. And so what you should look for are the effects that must result from God’s causation. And those effects must be good as God is good. Jesus is shedding a clear light on these old philosophies and revealing that they are not true. And this understanding, this higher perspective, removed the man’s blindness.

In Science and Health, Mary Baker Eddy wrote (476:32-5):

Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy.

I think this explains perfectly what Jesus did in this instance to heal this man of blindness and what he was telling his disciples (all of us!) so that we can “be energetically at work for the One who sent” him. Right now in my life, I feel like this passage from Science and Health and that story from John reveal the crux of practicing the love of Christian Science. This view might change, but for now I am earnestly trying to ask the better questions, checking to be sure that the basis of the question is from the right view of God and Her pure and perfect creation.