For Lack of Vision

From today's first reading from Amos:

Yes, days are coming, says the Lord GOD, 
when I will send famine upon the land:
Not a famine of bread, or thirst for water, 
but for hearing the word of the LORD. 
Then shall they wander from sea to sea 
and rove from the north to the east 
In search of the word of the LORD,
but they shall not find it. 

While I was reading this passage this morning, I kept thinking about how often I read things online, hear things on the radio, and see things on television (granted since I don't have a television, this last doesn't really happen often) and am sadden by the fact that so many people seem unable to see, hear or speak with any amount of clarity. I guess that having read scripture, I shouldn't find this surprising.

The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. 

They have mouths but do not speak; 

they have eyes but do not see; 
They have ears but do not hear; 

nor is there breath in their mouths. 

Their makers will become like them, 

and anyone who trusts in them.

Psalm 135:16-18 and a similar text in Psalm 115

Make the heart of this people sluggish, dull their ears and close their eyes; Lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and their heart understand, and they turn and be healed.

Isaiah 6:10

Pay attention to this, you foolish and senseless people, Who have eyes and do not see, who have ears and do not hear.

Jeremiah 5:21

Son of man, you live in the midst of a rebellious house; they have eyes to see, but do not see, and ears to hear but do not hear. They are such a rebellious house!

Ezekiel 12:2

Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear? And do you not remember...

Mark 8:18

It's pretty obvious that for a large segment of our population there is, "...a famine...for hearing the word of the Lord." It's not that the Word isn't out there, it's that in many cases there is a deliberate blindness and deafness like the reverse of the three monkeys that see, hear and speak no evil. Why open yourself to a truth that will get in the way of your plans? Along with this there is the darkening of the intellect that follows the abandonment of ourselves to sin. Saddest of all, and maybe the largest group of all is that which has been literally educated out of their senses. They cannot see, and they cannot hear, and they cannot think because their values have been clarified beyond all faith and all reason. These are the people that disturb me the most. They have a facile but false or meaningless answer for any argument, and they seem absolutely incapable seeing how baseless and frequently self-contradicting their opinions are, or of processing what any opponent might be saying. They are impervious to the Word.

Even people of faith (and reason) sometimes find themselves adrift in the miasma rising from our culture of misinformation and foggy thinking. We can be brought up short by the discovery some prevalent idea or way of thinking has wended it's way into our consciousness as I was yesterday when I read Maclin Horton's post on the true role of the Supreme Court. It's not that I don't know what the Court is supposed to do, it's just that I have spent so much time listening to people who get it wrong that I sometimes find myself falling under the spell of those who, like the Lady of the Green Kirtle in C. S. Lewis's Silver Chair mesmerize us into losing our connection with the real world.

The Fourth of July can be a really fun holiday. It's great to get together with friends and family to celebrate, cookout and blow things up. I wonder, however, how many people who are celebrating today, have any idea of the kind of government which they are celebrating, or of the underlying virtues that are required to make this kind of government work, or of the fact that we are currently bereft of many of those virtues. I wonder if they realize that it is slipping out of our hands.

May the eyes of [your] hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones...

Ephesians 1:18 

AMDG