Howard C. Wilkinson - "Blind Eyes and Itching Ears" (March 7, 1965)
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(gentle music) | 0:06 | |
- | Before commencing the sermon of the morning, | 0:30 |
I would like to call to the attention | 0:33 | |
of our radio congregation, | 0:35 | |
as well as those of you who are here, | 0:37 | |
the unusual opportunity which we have in this area | 0:41 | |
in hearing Dr. Duvall tomorrow evening in Page Auditorium | 0:45 | |
at eight o'clock, | 0:49 | |
as he discusses what is happening to sex standards | 0:51 | |
in America today. | 0:54 | |
He is being presented to the campus by the YMCA. | 0:56 | |
And I hope that every one of you will avail yourselves | 1:00 | |
of the opportunity, | 1:03 | |
which this very noted authority provides for us. | 1:04 | |
In the land of Palestine, | 1:11 | |
in the centuries during which the Bible was being written, | 1:13 | |
the prevalence of blindness was a vexing problem. | 1:18 | |
The heat, the glare, and the blowing sand | 1:24 | |
were very hard on the eyes. | 1:29 | |
And added to those visual hazards | 1:32 | |
was the contagious ophthalmia | 1:35 | |
from which many people suffered. | 1:38 | |
The writers of both the old and the new testaments, | 1:41 | |
therefore were very conscious of blindness. | 1:44 | |
And there are frequent references to it in the scriptures. | 1:50 | |
I suppose it was natural therefore | 1:56 | |
for Jesus and the writers of the Bible | 1:58 | |
to use the problem of blindness as a parable, | 2:00 | |
as an analogy, when they were discussing spiritual diseases. | 2:04 | |
And so it is true | 2:11 | |
that a third of all the references to blindness in the Bible | 2:12 | |
describes spiritual blindness | 2:16 | |
rather than physical blindness. | 2:18 | |
Cruden's concordance of the Bible, | 2:22 | |
which the publishers are careful to remind us as complete, | 2:25 | |
lists 66 references to blindness in the Bible. | 2:29 | |
22 of them deal with blindness of the heart or of the mind. | 2:33 | |
They describe people whose optical ability is unimpaired, | 2:40 | |
but who do not absorb insights into the understanding. | 2:44 | |
For example, Jesus once said to his disciples, | 2:49 | |
"Having eyes, do you not see?" | 2:52 | |
And again, on another occasion, | 2:57 | |
when Jesus was correcting the theology of the old Testament | 2:59 | |
in the hearing of his disciples, | 3:02 | |
he corrected Isaiah and made him to say this, | 3:05 | |
"The people's heart is waxed gross, | 3:09 | |
"and their ears are dull of hearing, | 3:12 | |
"and their eyes they have closed. | 3:16 | |
"Lest happily, they should perceive with their eyes | 3:20 | |
"and hear with their ears and understand with their heart, | 3:23 | |
"and should turn again, | 3:26 | |
"and I should heal them. | 3:28 | |
"But blessed are your eyes for they see." | 3:30 | |
Now the point which emerges | 3:37 | |
as we study these 22 biblical references | 3:39 | |
to spiritual blindness, | 3:42 | |
is that unwillingness to see, is the major factor. | 3:44 | |
The eyes are blind because the person will not see. | 3:50 | |
If he would only open his eyes, | 3:56 | |
or if he really would make an effort, | 3:57 | |
he would be able to see very well. | 3:59 | |
His blindness is a part of his prejudice against the light. | 4:02 | |
It is both a cause on the one hand | 4:07 | |
and an effect on the other hand of his prejudice. | 4:09 | |
He does not see because he is prejudiced against seeing. | 4:13 | |
But the fact that he does not see | 4:16 | |
only accentuates his prejudice and confirms him in it. | 4:19 | |
The writer of 1 John makes it clear | 4:27 | |
that hatred or ill will, can give a person blind eyes. | 4:29 | |
He writes, | 4:35 | |
"Only the man who loves his brother | 4:36 | |
"dwells in the light. | 4:39 | |
"There's nothing to make him stumble. | 4:41 | |
"But one who hates his brother is in darkness. | 4:44 | |
"He walks in the dark and has no idea where he is going, | 4:49 | |
"because the darkness has made him blind." | 4:53 | |
Well, certainly no one has to argue the point | 4:59 | |
in a university community, | 5:01 | |
that the lack of mental or emotional site | 5:03 | |
is an unwholesome state of affairs. | 5:07 | |
Indeed, there would be no doubt, | 5:11 | |
very general agreement | 5:13 | |
that the need to overcome it | 5:16 | |
accounts for much of the reason for the building | 5:19 | |
of our colleges and universities, | 5:23 | |
and that the presence of it | 5:25 | |
accounts for a great deal of the bungling of the world. | 5:27 | |
Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his "Idylls of the King" | 5:32 | |
puts the matter rather bluntly. | 5:36 | |
He says, "Blind and naked ignorance | 5:37 | |
"delivers brawling judgments unashamed | 5:41 | |
"on all things, all day long." | 5:45 | |
And so it is. | 5:48 | |
Now, I mentioned that everyone in an academic situation | 5:51 | |
agrees that blindness is unwholesome. | 5:55 | |
Unfortunately however, | 5:59 | |
the problem cannot be dismissed | 6:02 | |
with any such simple statement | 6:05 | |
and the shrug of the shoulders, | 6:07 | |
not even in a university. | 6:10 | |
For although the voluntary closing of the eyes to truth | 6:13 | |
is roundly condemned, | 6:18 | |
it is also widely practiced. | 6:21 | |
And it is even defended in certain circumstances | 6:24 | |
among university people. | 6:28 | |
Now, for the purposes of this particular sermon, | 6:32 | |
I'm going to omit any consideration of blindness | 6:36 | |
among academic pagans, and secularists, | 6:39 | |
and agnostics, and atheists. | 6:42 | |
Now, they do have their full share of sight difficulties, | 6:45 | |
make no mistake about it. | 6:49 | |
But this morning, | 6:52 | |
we're thinking chiefly of the religious people, | 6:53 | |
who occasionally are willing to walk with blind eyes. | 6:57 | |
Now and again, we meet a Christian student | 7:02 | |
who in many ways is a very fine person, | 7:04 | |
but who considers that piety is a substitute for knowledge. | 7:08 | |
He therefore enters college, | 7:13 | |
four or five years later | 7:15 | |
gets some kind of a bachelor's degree. | 7:16 | |
In between his entrance and his exit, | 7:20 | |
he remembers to read the Bible each day, | 7:22 | |
to go to church regularly and to treat others with kindness, | 7:24 | |
but he doesn't take seriously his vocation as a student. | 7:30 | |
He neglects his lab work, | 7:34 | |
he fails to study French, | 7:36 | |
and he spends the afternoon stretched out on the campus, | 7:37 | |
admiring God's beautiful world, | 7:40 | |
while other students are at work | 7:42 | |
on their English assignments. | 7:44 | |
He doesn't feel at all guilty about this failure to learn | 7:47 | |
because in spite of the fact | 7:51 | |
that he should feel very guilty, | 7:53 | |
he thinks that what he's doing is not a sin | 7:56 | |
because he believes that piety | 7:58 | |
is a substitute for knowledge. | 8:00 | |
He believes that faith will somehow take the place of facts, | 8:06 | |
that love will substitute for the laboratory. | 8:12 | |
Now let's be clear on one point to be sure, | 8:16 | |
knowledge is not a substitute for piety, | 8:20 | |
justice (indistinct) | 8:26 | |
will not take the place of (indistinct). | 8:27 | |
Neither will facts take the place of faith. | 8:31 | |
Nor will the laboratory fill the void when love is absent. | 8:36 | |
But it is extremely unfortunate | 8:41 | |
when the Christian refuses to honor his vocation as student, | 8:43 | |
and declines to face the full meaning | 8:47 | |
of Christ's commandment, | 8:49 | |
that we are to love God with our minds | 8:50 | |
as well as with our hearts. | 8:53 | |
And this person does piety no service | 8:56 | |
when he pleads it as an acceptable substitute | 8:58 | |
for the acquisition of truth. | 9:01 | |
The Christian student who receives his grade card, | 9:05 | |
and discovers that he has made an F in zoology, | 9:10 | |
maybe inclined to console himself by saying, | 9:13 | |
"Well, at least I made what I made honestly." | 9:16 | |
Well, surely we can all agree, can't we? | 9:20 | |
That it is good to know | 9:23 | |
that this student did not add dishonesty to ignorance. | 9:24 | |
But if he comforts himself about his F | 9:30 | |
by thinking of his honesty, | 9:34 | |
he is much too easily comforted. | 9:36 | |
Now there's a second type of Christian | 9:41 | |
who is willing to walk through life with blind eyes, | 9:43 | |
who will even seek to justify it. | 9:46 | |
I refer to the Christian who has heard that some people | 9:49 | |
who once had Christian faith | 9:52 | |
lost it when they studied geology. | 9:56 | |
And so he avoids the course in geology. | 10:00 | |
Mentally, he shuts his eyes | 10:05 | |
when he passes the geology section in the library stacks. | 10:07 | |
He's blind when he's there, intentionally. | 10:11 | |
He perhaps knows a student who took a course in biology, | 10:15 | |
and later declared, | 10:18 | |
"Well, I have given up the Bible in favor of evolution." | 10:19 | |
And so if he has to take biology | 10:24 | |
to satisfy the requirements of graduation, | 10:25 | |
he decides ahead of time that he will insulate himself | 10:28 | |
against anything which might have a tendency | 10:31 | |
to bring any of his childhood beliefs into question. | 10:34 | |
Now, all of this, he does on the assumption | 10:38 | |
that it is better to be permanently ignorant | 10:40 | |
than to be temporarily uncertain. | 10:44 | |
But the main result that he is accomplishing | 10:47 | |
is to witness to the thesis that if the truth were known, | 10:50 | |
faith would collapse. | 10:54 | |
That's what he's saying. | 10:57 | |
He is testifying that the revelation | 11:01 | |
of God's wisdom in Jesus Christ | 11:03 | |
will not endure the light of truth. | 11:05 | |
And brothers and sisters, | 11:09 | |
I declared to you this morning with strong feeling, | 11:11 | |
that any such testimony as that | 11:15 | |
is not inspired by the Holy Spirit. | 11:18 | |
A Christian must make up his mind | 11:23 | |
that he will not be afraid to face any truth | 11:26 | |
from any quarter, on any subject, whatsoever. | 11:29 | |
If something is true, | 11:35 | |
God allowed it to be true and he ordained it so. | 11:37 | |
Merryman Cunningham has pointed out | 11:42 | |
that since Protestantism generally | 11:44 | |
has come to accept the old slogan, | 11:46 | |
that all truth is God's truth, | 11:48 | |
we should now be willing boldly to restate that adage | 11:51 | |
with sharper focus, and say, | 11:56 | |
"God's truth is all truth." | 12:00 | |
Well, of course this principle | 12:08 | |
is at least as old as the reformers. | 12:09 | |
Some of you will recall the very widely quoted statement | 12:13 | |
of John Calvin. | 12:16 | |
When he said, "If we consider that the spirit of God | 12:18 | |
"is the only fountain of truth, | 12:20 | |
"we will neither refuse nor despise the truth itself, | 12:23 | |
"where soever it shall appear." | 12:30 | |
And so as fresh truth appears, | 12:36 | |
and as we begin to appropriate it, | 12:40 | |
if we discover that it requires a re-examination | 12:42 | |
of some of our long cherished beliefs, | 12:46 | |
let us commence that re-examination | 12:51 | |
with joy and thanksgiving, | 12:55 | |
rather than with fear and trembling, | 12:58 | |
afraid that all will be lost. | 13:02 | |
So let us in faith, open our eyes to see what is before us, | 13:06 | |
anywhere in the world. | 13:14 | |
Let us cheerfully come to the light. | 13:16 | |
Let us avoid the mental and spiritual ailment | 13:20 | |
which the Bible describes by a figure of speech as, | 13:22 | |
blind eyes. | 13:26 | |
However, it is important that we become aware | 13:29 | |
of a second ailment | 13:34 | |
before we completely leave the first one. | 13:36 | |
It is possible that in avoiding the blind eye problem, | 13:40 | |
we may, by overcompensation, fall victim to another malady, | 13:46 | |
which the Bible describes by a figure of speech as, | 13:52 | |
itching ears. | 13:57 | |
Now, to acquire itching ears by fleeing from blind eyes, | 14:02 | |
would be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. | 14:06 | |
What we have before us this morning is a pair of problems | 14:11 | |
which are related. | 14:15 | |
It is not that we recognize the existence | 14:18 | |
of a problem of blindness, | 14:20 | |
and then incidentally note | 14:23 | |
that mankind also happens occasionally | 14:25 | |
to encounter an itching ear problem. | 14:27 | |
Rather, what we must understand is, | 14:31 | |
that the second problem is often encountered | 14:33 | |
in our efforts to cure or to avoid the first problem. | 14:37 | |
So let us take a serious look at this other problem. | 14:42 | |
The apostle Paul, in his second letter to Timothy, wrote, | 14:46 | |
"I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, | 14:51 | |
"who is the judge of the living and the dead, | 14:54 | |
"preach the word, | 14:57 | |
"be urgent in season and out of season, | 14:59 | |
"convince, rebuke, and exhort | 15:02 | |
"the unfailing in patience and in teaching. | 15:05 | |
"For the time is coming | 15:08 | |
"when people will not endure sound teaching. | 15:09 | |
"But having itching ears, | 15:12 | |
"they will accumulate for themselves teachers | 15:15 | |
"to suit their own liking." | 15:18 | |
Now, the chief subjective characteristic of an itch, | 15:23 | |
is it's permanently recurring call for attention. | 15:27 | |
If you thirst, | 15:34 | |
you may drink a glass of water | 15:36 | |
and be satisfied for a season. | 15:38 | |
If you are hungry, you may feast and eat | 15:40 | |
and you're hunger be abated for a while. | 15:42 | |
But if the back of your hand itches, | 15:46 | |
you may rub it and rub it with the other hand, | 15:47 | |
and then in a half minute, it's itching again, | 15:52 | |
just as much as if you had never rubbed it. | 15:55 | |
So the person with itching ears | 15:58 | |
is one who never hears any satisfying information. | 16:01 | |
His ears must continually hear something new. | 16:08 | |
Dr. Luke wrote concerning the Athenian philosophers | 16:14 | |
who heard the apostle Paul on the Areopagus, | 16:17 | |
that they spent their time in nothing else, | 16:21 | |
but either to tell or to hear something new. | 16:24 | |
Lake and Cadbury think that this verse in Acts | 16:29 | |
should be translated to say | 16:32 | |
that they spent their time in nothing else, | 16:33 | |
but either to tell or to hear the last new idea. | 16:36 | |
Well, Theodore Farris has described these Athenians | 16:42 | |
as men who played with the ideas, | 16:45 | |
the way children play with marbles, | 16:47 | |
make a game out of it. | 16:50 | |
When Paul wrote Timothy about people that he should avoid, | 16:53 | |
he wrote of those who are ever learning | 16:57 | |
and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. | 17:03 | |
And so we see that the second malady, | 17:11 | |
this problem we encounter as we over compensate | 17:17 | |
for the danger of blindness, is an old one, | 17:21 | |
and it consists of an insatiable appetite for new ideas | 17:26 | |
without pausing long enough to digest them | 17:33 | |
or to evaluate them. | 17:37 | |
The person in this condition is like a man on a treadmill. | 17:41 | |
He's always on the run, | 17:45 | |
but he never arrives at any recognizable destination. | 17:46 | |
To return for a moment to the analogy of sight, | 17:51 | |
he's always willing, even eager, | 17:54 | |
to look at a new idea, but not for very long. | 17:57 | |
He compulsively must turn his attention | 18:02 | |
to the next new idea. | 18:05 | |
He's like the Casanova | 18:08 | |
who courts every new pretty girl he meets, | 18:11 | |
but who never will marry any of them | 18:15 | |
because he wants to continue courting | 18:19 | |
every new pretty girl he meets. | 18:23 | |
Now, the person who suffers from itching ears | 18:28 | |
does not care to spend his time in reading the classic works | 18:31 | |
of the distant past, | 18:34 | |
or even the great thoughts of the recent past. | 18:36 | |
For him, his reading and the topics of his conversation | 18:39 | |
are nothing, if not new. | 18:42 | |
He's perennial obsession is the scanning of new titles, | 18:47 | |
the discussion of the latest monograph, | 18:50 | |
and the reporting of anything avant-garde. | 18:51 | |
This scripture passage brings to mind this morning, | 18:58 | |
the words of Dean Cushman, | 19:01 | |
which were spoken from this very pulpit in 1961. | 19:02 | |
He described academic people | 19:07 | |
who always await the results of the next experiment | 19:08 | |
from the laboratory. | 19:12 | |
Or the anticipated findings | 19:14 | |
of the political or sociological statistician. | 19:17 | |
Endlessly multiplying data, | 19:21 | |
bursts the walls of libraries, | 19:24 | |
as monographs add more and more | 19:27 | |
to the mounting lore of less and less. | 19:30 | |
Now, this mania for a pouncing with enthusiasm | 19:35 | |
upon the latest publication, | 19:38 | |
whatever it may happen to be, | 19:40 | |
has at least one serious shortcoming, | 19:42 | |
it makes it very difficult to assess the lasting merit | 19:46 | |
of any new idea or discovery. | 19:50 | |
If new material, like gravel in a creek bed, | 19:55 | |
is quickly picked up and is quickly thrown down | 19:58 | |
in order to grab the next handful, | 20:01 | |
who will be able to say, which is a nugget of gold, | 20:04 | |
and which is only a pebble? | 20:10 | |
Gold and pebbles alike will be discarded. | 20:13 | |
Now, as we noted when we were discussing blind eyes, | 20:18 | |
so we shall note in connection with itching ears, | 20:23 | |
there is plenty of which needs to be said on this subject | 20:25 | |
with reference to the pagans. | 20:28 | |
But today we're confining our remarks | 20:31 | |
to the trouble of the religious. | 20:34 | |
There are some people in the academic world | 20:38 | |
whose only religious interest is in the last new idea. | 20:40 | |
Unlike the student who blinds his eyes to every new idea, | 20:46 | |
this student is not willing to hear anything, but new ideas. | 20:51 | |
He may be almost illiterate in matters of the Bible, | 20:57 | |
he may scorn a systematic study of religion, | 21:00 | |
but almost by rote, | 21:04 | |
he can pair out at least a few of the latest okay words | 21:06 | |
of (indistinct), | 21:09 | |
to mention only one letter of the alphabet. | 21:12 | |
Last Sunday, | 21:17 | |
Dean Cleland had the audacity | 21:18 | |
to recommend to the Duke community | 21:22 | |
that it read in Lent, 1965, | 21:24 | |
C. S. Lewis's book, "The Screwtape Letters" | 21:27 | |
which was first published about a quarter of a century ago. | 21:31 | |
He followed that suggestion | 21:35 | |
with an even more startling adequation. | 21:37 | |
He stated that he thought it would be a good idea | 21:40 | |
to read through one of the gospels. | 21:42 | |
Well, this doesn't sound like a straight diet | 21:46 | |
of avant-garde, does it? | 21:48 | |
Except, and here I should enter a caveat to my own point, | 21:51 | |
to the student who's only scriptures so far | 21:58 | |
have been (indistinct) and Hugh Hefner, | 22:04 | |
the gospels may very well be avant-garde. | 22:08 | |
In the real sense of that French phrase, | 22:12 | |
it ought to become clear to all of us | 22:18 | |
that this neurotic preoccupation with what is coming next, | 22:21 | |
only on fits us really to appropriate what is at hand. | 22:26 | |
It resolves itself into a game of academic one-upmanship, | 22:31 | |
which is basically the same process | 22:36 | |
by which men in the business world | 22:39 | |
sometimes strain to make money | 22:41 | |
merely to beat the game | 22:43 | |
and to establish their egoistic ascendancy | 22:45 | |
over their fellows. | 22:47 | |
It really is not a pursuit of wisdom at all, | 22:50 | |
or even of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. | 22:55 | |
It is at best, a nervous and dubious attempt | 22:59 | |
to capture the magic of the last new idea, | 23:04 | |
and use it for selfish ends, | 23:08 | |
like some old wives trading the latest neighborhood gossip | 23:11 | |
over the backyard fence. | 23:14 | |
Well, it certainly is important | 23:17 | |
that we take care to avoid being blind. | 23:20 | |
We should, by all means have open minds in general, | 23:24 | |
and minds open in particular to a new truth. | 23:28 | |
But market noise is wise and reminding us | 23:33 | |
that William Temple taught that an open mind | 23:36 | |
must have a purpose for being open. | 23:38 | |
And that the purpose of an open mind | 23:41 | |
is to close it on something. | 23:43 | |
To close it on something. | 23:48 | |
We have to raise a real question therefore, brethren, | 23:52 | |
about the significance of the scholar, | 23:55 | |
who day after day goes on piling up fact upon fact | 23:58 | |
and quote upon quote, | 24:01 | |
but who remains impotent | 24:03 | |
to draw any decision-making conclusions from his facts, | 24:05 | |
or to relate his quotations | 24:09 | |
to any dynamic system of meaning. | 24:11 | |
Let him be ware, | 24:15 | |
lest he become like those whom the apostle Paul described | 24:17 | |
as ever learning but never able to come | 24:20 | |
to a knowledge of the truth. | 24:24 | |
All facts are not alike in value, | 24:27 | |
and not all new ideas are equally profitable. | 24:32 | |
Some are nuggets of gold | 24:37 | |
and others are only pebbles in the sand. | 24:39 | |
Some are pearls of wisdom, | 24:43 | |
others are merely oyster shells on the beach. | 24:46 | |
The Christian is a person who, | 24:50 | |
as he sifted the deposits of learning, | 24:54 | |
which history has accumulated, | 24:58 | |
has been confronted by the fact that Jesus of Nazareth | 25:01 | |
lived at a certain time, at a certain place, | 25:07 | |
and that he taught a certain understanding of life, | 25:11 | |
of death, and of destiny. | 25:16 | |
And that he claimed to have a sure and ultimate word | 25:20 | |
from God to man. | 25:23 | |
And that he is that word. | 25:27 | |
The Christian is a person who, | 25:31 | |
as he reflected on this news, | 25:33 | |
decided for himself that this is good news. | 25:37 | |
The good news, the gospel. | 25:42 | |
This is no mere oyster shell | 25:47 | |
among other equally valuable shells. | 25:49 | |
The Christian has decided that this Jesus is a pearl, | 25:53 | |
the pearl of great price. | 25:58 | |
And he willingly sells all that he has and is | 26:01 | |
to buy that pearl. | 26:05 | |
The Christian scholar is a person who ever learning, | 26:08 | |
knows that in Jesus Christ, | 26:13 | |
he has come to a knowledge of the truth. | 26:15 | |
He no longer therefore needs to have itching ears. | 26:20 | |
His itch for news has been satisfied with the good news. | 26:25 | |
His thirst for the water of the soul | 26:30 | |
has been satisfied by the water of life, | 26:32 | |
which is within him a well of water | 26:35 | |
springing up into everlasting life. | 26:38 | |
The Christian student or professor, | 26:42 | |
continues his patient and energetic search for truth, | 26:46 | |
but it no longer is an erotic search, | 26:51 | |
which has the last new idea as its center of reference. | 26:54 | |
It is a confident search, | 26:58 | |
which has an eternal center of reference, | 27:01 | |
and which ends not in an impersonal fact, | 27:04 | |
but which he believes leads to the author of all truth. | 27:08 | |
Oh God, thou has made us for thyself, | 27:20 | |
and our hearts are restless | 27:23 | |
until they find their rest in thee. | 27:25 | |
We now arrest our hearts in thee, | 27:28 | |
and offer our minds to thee | 27:32 | |
for an understanding of thy truth. | 27:34 | |
And now may the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ, | 27:36 | |
be with us all. | 27:40 |