Howard C. Wilkinson - "Blind Eyes and Itching Ears" (March 7, 1965)

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	(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

Item Info

Title:

Howard C. Wilkinson - "Blind Eyes and Itching Ears" (March 7, 1965)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4qz26j52

Date:

March 7, 1965

Speaker:

Wilkinson, Howard C.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0286
ref5777_t6j
uachapelsermaud
duke:628111
dcrau002285
ark:/87924/r4qz26j52
1a6e14d2-60cf-4a59-937e-4227256c42ff

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Howard C. Wilkinson - "Blind Eyes and Itching Ears" (March 7, 1965)

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1. Howard C. Wilkinson - "Blind Eyes and Itching Ears" (March 7, 1965)

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