I see men as trees walking, part 3: The allegory of fear.

favorite scene in Fran­co Zef­firelli’s Jesus of Nazareth involves Christ’s heal­ing of a blind man, played by Rena­to Ras­cel, near the pool of Siloam. This is not the same blind man, of Beth­sai­da, whom he had healed in the Gospel of Mark. This par­tic­u­lar heal­ing takes place in Jerusalem; St. John records the sto­ry in chap­ter 9 of his gospel:

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his dis­ci­ples asked him, Rab­bi, who sinned, this man or his par­ents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, It was not that this man sinned, or his par­ents, but that the works of God might be made man­i­fest in him. We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ As he said this, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spit­tle and annoint­ed the man’s eyes with the clay, say­ing to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back see­ing.

“You are hurting me!”

The Phar­isees, who always seem to be close by at such moments, quick­ly learn of the heal­ing. They decide to open an inves­ti­ga­tion into the mat­ter, and thus ques­tion the man regard­ing how he got his sight back. There is a fac­tion among the Phar­isees, which insists that Christ “is not from God, for he does not keep the sab­bath.” One mem­ber of the fac­tion demands that the for­mer­ly-blind man tell them his own opin­ion of Jesus. “He is a prophet!” the man says. The Phar­isees next ques­tion the man’s par­ents, who in their turn respond that their son is of age and can speak for him­self. John explains this refusal to answer by explain­ing that the man’s par­ents were aware of cer­tain threats involv­ing the excom­mu­ni­ca­tion of any­one con­fess­ing that Jesus was the Christ fore­told by the prophets.

Turn­ing to the for­mer­ly blind man, one Phar­isee demands: “Give God the praise. We know that this man”—meaning Jesus—“is a sin­ner.” To whom the for­mer­ly blind, cut­ting to the heart of the ques­tion, says: “Whether he is a sin­ner, I do not know; one thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see” (John 9:1–25).

The writer and Eng­lish teacher in me admires St. John for all these won­der­ful nar­ra­tive details. It is details of the kind above that make him a wor­thy patron saint for writ­ers. By con­trast, details make St. Mark—who wrote his com­po­si­tions the night before they were due—break out in a cold sweat. But screen­writer Antho­ny Burgess (who, inter­est­ing­ly, also wrote the nov­el A Clock­work Orange) adds an addi­tion­al detail that is not in the gospel account. In the screen­play, when Jesus begins to anoint the blind man’s eyes with the sacra­ment he had made out of clay and spit, the blind man shouts at him to stop. “No, don’t!” he cries. “Leave my eyes alone! I don’t want you to touch them! No, don’t touch my eyes! You are hurt­ing me!! They’re burn­ing. What have you done to them?”

You … are … hurt­ing … me! This detail is not in the gospel account, but Burgess’s poet­ic license gets it exact­ly right. Ear­li­er in the scene, when Jesus first notices the blind man—before the crowd drags him to Jesus to be healed—he had been pan­han­dling for help. “Alms! Please, help for the poor blind man!” he says. He is per­fect­ly will­ing to receive help in the form of char­i­ty of this kind. But when giv­en the chance to actu­al­ly be able to see, he resists, and com­plains that Christ’s method of heal­ing him hurts. His encounter with Christ is threat­en­ing to his blind and small­er world, to which he had his own favorite method of adap­ta­tion.

But now a won­der­ful thing hap­pens. At Christ’s instruc­tions, the man goes to wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam. He tow­els his face, and then the cam­era switch­es to the blind man’s point of view; what we the audi­ence see is what he sees as he opens his eyes. First, dark­ness. But then, a few, dark­ened rip­ples of waters; and a hint of sparkle; and then, sud­den­ly, an amaz­ing flash of sparkle, and so much light—as if the light is com­ing from the water. “As long as I am in the world,” Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” This sparkle of light on the rip­ples of water in Siloam is what it means—not mere­ly to see for the first time, but to see Christ for the first time. The blind man, once upset and protest­ing that he was being hurt, is now amazed and grate­ful as he looks around says: “I can see! I can see you, and you! Broth­ers, I can see! I am not blind any­more!” “Now I know,” he says, “what it means to see”—to see not just light, or peo­ple, or things, but to see Christ and know who he is.

He search­es for the man who has healed him. When he finds him, Jesus asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

“Who is he, Mas­ter, that I may believe in him?”

“You’re see­ing him. It is he that is speak­ing to you.”

“I believe, Lord.”

“But since you say ‘we see.’ ”

Imme­di­ate­ly the Phar­isees, who always seem to be close by at such moments, show up and protest that the man had only been pre­tend­ing to be blind so that he could earn his liv­ing beg­ging for alms. Fur­ther, they demand that Jesus explain him­self. (Who is he, after all, to show up the Phar­isees?)

Jesus answers only: “I came into this world to give sight to those who can not see, and to take away sight from those who can.”

“What do you mean by that?” demands one Phar­isee. “That we who are right­eous are blind?”

“If you were blind, you would be with­out sin,” Jesus says. “But since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”

This requires some unpack­ing. For the dis­cus­sion has turned from the sub­ject of phys­i­cal blind­ness to that of spir­i­tu­al blind­ness. Self-right­eous­ness, accord­ing to what Jesus says here, is the pri­ma­ry sin of the Phar­isees. They insist that they “see”: that they are right­eous, and there­fore that they are apt to judge the sins of oth­ers. Accord­ing to Christ, how­ev­er, who sees through their guise, the Phar­isees would be right­eous only if they were blind. In oth­er words, only a true inabil­i­ty to dif­fer­en­ti­ate right from wrong excus­es an indi­vid­ual from moral cul­pa­bil­i­ty. Since the Phar­isees, however—by their own testimony—can see, they are with­out excuse. But Christ is the light of the world. When you see him, you can no longer pre­tend excus­es. In such a man­ner, Christ gives us our sight back. He shows us where we have failed. He allows us to see the truth, and the truth is him­self. That knowl­edge alone is the path to our sight and our heal­ing. But it can hurt.

The Allegory of the Cave.

In a thought exper­i­ment in Book VII of The Repub­lic, Plato—through the dia­log­ic voice of his teacher Socrates—presents for our con­sid­er­a­tion a group of indi­vid­u­als who have been chained up in a cave their whole lives, unable to see any­thing but what is on the wall in front of them. Behind them is a fire, and the fire projects shad­ows onto the wall. They are the shad­ows of mar­i­onettes who are being manip­u­lat­ed out of sight. As for the pris­on­ers, all they have been able to see, their whole lives, are these shad­ows. They are real­i­ty; noth­ing else exists. The pris­on­ers can­not dis­cern the cause of the shad­ows, and the ques­tion is open whether they are even capa­ble of imag­in­ing a world oth­er than the one they are thus able to per­ceive.

Socrates asks: What would hap­pen if some­how one of the pris­on­ers were to be released from his chains, and was there­after able to dis­cern, not only the cause of the shad­ows, and the nature of his for­mer impris­on­ment, but also the real­i­ty of the rest of the world out­side the cave:

Would­n’t he be struck blind and try to turn his gaze back toward the shad­ows, as toward what he can see clear­ly and hold to be real? What if some­one forcibly dragged such a man upward, out of the cave. Would­n’t the man be angry at the one doing this to him? And if dragged all the way out into the sun­light, would­n’t he be dis­tressed and unable to see even one of the things now said to be true because he was blind­ed by the light? (516b‑c)

One is remind­ed of the blind man in Jesus of Nazareth, who protests: “You are hurt­ing me!” One is remind­ed, fur­ther, of the patients described by Annie Dil­lard in Pil­grim at Tin­ker Creek, who when receiv­ing their sight back want­ed to tear their eyes out or oth­er­wise revert to their for­mer blind state, because of the dis­tress­ing expe­ri­ence of agnosia. Socrates does under­stand that the indi­vid­ual in this thought exper­i­ment would be able to accli­mate himself—gradually. But then he turns to Glau­con to ask a fur­ther hypo­thet­i­cal.

Sup­pose that this man, now accli­mat­ed, now enlight­ened by the truth of things, were to return to the cave in an attempt to free the oth­ers and bring them to the same knowl­edge he him­self had attained. Socrates and Glau­con both reach the same con­clu­sion: Those still in the cave would con­sid­er, pos­si­bly, that the freed man’s eyes had some­how been cor­rupt­ed. It is dan­ger­ous to go out­side the cave and see what­ev­er is out there; it is much safer to remain chained up. If, how­ev­er, the for­mer pris­on­er were to attempt to forcibly free those still in their chains, pos­si­bly he would be putting his own life in dan­ger. For the remain­ing pris­on­ers would be afraid of free­dom and knowl­edge. They would be afraid of what they did­n’t under­stand and did­n’t know.

Who are you before Christ?

I am inter­est­ed in these two sto­ries for what they have to tell us about fear. But I am inter­est­ed in them, too, for what they tell us about the encounter with Christ and the encounter with truth. They are, of course, the same encounter. But Socrates had it only par­tial­ly right. Some will resist the truth out of fear; some, in fact, will resist it vio­lent­ly. We see those peo­ple every day. Oth­ers will com­plain about how much the truth of Christ hurts—at least for a while. And oth­ers will tear off their chains at the first oppor­tu­ni­ty and rush into the sun. We see those peo­ple every day too.

Who were you when you first encoun­tered Christ? Or are you still resist­ing? How many peo­ple do you know who seem to enjoy being sick or mis­er­able? Such peo­ple do exist. Such peo­ple seem to be the kind who would­n’t know what to do with them­selves if they were healthy or hap­py. One can spec­u­late until the sun goes down what ratio­nale lies behind such psy­chol­o­gy. Maybe they would rather not have to do for them­selves. Maybe they would no longer be able to con­struct their men­tal lives around the knowl­edge that oth­er peo­ple feel sor­ry for them. Or maybe they’re just addict­ed to com­plain­ing, and can’t imagine—if the cause for com­plaint were tak­en away—what else there might pos­si­bly be to talk about. But at the back of it all is fear.

And per­fect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). But St. John devel­ops that thought much more ful­ly: “There is no fear in love, but per­fect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with pun­ish­ment, and he who fears is not per­fect­ed in love.”

When Christ comes to us, he does not come for the sake of pun­ish­ment; he comes to per­fect us in love. It is we who cry out, “You are hurt­ing me.” We can be so com­fort­able in our fear. But what I detect, in both the blind man of Jerusalem—at least, in the beginning—and in the hypo­thet­i­cal pris­on­ers in Pla­to’s cave, is fear also of truth. We can be so com­fort­able in our igno­rance. We can become com­fort­able with lies—including, and per­haps espe­cial­ly, the lies we tell our­selves.

Christ wants to throw that all away. He wants our perfection—our phys­i­cal per­fec­tion, our intel­lec­tu­al per­fec­tion, our moral per­fec­tion. But we have to let him. We can only cry out for so long, “You are hurt­ing me,” before the real­iza­tion must dawn on us that we are hurt­ing our­selves by our resis­tance to Christ.

What I find, upon reread­ing these sto­ries, is that each one of us is called to deter­mine who is it that we want to be. Do you want to be the blind man, cry­ing out against the pos­si­bil­i­ty of heal­ing, “You are hurt­ing me.” Yes, you might get hurt for a while. Or do you want to be the blind man daz­zled by the sparkle of water on the pool of Siloam? Do you want to be the peo­ple chained in the cave, afraid of what’s on the out­side, protest­ing in anger against the man who would set you free? Or do you want to be the free man, who rush­es in to save his friends—knowing that they might turn on him and hurt him, but also know­ing that the truth he has dis­cov­ered can­not be kept to him­self.

The answer to those ques­tions might be found in the answer to this one: Who are you when you encounter Christ?