Meaningful Directions
Jesus walks along the rode with his disciples. They come across a blind man. There was no greater calamity in the ancient world than blindness. In this case, the man was well known for the disciples recognize him as a man who was born blind. This is especially cruel. Only terrible evil could case such a hardship. So the disciples ask the inevitable question:
“Master, who sinned so horribly that this man was born blind? Was it he or was it his parents?”
Notice the implications in this question. First, it’s hard to imagine that an unborn child could sin so terribly that the punishment would result in blindness at birth. While the baby must be included as a possible candidate, it is much more probable that the parents are to blame. That is the implication of the question. Someone is to blame. The disciples are being clever. They include the unborn child but for all intents and purposes, they are asking Jesus to delineate the terrible sin committed by the parents resulting in this tragedy.
Now notice the direction of the disciples’ inquiry. They look toward the past for the answer to the problem. They are focusing on the cause of this effect. Something or someone must be responsible, so Jesus, tell us what or who caused this to happen. The disciples look back over the causal chain of events and suppose that they will find the answer to the meaning of the tragedy. They are the scientists here, examining the evidence, looking for the past explanations.
But Jesus looks in an entirely different direction. He pays absolutely no attention to finding the meaning of this event in the past. His reply is “No one is to blame”.
What? Does that mean that there wasn’t any cause for the blindness? Of course not! There was a cause, whether physical or spiritual. But Jesus says that the explanation of this blindness is not to be found by looking for a cause. It is to be found by looking for a purpose. It is not what has happened that matters. What matters is what is going to happen. This man serves the purpose of revealing God’s glory. How he because blind is irrelevant to the meaning of his blindness. His blindness should not focus us on the past, but rather on the future. Jesus demands that we view the meaning of the present from an eschatological perspective, not a causal perspective.
Dwell on this for a moment. Most of our human experience is tied to the causal explanation of meaning. We seek the past as the place to find an answer to the “Why” questions. “Why did this happen to me?” Start sorting through the evidence of the past to find the causal chains. Why did I suffer financial collapse? Well, it was because of this and this and this. Why did my child die? Well, this happened and then this happened and then this. Why did my home burn? Well, first this event occurred and then it triggered this event and then this. You know the story all too well. We constantly dissect the past causal chain in order to grasp the meaning of some present set of circumstances.
But Jesus calls a halt to the whole methodology. Jesus reminds us that the meaning of present circumstances cannot be explained from an examination of the past causal chain. The meaning must come from the future purpose. My present circumstances cannot be understood according to the actions that brought them into being. They can only be understood according to their ultimate fulfillment of God’s eternal purposes. All meaning is eschatologically based.
Jesus lived his life in eschatological meaning. The temptations in the wilderness have meaning only from the perspective of the overthrow of Satan at the end of the age. The miracles have meaning only from the perspective of the victory of the Kingdom. Death on the cross has meaning only from the perspective of the future resurrection. While the disciples and the followers grieved, fled and despaired at the death of Jesus, he clearly said to them, “What is going to happen you will not understand, but be of good cheer, for the time will come when the meaning of it all will be revealed and you will turn for grief to rejoicing.”
So it is with each of us. Your present circumstances require an eschatological explanation before you will understand the meaning. That explanation is not yet available, but it will be. The explanation is a function of telos, the end, the goal, the fully complete. At that moment, we will no longer see through a dark glass. The meaning will be revealed and we will say, “Oh, now I see what that was all about. Oh, it’s so different than what I thought.” The meaning of life is not found among the living. I have to wait until I get to the other side of the horizon before God will say, “Now do you see why I worked it out this way?”
To live life eschatologically is to live life as trust. We do not require the meaning because it is simply not available – yet. We have to wait until the end. In the meanwhile, life is the exercise of dependence on the faithfulness of God, the God who will reveal the meaning to us on the day of completion, the God whose purposes weave all events into a tapestry of meaning.
Why was the man born blind? For this purpose – that the glory of God might be revealed in him. The answer looks forward. The answer anticipates the connection to God’s great tapestry. Eschatological meaning is ultimately not about me at all.
