How Is Your Eye?

Our Sunday School lesson was on a Bible passage that many of us have read again and again.

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light within you is darkness–how deep is that darkness (Matthew 6:22-23).

Sometimes my thoughts are a bit unorthodox so I pretty much kept the ones concerning this passage to myself, but no longer! Here goes:

To me, the eye is a window through which we perceive life. Messages are taken in through our eyes: a beautiful day, a smiling face, an act of heroism or selflessness, an act of selfishness or greed or immorality. We see life through what comes into our five senses. Ideas are formed; we act and react based upon how we look at life.

But, going deeper, the eye or lamp of the body could be a person upon whom others depend. In a family, if the father and mother fulfill their positions faithfully to each other and their children, the whole family will be full of light but if a parent shirks his or her responsibility, the children’s viewpoint of life is skewed. It’s dark. I’ve read that 80% of inner city children are without fathers in their homes. We wonder how so much violence and hatred and crime come out of those places. I believe the answer lies in the fathers or mothers deserting their God-given privileges and responsibilities. Their kids see life darkly.

In a church, if the leader leads his congregation in a false direction, the people view Scripture, not in the light of truth, but in the darkness of personal opinion. 

In a country, if the ones who decide the direction of a nation, the ones who make or interpret laws, are blinded by personal ambition, greed, love of power and money, this eye which is supposed to take in the light of truth, leaves citizens floundering in darkness, not knowing which way to turn. Elected officials should represent the views of the citizens but if their eye is blighted, the light of truth isn’t reflected in their actions. Words are something else. It’s the actions that matter, not what a person says that reveals the true state of their eyesight.

Anyway, these were just some of the thoughts that danced through my mind as I listened last Sunday. I believe Scripture is the basis for life. It is the light through which we should see the world. If what we are or what we view, or our actions don’t align themselves with Scripture, then what should be light is darkness. Without the light of truth on our pathways, we are bound to get off course. How is your eye? How is mine?