Willful Blindness

 

When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau his older son and said to him, “My son”; and he answered, “Here I am.”   Gen. 27:1 

With his eyesight failing, the time had come for Isaac to confer his blessing upon his sons – Jacob and Esau. Not only was Esau his favorite son, but he was older and thus deserved the birthright blessing according to tradition. However, the Lord had already reveled to Isaac and Rebekah that God was going to reverse the expectation with these sons. Going against the grain, before these boys were born the Lord declared that “the older would serve the younger” (Gen. 25:23).

Even though God chose Jacob over Esau, this did not set well with Isaac, and he sought to bless the older anyway. It appears that Isaac was double blind – physically and spiritually. In fact, you might say the old man was willfully blind because he chose against God’s revealed choice.

What followed was all kinds of chicanery and family feuding. “If the old codger won’t see the obvious choice is to bless Jacob, then we will make him see!” Rebekah thought. She connived and cajoled Jacob to play along with her scheme. Because Isaac’s vision was blurry it allowed Jacob to don a disguise and fool his dad into blessing him instead of his brawny brother.

But back to Isaac’s spiritual blindness. I think there were two big cataracts that obscured his vision. One was tradition, in that culture the firstborn always received the greater blessing. The other was favoritism. As Gen. 25:28 says, “Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.”

We can be like Isaac too – willfully blind to God’s truth. Tradition and personal preference can cause us to choose against God’s choice. How many churches and Christians are stuck in the past simply because “that’s the way things have always been done”? God may want to do something new, but we fight against change. Then there is preference. God’s Word clearly tells us what to do, but when that doesn’t fit with our agenda, we go our own way. Pretty soon we get into that illicit relationship, we justify that sin or make that move that ends up putting us in a bind. When things fall apart, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Willful Blindness. It happens when we consciously close our eyes and ears to information we’d rather not acknowledge. And the outcome can be disastrous. Kind of like the sign I saw one time that read, “My mind is like concrete: thoroughly mixed and permanently set.”

So what do we do? The Psalmist has a great remedy. “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law” (Ps. 119:18). We must check-in with our Great Physician and submit to an examination, asking “Where am I blind?  Where am I refusing to see and believe what God is doing right in front of me?”  We all have blind spots—things we just don’t see and things we pretend we don’t see. We need the Lord to show us where we think we see but are really blind.

Pray: “Lord, show me where I’m blind, where I think I understand but I really don’t.  I want to always be a learner, and not get set in my thinking or ways to the degree that I’m not open to new insights from You.  Open my eyes and help me see new things from You today.” -DM