Snow Blind..

Anybody ever go snow blind? There’s the kind of snow blind where you get too much snow in your eyes and just can’t see a darn thing and then there’s the kind where you’ve seen so much white, you just stop seeing completely, your brain just refuses to register what’s in front of you anymore. It’s called photokeratitis and it’s actually temporary damage to our eyes from UV rays reflected off the snow. Sailors will get this from UV rays reflected off the water, too. I went blind a few times as a kid, temporary, still seeing some shapes and shadows, but definitely fried eyes from UV rays.

There are some people in the world who are snow blind to sin, who simply cannot see the dark things, who deny that sin is a real thing in the world. I tend to have two responses to this, first, where the heck is this sin free easy street you people seem to live on and how do I get there? I am surrounded by sin, impacted by sin daily, absolutely marinating in the results of sin. I want to live in your world! But then I tend to empathize because I know I didn’t always see it either. I just didn’t understand.

I actually became snow blind to sin as a kid, as a young adult. If sin is everywhere and everything is sin than nothing is sin anymore. There’s nothing to contrast and compare it to. I grew up in the 60’s, it was sex, drugs, and rock and roll, experimentation, confusion, chaos, entropy. About all you can do at that point is start comparing one thing to another, worser sins, better sins, lessor evil, eviler evil, until eventually up becomes down and right becomes wrong and soon the very word “sin” must be taken away because it no longer has any meaning.

There is real mercy in being snow blind to sin, I call it God covering my eyes, not unlike one might do with a child while driving past an accident scene. Your psyche just doesn’t need to see this right now. Mercy, kindness, protection, that is something I praise God for to this day, because once He opened my eyes, I about had a spiritual heart attack.

It’s almost comical to remember, but I had a genuine panic attack. We’ve broken the world and there is now sin everywhere.….and then unbelievable grief because how far we have strayed from our intended design, from the truth and beauty to be found in that perfect garden of long ago.

I knew intellectually that sin was a real thing in the world, that people sometimes did bad things, but there were lots of excuses for this, drugs, poor childhoods, the man, economics, the times we were living in. I sometimes think I should have become a defense lawyer because I can spin the most creative excuses for anyone, and I do mean anyone. I learned an awful lot about cause and effect during this time and how to empathize with even the most appalling people.

When you become snow blind to sin you can’t see your own sin either. You’re left comparing yourself to others, insisting you’re a fairly decent person, at least if we’re grading on a curve. I haven’t killed anybody, I help old ladies cross the street, I live by the golden rule.

We are not grading on a curve at all. There are no plea bargains going on. We are all sinners.

I sometimes think it may be easier for people who are just downright evil to come to Christ, to truly understand the need for forgiveness and redemption. I was left trying to be good, as if I could somehow earn salvation. That’s really a huge burden to bear and it’s not healthy. It leaves you in Christ perhaps, but it doesn’t really allow  you to be cleansed, washed clean in the blood of the Lamb, eyes open and able to truly receive Him.

In the 60’s there was this idea of the golden rule, karma, just do unto others and they’ll do unto you. All the world needs is just a little more love, love is the answer. There is no sin, there is no God, we just need to love one another more. That’s partially true, the world does need a lot more love, the problem being that people don’t apply the golden rule. We haven’t managed to pull it off in thousands of years of human history. The idea that people are just basically good and all we need to do is love one another and we’ll create utopia, is a deception, a lie. It completely fails to take sin into account. Snow blind.

As I had to learn, we  cannot truly love one another until we learn of our own sin nature and the love and mercy that was shown us first. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”.-Romans 5:8