Proof Enough!

If you search the internet for visual agnosia you’ll come up with the following information:

Visual agnosia is the inability of the brain to recognize or understand visual stimuli. An individual with visual agnosia has otherwise normal visual functioning and can see, but is unable to interpret or recognize what he or she is seeing. This condition often affects people who are recovering from cortical blindness, which has caused them to lose their sight not because of damage to their eyes or optic nerves but because of damage to the brain regions that process visual information.

Visual agnosia was first tentatively diagnosed in 1890 with full description nearly 100 years later. If you search you’ll find that there is no cure, there’s therapy to get the sufferer to survive life with this condition but no actual cure.

What does this have to do with a spiritual blog? Let’s take a quick look at the Gospel of Mark chapter 8:

²²And they came to Bethsaida. And they brought a blind man to Jesus and implored Him to touch him. ²³Taking the blind man by the hand, He brought him out of the village; and after spitting on his eyes and laying His hands on him, He asked him, "Do you see anything?" ²⁴And he looked up and said, "I see men, for I see them like trees, walking around." ²⁵Then again He laid His hands on his eyes; and he looked intently and was restored, and began to see everything clearly.

As you can see, Jesus first cured the man of his cortical blindness, then He cured the man of his visual agnosia. Could Jesus have cured him of both afflictions at once? Of course, but here He’s taking advantage of the situation to teach us a lesson. He’s not teaching his disciples but us here in the 21st century. First Jesus cures the blindness, then He pauses and asks the man “What do you see?” and the man described “Men like trees walking around”. At this point it’s like Jesus is telling us across the gulf of centuries “Here’s a typical case of visual agnosia.” And then He proceeded to cure what we are still incapable of curing. For all our medical and scientific prowess we can’t even come close to doing what Jesus did with the touch of His hands.

How many centuries has Mark 8:24 been meaningless, or an unfathomable mystery? Not only was this a proof of Jesus’ divine power but of the infallibility of the bible: there was no science or medicine to cure someone of cortical blindness 2000 years ago, and because visual agnosia was unknown until recently how could it possibly have been imagined? There’s no way this could have been faked.

Wake up my sleeping brothers! Across the gulf of millennia our savior calls to us, showing us His glory, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt His power and love and divine wisdom and the sanctity of His word. Wake up and renew your love for Him, He’s waiting with open arms.