by Tom Greenslade

Created on: November 04, 2008

A blind Doctor?

Notes on John 11

"he stumbles, for he has no light" (John 11:10)

I work in a clinic as a Spanish/English medical interpreter. In all the time I have been at the clinic I have never known a blind doctor. I have read about several. One remarkable young man, Tim Cordes, has just finished medical school and is in the process of earning his doctorate. There are some things he will be able to do very well. His ability to feel with his fingers will be an advantage in some situations. In others he will have to do diagnosing by borrowing someone else's eyes. At the clinic the doctor sometimes asks me to turn off the light while he shines his light into a patient's eye in order to see the reaction of the pupil. Then the doctor always asks for the lights to be turned on again. Without light he would not be able to look into the ear, check the skin, and observe reactions. He would give many faulty or incomplete diagnoses if he did not have some way of seeing. In the same way, even the most brilliant or practical of men make many grave errors because they are in spiritual darkness. They cannot see what is right in front of them. They make fundamental errors and go in completely the wrong direction because they are in darkness. Few people are really helped by their psychological or spiritual counsel. They may be helped just a little, just enough to keep them trusting, and are misled, and even destroyed because the person they trusted was blind.

"Doubting Thomas"

Notes on John 11

I was named after my uncle and the disciple Thomas. I wonder what kind of a man the disciple Thomas was. After the resurrection of Jesus he was the most resistant to believing that Jesus was alive. He said he wanted the proof of seeing and touching. For that we have tagged him with the name, "Doubting Thomas." He was the sobriquet Missouri has on its license plate: "Show-Me State". Hard to convince? But then when Jesus granted him those proofs he was the first to bow before him and say "My Lord and my God." In John 14:5 Thomas demonstrates he still has no clue as to who Jesus is. "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?" Now he knows, and is the first to publicly address Jesus as, "my God." Before all of this happened, before the crucifixion, before they understood who Jesus was, Thomas demonstrates a commitment to Jesus that is perhaps a bit fatalistic. When Jesus told them he was going to Jerusalem and that he would be killed there Thomas said, "Let us also go, so that we may die with him." (John 11:16) Perhaps he was a romantic with noble notions. Later as the apostles spread out going on the missions that the Lord sent them on, Thomas went to India and established the church there. There he did die for Jesus, shot to death with arrows, and joined His Lord and God in Heaven.

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