I feel embarrassed that C.S. Lewis describes me so well. For what he seems to know of me is not flattering. Lewis once pointed out how difficult it is for us to remember our humanity when looking at one another and interpreting one another. In his Screwtape Letters, Lewis imagines how a senior devil might teach a younger devil to disorient Jesus followers. Referring to the Jesus follower as the "patient" the senior devil says this:
“When he [the patient] gets to his pew and looks around him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided….Provided that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must be somehow ridiculous.” (Lewis, Screwtape, 12)
I am prone to believe that categorizing and explaining is synonymous with knowing and understanding. I see a red bird. I call it a Cardinal. I may tell others that this bird is a Cardinal. Yet, I actually know nothing about the habits of Cardinals in general or the nuances on the body of a Cardinal that indicates its unique story. I am often tempted to treat human beings in this same way. I'm even prone to illusions about myself because I see myself more cruelly than Jesus does or less realistically than He does. Each of us, even those of us whose eyes work well, is partially blind when we look at ourselves and at one another.
Most of us know what it is to have others look at us but not see us. We know what it is for another
to keep us tied to our worst moments. We feel used and fraud-like because only our best moments are valued.Jesus is different. Jesus does not look at us, at other people or the world in the same way as His followers, the secularists, the spiritualists, or the religious tend to. The religious and the common folk see Levi the tax collector; Levi the scoundrel. Levi the corrupt misuser of money. The thief. The bribe-taker. But Levi tells us that, in contrast to how others saw him, when Jesus looked at him, Jesus saw a man. "As Jesus passed from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth...." In contrast, "when the Pharisees saw this, they said . . .'Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"
Similarly, when the religious and the the indifferent saw the notorious woman. They saw her as the sinner she was. But Jesus pointedly asks them to see her humanity. "Do you see this woman?" he asks. (Luke 7:44) The way Jesus asks stuns us. He looks at her not them. He turns away from them and toward her. He leaves them in the shadow of His gaze. He places the full light and heat within his loving eyes upon her. He looks into her eyes. He touches her heart. Fully seeing her, he asks them, "do you see this woman?" He does not minimize her. He does not exaggerate her. He lets her be within His gaze as she is.
I feel humbled by Jesus. Jesus does not blind himself to the wounds and rants and insanities of a person. He confronts such things with the love and payment of His life, death and resurrection. But Jesus confronts as one convinced of our human dignity. It was through Him after all, that we have been created. Others label you. But in Wendell Berry's words, they assume that explanations are more like buckets than wells. When Jesus sees you. He sees you as a human being. He does not reduce you to simple explanation. He enters the deeps and from there draws out the nuances of the tributaries within you.
So, as a an ordinary man, I long to feel the fulness of His gaze and to grant it to others. As a community of Jesus followers, we at Riverside want to echo the words of Bono from U2. We ask God. "When you look at the world what is it that you see? People find all kinds of things that bring them to their knees." With the song, we then testify that how Jesus relates differs dramatically from our own visual attempts with people. "I see an expression so clear and so true," Bono continues, "that changes the atmosphere when you walk into the room. So I try to be like you, try to feel it like you do." But then we humble ourselves and confess that apart from Him we cannot see. We agree with Bono, "But without you its no use. I can't see what you see when I look at the world."
Jesus, as your followers, please teach us to see human beings again. Please free us to see ourselves without illusion but with your eyes.
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