I Was Blind, But Now I See

That title is a quote from an unnamed man in the Bible, but it has so many applications in life that even if you’ve never opened a Bible you’ve probably heard the quote.

For the last few days, I’ve been using it myself — and in the somewhat literal sense.

That is to say, I was far from being blind, but there were things I couldn’t see. My good eye measured around 20/30. That meant I could see at 20 feet what a normal eye could see at 30 feet.

To optometrists that 20/30 is known as a Snellen fraction. As the second number goes up, visual acuity is worse. The Snellen fraction came with something you know well — the Snellen chart. Can you say E?

I’ll bet you can guess exactly how far you sit from a Snellen chart when you get your eyes tested. Yep, 20 feet. Herman Snellen was a Dutch ophthalmologist, and he developed all of that way back in 1862. Snellen’s professor, Franciscus Cornelius Donders, developed the formula that inspired Snellen in his work. Smart people, those guys!

The primary cause of my own lack of acuity was cataracts. Until about a year ago, I had never worn prescription glasses. Cataracts changed that. In medicine, a cataract is a condition in which the lens of the eye becomes progressively opaque. I had two of the factors that can cause cataracts to develop: age (you don’t have to be that old); and eye injury. That was in my left eye, where my Snellen fraction was closer to 20/40. Glasses helped, but couldn’t solve the problem.

The “problem,” at least as far as I was concerned, was that I could not see a golf ball in flight. Yes, night driving was a little more challenging, though glasses helped a lot. But I’ve played golf my whole life and I’ve worked with a golf ministry for more than a dozen years, and this wasn’t getting better on its own. Something had to be done.

What do you see?

Reading a Snellen chart is one way to test what you can physically see. It is not just random letters of diminishing size, of course. The white spaces between the letters are very specific, and so is the font. So I sat in the chair at an ophthalmologist’s office while a nice nurse asked me to read. Every time I got a line right, she would say enthusiastically, “That is correct!” It really made me want to see better.

On my last line I read them all, but wasn’t sure of one letter. Silence. “Wait,” I said, “not R. H!” And she said, “That is correct!!” Made my day.

What I couldn’t see on the chart made me wonder about things I couldn’t see clearly in life. That isn’t a matter of visual acuity, it is a matter of observation, of examination, of reflection, and of experience. I might have developed cataracts in my eyes by aging, and I might develop them in my thinking the same way.

Perhaps it is natural for us to get “set in our ways.” I’ve known friends who early in life latched on to a set of beliefs — spiritual, political, financial, social, and every other type — and as they grew older became less interested in looking at anything that challenged those. Instead, they fed them by listening only to voices that echoed their own positions. I now think those people might have cataracts, and they have become so used to seeing through clouded lenses they think it is normal.

When I was much younger I held a particular position on what I thought was an important issue around churches. Unknowingly — just as it happened in my eyes — I was developing a cataract slowly but steadily, and if I had let it keep growing I might never have changed that position.

To push the analogy just a tiny bit more, a cataract makes your vision blurry. It also changes the color of everything you see, because cataracts commonly take on a yellow or brown tint. And so it was in life, that I was not “seeing” some ideas with clarity, nor was I able to detect the nuances (colors) of ideas. I simply saw them the way I saw them and assumed that my vision was true when in fact it was not.

The fix

After looking deep into my eyes (not in the romantic sense) with cameras and special lights, my ophthalmologist (great guy!) told me what he had seen. His words helped me understand my condition and the options for correction. I asked questions, and one of those was, “Will I be able to see a golf ball again?”

My friends who had undergone cataract surgery cared only a little about seeing a golf ball but a lot about seeing colors. Their experiences changed my perspective considerably. So did those who said that life was just plain better without cataracts.

So a little over a week ago I found myself (with my chauffeur/wife) at a surgery center. About an hour later I was headed home with a patch over one eye, like a pirate. On the second day I could see very little. By the fourth full day, I could see a golf ball in the air! Even better, I could see white. I could see green. I could read signs. All of that, and only one eye had been fixed. My “good” eye will be repaired in the coming week, and by the middle of March I will be able to say, “I was blind, but now I see.” (The original story in the Bible is in John, chapter 9.)

With both cataracts removed, my vision will improve greatly. Here is hoping that my mental and spiritual cataracts will be removed as they are discovered, and that my vision will improve there, too. I hope the same for you, because it is easier to know what good to do when you can see life and all of its beautiful colors clearly.

Do good. It’s in you!