Deafness

Just lately I’ve been suffering again from a wretched condition which leaves my ears blocked and me with most of my hearing gone until I can get to an expert who will unblock them again and restore me to what I was before. Thankfully this should be soon!

It is a strange business, going around with this hearing loss. It means I can sympathise with those who are chronically hard of hearing. The difference is that their problem may be permanent and may deteriorate over time.

At first it was infuriating to have this unwelcome issue returning. I was very aware of it and felt as though I had to apologise to everyone for it. I’ve just spent a week at a big Christian conference and felt the need to keep changing my place in the auditorium, going to where I could best hear the speakers. Speech would sound muffled while music would absolutely assault the “good” ear – the one which managed to pick up more sound. It would come across as shrill, piercing, painful even.

Yet by now, in a strange way, I have grown used to the handicap. I just accept the distortion of the sound around me. In other words, I put up with something that falls far short of the level of hearing I normally enjoy, which they say is fine for my age.

Spiritually most people have rejected the call of Christ so often they have become deaf to it. They tune it out, as we say. And just like me with my physical hearing, they put up with their hearing loss quite readily, not even conscious that it it is there!

It is a tragedy. The prophet Isaiah laments in the Bible:

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” And he said, “Go, and say to this people:

“‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;

keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’

Make the heart of this people dull,

and their ears heavy,

and blind their eyes;

lest they see with their eyes,

and hear with their ears,

and understand with their hearts,

and turn and be healed.” (Isaiah 6:8-10 ESV)

The meaning of this startling sounding passage is not that God deliberately wants to make His people unreceptive to His message. It is rather that He is determined to carry on speaking to them regardless of the reception they give His prophet. If they persist in their attitude, they will be unresponsive and therefore gain no benefit.

God forbid that any of us should resolve to tune out the message of a living Saviour who loves us enough to die for our sin and to rise again. Never could there be a more tragic example of someone looking a gift horse in the mouth.

All-knowing, All-powerful, Everywhere at Once

Sometimes I listen to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day and discover that it gives voice to my own thoughts. One such occasion was when John Bell of the Iona Community spoke a few days ago. He was talking about the way mobile phones give their users the feeling of having godlike qualities.

They give us the illusion of being all-knowing – through them we have a world of information at our fingertips.

They make us seemingly all-powerful – we can send a message to whoever we like and order a takeaway that will arrive on our doorstep as soon as we return home and are ready for a meal!

They make us think we are everywhere at once – in an instant we can be in touch with people right across the world.

You might think we should be delighted at the power the little rectangular screen puts in our hands. Yet instead many mobile phone users feel stressed and insecure if they are out of signal range for any length of time. What do people think will happen to them in that case? That they will suddenly lose all their friends because they are out of contact for a short while?

This sense of panic reminded John Bell of Adam and Eve and their temptation and fall from grace. God had commanded Adam,

“You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17 ESV.)

Adam and Eve succumbed to that temptation. They allowed themselves to be seduced by the serpent, Satan, into thinking that God had forbidden them to eat the fruit of that tree for fear it would make them godlike.

You can make what you will of that Genesis story, but it is echoed in the behaviour of the rest of the human race in a most uncanny way. Adam and Eve became the first examples of the common human temptation to want to be all-knowing, all-powerful and everywhere at once, which having a smartphone seems to satisfy. What human beings from the first couple onwards have failed to recognise is that they are only human and cannot mysteriously become divine!

God’s response to this sad development in the relationship between Adam and Eve and Himself is found in verse 22 of chapter 3:

“Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—’ therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”

John Bell concludes, 

“To live comfortably with our limitations rather than constantly frustrated by them is not a bad thing.” 

While not always agreeing with Bell’s views, I can certainly say Amen to that.