Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind

John 9 tells of a miracle that Jesus performed. In 9:1-12 John records Jesus healing a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples, assuming that the man's blindness had been caused by sin asks Jesus who had sinned, the man or the man's parents. Jesus however, states that there was no one at blame for the man's blindness. Rather, the man's blindness was there so that the work of God might be displayed in the man's life. Jesus then heals the man.

This brings up an unique aspect of the Problem of Evil and the fairness of God. How is it fair that nobody's sin had been the cause of this physical evil? If God, is all-Good then the man wouldn't have been born blind. If God, is all powerful then God could have prevented the man from being blind from birth. But the fact of the matter was that the man was born blind and nobody's sin was at blame. If God was going to perform a miracle, fine. But, what of the whole part of the man's life left in blindness? Is that fair of God to use a man's life as an object lesson for eternity?

I thought about this hard for a second and couldn't untangle it in any type of acceptable way so I simply read on. The problem with abstracting philosophical or theological points from a particular part of Scripture is that abstracting doesn't work with God or even man. The blind man's reaction to the healing shoots any philosophical or theological nugget we might have gleaned from the subject. The man, having heard that he was blind from birth "so that the work of God might be displayed in his life" may have felt aggrieved at having been subjected to lifelong blindness. The problem with that is, he wasn't. We can armchair quarterback God and say this wasn't fair to the man, but fairness is something that only comes in the eye of the beholder and in this case, the blind man's eyes were opened and he didn't once question the fairness of the situation.

No, instead he proclaimed Jesus. He calls out the Pharisees who were looking to trap Jesus on a religious technicality (working on the Sabbath) or line him up as a heretic. But, in the face of being possibly ejected from the Synagogue, he states, "If this man were not from God, he could do nothing" to refute the teachers of the Law. Jesus then asks the man if he believed in the Son of Man and the man simply said, tell me who he is so that he can believe in him. He then believed. No questioning the fairness. No questioning where Jesus came from. He simply believed and was healed.