If the eye is sound

“Christmas is a poor excuse every 25th of December to pick a man’s pockets.”

That’s what Ebenezer Scrooge replied when his underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit warily requested the day off to celebrate the birth of Christ with his family. For the longest time I could find no fault with Scrooge’s logic.

This is because my eye was set in a certain way, and so everything that entered me through my eye (which is the portal of the soul) was immediately converted into transmissions according to a certain self-consistent perspective. I valued work and completion of tasks, and saw relaxation as an unbiblical waste of time.

Jesus said:

“Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness” (Luke 11:34, ESV).

Take the abortion agenda as an example of a “bad eye.” The “set” of the eye in that case is the foundational position that a woman’s authority over her body is absolute. With that incontestable credo as a starting point, every bit of information that henceforth enters the body through the senses will be made subservient to that dominant idea or truth. It is a false truth and therefore a false starting point and therefore Jesus solemnly warns:

“Therefore be careful lest the light in you is darkness” (Luke 11:35, ESV).

Jesus’ expression “the light in you” is another way of saying “the dominating idea by which you see and judge all things entering into your mind and senses all day long.” That “light” can be dark. It can be a wrongheaded and demonic cast of mind that immediately taints all your incoming data and skews all that it sets its dark rays on.

Get a man’s eye straight and his whole body will be straight. Make a man’s eye corrupt and his whole body and life will be corrupt. This is why it is so important for us to tell our fellow men the gospel. Otherwise, though they work and work their fingers to the bone in gainful employment or in popular social causes, it is all for naught, just fuel for the flames:

“… The peoples labor for nothing, and the nations weary themselves only for fire” (Jeremiah 51:58, ESV).

Let us avoid the tragedy of an eye that sees the whole day with darkened understanding. Consistent in our logic—but fatally wrong. Jesus calls us to better than that:

“If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light” (Luke 11:36, ESV).

A great stocking stuffer: Andrée Seu Peterson’s Won’t Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, regularly $12.95, is now available from WORLD for only $5.95.