Metaphor 7: Blindness, Lostness
--In one of the most famous lines of music history, John Newton described the transformation from sin to salvation this way:
“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind but now I see.“
--In this one potent line of theology, Newton gives us no less than four powerful metaphors for sin, heavily bound up with our senses.
--The first is implied (unstated), a kind of ugly or unmelodic sound, thus awful noise to our ears, in contrast with the sweet sound of God.
--The second is wretchedness, a word rich with negative meaning, much of which has to do with a disturbed or afflicted body, thus our physical sense or touch.
--The third is lostness, a feeling of disorientation and dislocation from wherever you should be. And as anyone who has ever been lost knows, it can be terrifying, especially when you feel powerless in the midst of it. When children are lost, like in a large store, they typically break down and cry because the fear is so crippling. The center of their universe has gone missing, and what could possibly be worse than that? This loss of bearings, position, and even person is a marvelously apt metaphor for how sin disrelates us to God and our place in this world.
--Philosophers sometimes call this sensation “alienation,” or a feeling of everything being all wrong about life.
--Then the fourth metaphor for sin is of course blindness, is a huge practical difficulty. But blindness also means an inability to experience the joys of sight and color. A blind man isn’t even aware of rainbows and twinkling eyes and toddler smiles and clouds and Monet.
--And so Newton is describing sin as an utter ruination of every physical aspect of our selves. About the only thing he doesn’t mention is taste and smell, but we can infer those are ruined as well.
--So, our senses are all destroyed and even our sense of belonging is scattered. That’s sin.
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