My father is a skilled engineer. For example, he was influential in developing a new kind of water cooling system for plastic injection molds. He designs the kind of plastic parts that you and I use every day, like the keyboards you type on or the plastic cup you drink from. He is not a reader of literature, which is why I was interested the other day to look in the storage closet, where he keeps his hunting gear and plethora of rugged old coats and vests, and wool pants and boots, and to see nine novels by Louis L'Amor. So I read one of those novels about Barnabus Sackett, who came to America and made a new life for himself, and I realized that this man is my father. He is the hero of the Louis L'Amor novels, the man who can handle ever situation, who can get himself out of tight fixes and do things with his hands and make things work. My dad knows how to do things that I may never do. He built our 3000 square foot house and he bought a bright red 1974 Ford Pickup and took the engine completely apart and laid every part on the driveway on a big tarp in an orderly fashion, like an expanded puzzle, every gasket and bolt and piston and piston rod, every washer and filter and belt and hose, and then he put it back together again and it worked and it still works.
There was one other book that I found on my Father's shelf, and which contained within that topic that I am very interested in, a topic that you might not suspect would be in a book like this. The book is See Without Glasses by Ralph J. MacFadyen, written in 1958. And the topic is the intimate relation between spiritual and physical things. (Now, my intention is not to discuss the merit of the claim that one can see without glasses, but I found the book philosophically interesting. Neither do I think that the book is representative of the views of my father, who is a Christian and not inclined to believe silly popular gospels--except my father is a problem solver and he must have bought this book with a mind to see better. And I think there is something to be learned from that.)
MacFadyen is a modernist, a materialist, who no longer believes in transcendent salvation from the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet he still believes in redemption. His life is irreversibly impacted by the story of the gospel, although not Christ Himself. He presents the optometrist's gospel:
It is interesting to observe the effect of the eyes on the personality. The more relaxed the eyes, the more relaxed and likeable a person becomes. Strain and tension are contagious, and the person whose face gives evidence of them creates about him an atmosphere of tension. When you have achieved relaxation of mental strain and when the blood circulates freely through the eyes and head, evidences of facial tension disappear. The eyes open more widely, deepen in color, regain a sparkle, and lose their fixed, staring appearance. Tension vanishes from round your mouth and forehead...MacFadyen's gospel is thus: Get busy seeing or get busy daydreaming. Get busy living or get busy dying. That is the optometrist's gospel: salvation means learning how to see. And it is easy for people to be deceived by this sort of thing, because the Bible, too, is a book about seeing: The Lord spake to Isaiah, "Go and tell this people: Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed." But as, Douglas Wilson is fond of saying, there is no virtue in a transitive verb. It does not matter whether we see, but who we see. David writes, And I--in righteousness--I will see your face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness" (Psalm 17:15). Only those who see their own sin and salvation in Christ Jesus will be saved.
At the outset you must understand that you are not the victim of your eye condition; the eye condition is a victim of your own mind. The extent of your visual improvement rests primarily with you, with the application and the mental alertness you apply in the course of the [eye] drills, and with the extent of your own inner desire to see.
"But," you protest impatiently, "naturally I want to see."
And yet the daydreamer--and you may be one--is a person who, in his profound heart, prefers not to see reality and substitutes his dreams; and daydreaming results in a lack of focus that is actually harmful to the vision. A dreamer generally fixes his gaze on some immovable object, thus fixing the extrinsic muscles of the eyeball and causing a strain. In other words, he is a great starer. While you do your daydreaming, close your eyes and let them rest.
And yet I believe that this silly little self improvement book contains some valuable information about mortifying the flesh, about disciplining our eyes. There is a reason that the Bible speaks of Salvation in terms of seeing and hearing. At NSA, we like metaphors. Well then, if it is true that seeing is a metaphor for seeing God, then disciplining your sight is a way of drawing closer to God. And helping others to see physically, as an optometrist, for example, is a great service to God. And this all goes to show the intimate relation between physical and spiritual things. A relationship, which should give us no cause for concern, because Christ has descended to earth to eat with men and heal our diseases. We are all priests in Christ Jesus. And the engineer, who works with the material world, is no less a servant of Christ than the man of liberal arts, who works with ideas and lesson plans. In fact, we all need to become engineers in the sense that we eagerly engage with the material surroundings that God has given us.
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