The Invisible Jesus Test | The Gospels | John 9:35–41
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to 10-Minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work.
I'm Jeff Parrott.
What is the 'invisible Jesus' idea and how does inattentional blindness explain it?
Sometimes we miss the big thing that's right in front of us. Some people describe this tendency with the phenomenon called inattentional blindness. When people experience inattentional blindness, it's not that they can't see anything. Their physical eyes are functioning. The problem is that their eyes aren't really focused. their attention is distracted. And so their inattention makes them blind to something right in front of them, especially if that something is unexpected. Now there's a good chance you're familiar with the famous experiment that displays this tendency. It's called the invisible gorilla test. With the invisible gorilla test, subjects watch a video of people passing a basketball back and forth.
Viewers are asked to focus their attention on the number of passes between people in the video. And while their eyes are functioning and focused on the passes, many viewers don't notice the gorilla walking across the screen. It's the unexpected thing that they miss. Now, in most life scenarios, someone dressed in a gorilla suit would be impossible to miss. But when you aren't expecting it, if you're looking for something else altogether and have inattentional blindness, well, that gorilla might as well be invisible. I wonder if it's possible for you and I to have our own version of inattentional blindness with Jesus. He can be right there in front of us, yet we can miss him because we're busy looking for something else.
Could you be blind to who Jesus is and to what he's doing? Could you functionally be making him invisible? Our passage today in John chapter nine is a little bit like an invisible Jesus test. It forces us to reckon with the spiritual blindness of the human heart, and it causes us to consider what we're paying attention to, who we're paying attention to, and how we can start seeing differently. Now, as we approach God's word together, let's slow down and ask for His grace, for His kindness to move through our time. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the gift of life, for the gift of breath, and we thank you for the amazing gift of your word that you give to us. We bring before you every part of our human experience now, the things that we're bringing into this moment, our joys and our sorrows,
our anxiety and our excitement, our calendars and our contingencies. God, we bring all these complex things to you. We pray that you'd meet us in this space. Jesus, help us abide in you and remain in you as we engage with your truth. And Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in John's gospel account. As we read your living word, may it read us and restore us to life with you. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, now leading up to our passage today, we encountered a man who was born blind, but was given sight by Jesus. In verse 3 of chapter 9, Jesus said that this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. And the ensuing events included a group of Pharisees interrogating this man who had been born blind.
They're relentlessly digging into how this miracle occurred and what it meant about who Jesus is. In their frustration, the Pharisees cast the man out of their presence. And that takes us to our text for today, which begins with the man born blind being found by Jesus. Let's pick up in verses 35-36. Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him, he said, Do you believe in the Son of Man? He answered, And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him? All right, let's do a quick pause here and recall that this is one of the key foundational questions in all the gospel accounts. And it's a key question in this scene. We've seen it repeatedly. Who is the son of man? Who is Jesus? What does it mean to believe in him?
What is the invisible gorilla test and how does Jeff apply it to spiritual sight?
The conversation continues in verses 37 through 39. Jesus said to him, "'You have seen him, "'and it is he who is speaking to you.'" He said, Lord, I believe, and he worshiped him.
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