Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind. How many times have you sung this verse, and reflected on how far short you fall - we all fall - of God's perfection?
The 19th century hymn echoes the words of Revelation 3:17: "You say `I am rich, I have prospered, I need nothing.' You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked." A complacent church is being warned that their well-off smugness counts for nothing - spiritually, they are no more than the poor blind beggars they met in the streets. When we sing the hymn, we tend to forget this scriptural image of the beggar. We feel that without God's help we are spiritually blind. And in other hymns, we find the same image, of "guilty blindness", or "blind unbelief".
I read an article recently by a blind theologian. He noted that references to blindness in hymns tended to be negative, just as they were in general speech (think of blind disregard or blind fury - to be blind is to lack discrimination, to be ignorant, stubborn and insensitive). If the same references had used race or sex for their analogy, the hymns would have been quietly dropped, or discreetly edited.
The article opened my eyes to the way in which the words we use can marginalize groups of people - people who are already at a disadvantage. And in the case of blind people, needlessly. But is this taking political correctness too far?
Maybe not. Jesus was always at the side of the disadvantaged - the outcasts of society, the lepers, the despised tax gatherers, the beggars, people of other races. We too need to be sensitive to the needs of those who, through various circumstances, are handicapped in some way.
Think of the poor. Too often we rush to judgement, and feel that if people are poor, it is through some fault of their own, that if they were less idle, they could find themselves a decent job. We criticize them for their lack of initiative, their style of life, their attitudes. Perhaps we should listen more to them, and be more sensitive to their needs.
Today's swing towards "politically correct" language and attitudes is a way of showing sensitivity to others' needs. It is a swing that needs to continue, for even if we are slowly changing our language, it seems to take longer to change our attitudes!
I write this shortly after attending a service according to the Australian Prayer Book - one that has tried very hard to cut out references to God as necessarily male and dominating (in the Creed, Jesus was "made fully human", and the Spirit is not referred to as "he", for example). I found this more sensitive to the needs of people who found this "narrow" view of God a hindrance, and at the same time, exciting, because it gave a less limited view of God's relationship to us.
So let us try to open our eyes more to the needs and sensitivities of others. And let us be aware that the analogy of opening our eyes is not as helpful if we are blind as to those of us who can see. Above all, let us remember that whatever our race, sex, disability in body or in mind, nothing can separate us from the love of God shown through Christ Jesus!
HD