More than Meets the Eye

 

Picture this.

Jesus told his disciples a parable,
“Can a blind person guide a blind person?
Will not both fall into a pit?
No disciple is superior to the teacher;
but when fully trained,
every disciple will be like his teacher.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?
How can you say to your brother,
‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’
when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?
You hypocrite!  Remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.
“A good tree does not bear rotten fruit,
nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
For every tree is known by its own fruit.
For people do not pick figs from thornbushes,
nor do they gather grapes from brambles.
A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good,
but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil;
for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”

 Luke 6: 39-45

This was today’s mass reading. 

That familiar saying about the splinter in your brother’s eye, and the log in your own, is commonly taken to advise us against criticizing another’s sin. 

Bu this actually does not make sense. If this is meant, there is no reason for a metaphor. And a good writer, a good communicator, does not use a metaphor when plain speech will do. It would be easy to say, “flaw in your behaviour,” or “sin.” So why this business about the eye?

Then notice that sight is an extended metaphor in this “parable”: it begins with the image of the blind leading the blind.

But it is also not about physical sight. Note the image of a “beam” in the eye. This is physically impossible: this tells us the realm of which we are speaking is the realm of imagination, the “inner sight,” the imaging faculty.

Sight is the obvious metaphor for imagination.

 We are told that the blind man is like the uneducated, the untaught. And one should, after removing one’s own beam, instruct one’s brother. But in the case of ordinary knowledge, it is indeed possible for the student to exceed the teacher, and a teacher hopes for this. It happens often. Augustine exceeded Albertus Magnus. This is something, some knowledge, in which the student cannot so excel the master.

So the passage tells us imagination, our inner vision, can be either better or worse, clear or clouded by splinters or beams. Perhaps this represents material things, material concerns, the things of the senses.

And this is true. This is the experience of the artist. He does not compose or create: he sees. Michelangelo said that in sculpting, he discovered the form in the marble block. Steven King says writing a story is like an act of excavation. You hope you get it out intact.

The disciple cannot exceed the master because the master, the source of inspiration, is God himself. The world of the imagination is the kingdom of heaven.

And the business of the true disciple is foremost to express his own vision, not to criticise the work of others. As Blake put it, “I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”

Now we speak of fruits: of good trees bearing good fruits. Again, this cannot mean, as commonly thought, moral acts. For one thing, bad people can indeed perform good deeds. They commonly dd; beware of the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

No; the passage says clearly that it means what “the mouth speaks.”

What does it mean to say that a given speech is “good”? Again, not that it advocates good behaviour. The worst Pharisees and hypocrites advocate good behaviour. Anyone can. 

No; it has to mean “good speech” in the sense of beautiful speech. Artistic expression.

Good morals can be faked. Truth can be falsified; anyone can lie. But the perception of beauty is perfect and immediate and cannot be achieved by trickery. Beauty is the test.