Luke 11:33-36 ESV “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. (34) Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. (35) Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. (36) If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.”

These verses have always been hard to understand, even though we all sang “this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine” in Sunday School as children. That happens often by the way – children being taught songs and memory verses and so on without being helped to understand the meaning. And I maintain that children can indeed be taught quite deeper truths than we think. But then, that is another subject.

Jesus said “your eye is the lamp of your body.” You have to have a good eye or your body is going to wander around in the dark stubbing toes and so on.

Then Jesus moved to the real point here. He said, “therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness.” What did He mean? I can tell you.

Jesus was talking about, with this eye imagery, our minds. The things we know. The things we understand and believe to be true. The very mechanisms and processes by which we think and interpret the data our senses observe and feel and taste and hear. He meant to warn us that if the eye of our minds is bad, we are in serious trouble. We won’t be able to “see” properly. We will misinterpret our input and come to false conclusions and we will do so because the eye of our mind is botched.

This blindness of the eye of the mind is something the wicked use against their victim. In fact, they foster it. They reinforce it. And guess what? So do people around us – pastors, other Christians, family members and so on. The eye of our mind, as we are calling it, can be so messed up that we don’t know up from down, black from white, or more fundamentally, good from evil. We end up filtering data through our faulty mental grid and guess what comes out? You are the one that is wrong. You are the one who should be ashamed. When in fact this isn’t true at all.

And this is why light can become darkness. But if, by God’s grace and by His Word and Spirit, He “turns on the lights,” everything changes. And this is exactly what happens when a victim of an abuser has that light bulb, “wait a minute” moment and clarity comes rushing in. The fog dispels.

I would very highly recommend that we all carefully examine the things we have been taught about…everything. About what God thinks of us when we are in Christ. About how wrong it is for a supposed “Christian” to abuse the innocent. About what is right and what is wrong in a marriage or other human relationship. About the church and pastors and about who is really a Christian.

It is only Christ who can shine into our minds. Only He can bring us to that wake up moment when we are almost set back in our tracks and gasp – “hold on now! This is what this thing really is – evil!”

So one of the most important things we can regularly pray is, “Lord, please put my head on straight. I think that I am all turned around on a lot of things. Give me eyes to see and ears to hear so that the truth can set me free.”