GN Commentary: November 11, 2008 - Flying Blind

Are you flying blind in life? There is a way out of your moral and spiritual blindness in which you have been flying. Will you choose to use this guide or go at it alone?

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Video Transcript

What's worse? Piloting an airplane and suddenly going blind, or flying blind in life?

The airplane scenario actually happened recently.

[video news clip]

How unnerved and panicky would you be finding yourself in that life and death predicament?

[video news clip]

Isn't it time to realize we are finding ourselves in some other serious predicaments? 

Are you a little unnerved because our society is apparently flying blind when it comes to morality and ethics?

Are you a little panicky over the shaky economy and the confusion about how to get out of this mess?

Are you losing faith in the ability of any world leaders to steer us to peace?

If one thing is very clear, it's the fact that we can't see clearly which direction to go in virtually every area of life!    

What's going to happen to us if we continue flying blind morally, spiritually and ethically?

I recently read an astute commentary in which the author wrote:

"We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night." 

We're flying blind, he's saying, on a number of modern societal issues, violence isone of them – "Your hands are defiled with blood" and our "feet run to evil," is how he describes it.

"The way of peace they know not," he says.  We're flying blind!
 
His eloquent summary statement was:  "truth is fallen in the streets."

Insightful analysis! You can read the entirety of it for yourself in—of all places—your Bible!  This social commentator was Isaiah, he was writing over 2,500 years ago, but the warning words he directed to ancient Israel can be neatly overlaid on our society today.

The country he loved was flying blind, heading for a crash.  Whenever we, too, are just doing whatever is right in our own sight, we are flying blind! 

The pilot who had the stroke?  That actually turned out to be a good news story—he survived, in a miraculous and most interesting way. 

[video news clip]

Interestingly, the ones who did have sight could not talk him down, no more than we can talk ourselves out of the moral problems that we have acted our way into! 

It required the Air Force pilot to fly alongside and guide him in, and it required the man to believe and trust in those directions. 

We have a similar rescue at hand.  Isaiah also advised:

"The LORD'S hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear" (Isaiah 59:1) – God can be there to guide us back to safety.

But, he says, "[your sins] have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear" (Isaiah 59:2).

Are we going to tell God, "thanks but no thanks—we'll find our own way back!"

Or is it time to panic, and call out a fervent "May Day" to God, and trust Him to guide us out of the moral and spiritual blindness in which we have been flying?

For GN Magazine, I'm Clyde Kilough.