Age catches up with all of us! We see customers in the greeting card section of the store without glasses, who eventually were seen stretching their arms out further and further and struggling to read the small print. We know they must have reached at least forty years of age.
It happened in Bible days too, except to Moses, whose eyesight was “undimmed.” (Deuteronomy 34:7) The painting to the left shows the aging Luke trying to complete his gospel with eyes that are not so young anymore. He needed a pair of bifocals, but they were not available at that time. He is utilizing the professional scribes of his day, the young men who could still see better. They are given the title of an “amanuensis.” Wikipedia defines that term like this: noun, “a literary or artistic assistant, in particular one who takes dictation or copies manuscripts.” (Drawing from first book cited below, pp. 76-77)
These men originally took their dictation down “on wax tablets that served the same purpose as a modern scratch pad. Only when the writing reached the stage of a finished draft was a pen put to papyrus.”1 Of course, wax was cheaper than papyrus.
This realization of the aging process may shed some light on the discussion about Paul’s eye problem mentioned in Galatians 4:12-15. He says that an illness accompanied his eye disorder. Perhaps some of it may be attributed to simply getting older; he needed bifocals too.
Whole debates among Christians have ensued from beliefs about Paul’s eyes. Some have identified his condition as his “thorn in the flesh.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9) For example, healing evangelist, F. F. Bosworth, says that his work was attacked by a fellow clergyman who widely distributed a leaflet with a lengthy description about Paul’s eye disease, just to discredit the work of Bosworth. The antagonist said:
Paul was sick. He was the sickest of men. He had one of the worst and most painful of oriental diseases. He had opthalmia—a disease of the eyes… Here is Paul saying just this, “I will glory in my opthalmia. My eyes may be full of repulsive discharges; I may be the object of pity; no matter, I will glory in it. I will rejoice in my sickness.” …The Lord has written His Divine protest against this unspeakable doctrine, this brutal transmutation of the cross of Christ into a center of physical healing.2
Bosworth counters in Chapter Fourteen of Christ the Healer that the “thorn in the flesh” is none other than what Paul declares it, a messenger of Satan to buffet him. The Bible translations of Weymouth and Rotherham refer to this messenger as a “he” or “him.” This messenger was sent to buffet Paul; it was a “satanic personality and not a disease.”3
The word “buffet” denotes repeated offensives, as Jesus was buffeted after his arrest. With this perspective in view, we live in awareness of spiritual conflict and not with a mindset of patiently enduring sickness.
We are so accustomed to getting corrective lenses that we fail to put ourselves into the Biblical narrative with the realism that aging eyes take on the inevitable egg-shape that steals our seeing ability. One day (thank God) these weak, perishable bodies will become like His glorious body and will no longer become failing in sight. (Philippians 3:21)
1After Jesus, The Triumph of Christianity. Edited by Gayla Visalli. Pleasantville, New York: The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc., 1992, p. 82.
2Bosworth, F. F. Christ the Healer. Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1973, pp. 191-192.
3Ibid, p. 194.