After my thought the other day on the relationship between blindness and sin. Another one crossed my mind regarding sin and the blindness it creates in us. How does it do this?
One of the ways is that sin seems to create a kind of self-consciousness within us. When we are free from it (self-consiousness), we don't often feel the constraints it piles on us, wondering about what other people think, worrying about my status in a relationship, working for acceptance from those around me.
However, when are not free from it, we do seem to spend a lot energy on these kinds of things. I wonder if our sinful choices foster a 'need' for these things. A need that binds us, rather than freeing us to live towards another person. Self-consciousness turns our eyes towards ourselves and the protections we must seek to survive or prosper in our relationships with others. In a way, blindness is a from of what we are looking at or not looking at. When I am only looking at myself, brokering for myself, navigating for my own interests, competing for attention from others, I'm not really able to see much of what is going outside of myself. I am, in fact, blind to it.
So I've noticed that, among other things, sinful choices lead me in this direction...towards myself. It forces itself on me by plunging me towards the questions of 'am I OK?' 'What if I'm not?' 'What do I need to do about it?' 'How can get others to see me the way I want to be seen?' Because sin is involved, there is a portion of truth to the fact that I am not OK. I have violated something about myself; I have sinned. And, here is where sin gets violent with us, it turns our face away from life, away from our true acceptance. It grabs our chin and as it jerks us, says 'look at you...you are terrible'. It leads us away from God, inward, turning on ourselves. It creates demand from others to make us feel better about ourselves. Our need becomes greater than anyone else's.
The path back is straight and short - confession is remarkably easy. Forgiveness is bountiful. So, the only thing sin can do is to try to keep us from turning towards God, from where our true acceptance comes. In other words, to keep us blind (enslaved) to the truth.
Self-consciousness is part of how sin blinds us.
