Watch How You Watch

Luke 11:34-36 – 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. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. 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.”

Have you ever noticed how two people can view the exact same situation in two completely different ways? When laid off from a job, one person gets bitter, gets a gun, and shoots his previous employer. Another is disappointed, but understands the realities of business, and takes the opportunity to pursue a new career. Ten years later the first is in jail and the second is a successful manager, far better off than if she had stayed with the first firm.

So much of our wellbeing in life is not determined by what happens to us but by how we view it. In this passage, Jesus says how our eye sees determines what our whole body is like. The difference is how we look. Is it evil or pure?  The word translated healthy in the ESV above in Greek is aplous. It means sincere, genuine, with no selfish hidden agenda. The concept of the evil eye is still strong in the Middle East. You cannot go anywhere in Turkey without seeing a nazar – a blue, white, and black talisman designed to keep people with jealousy and selfish ulterior motives away.

Jesus is not urging us to get trinkets to change the motives of others. Instead, he commands us to watch our own eyes. Selfish prejudging of others’ motives will only cause us greater pain throughout our lives. Look for the good. Instead of seeing that person who cut you off in traffic, stole your phone, or lied about you to your boss as pure evil, see them as a wounded person in desperate need of grace, just like you and me.