If I take my glasses off the world becomes blurry. In fact, things begin to diffuse at about six inches from my nose and grow more distorted the further away they are. I am very dependent on my corrective lenses to see correctly.

Richard Dawkins believes that this is evidence that there is no Designer. What Designer would make such a crucial organ as the eye so prone to defection?

What about a Designer who designed this defection so that we might see better in a much more important way? There’s more in myopia than meets the eye. I think our defective sight is a parable of a spiritual reality: we must have help to see right.

I think this because of the Designer’s parable of the eye:

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. (Luke 11:34–35)

And the Designer gets very specific about the light he has in mind:

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. (John 8:12)

The light of life is the Word that is God (John 1:1) and the word of God (Psalm 119:105). Only “in [Jesus’] light do we see light” (Psalm 36:9).

Now, Jesus helps us to see right in two ways: first, he opens our eyes to see and believe who he is (Acts 9:5) and what he has done for us (Acts 26:18). And second, he helps us “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

But what does walking by faith and not by sight mean? It doesn’t mean that faith is blind. It means that faith is another kind of seeing. Faith is the conviction — the perceiving — that there are more real, more reliable, and more wonderful things than what we see with our eyes (Hebrews 11:1). Faith sees that God exists (Hebrews 11:6) and that his promises are more trustworthy than our own natural perceptions. Faith trusts promises over perceptions.

Which means that the corrective lenses we must “wear” in order to see correctly are the “precious and very great promises” (2 Peter 1:4) of God — the Scriptures. We need them desperately. Even with them we see in this age as if “in a mirror dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Without them we do not know where we are going (John 12:35).

The Bible! How precious it is! It is better than all the gold in the world (Psalm 19:11). Through it we see the Light of life and hear the Word who is God and find everything he provides us for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). Through it we come to know the truth that sets us free (John 8:32). It brings the blurry confusion of the world into focus, it makes light dawn in our darkness (Psalm 112:4) and it points us to a promised future when we will see with far more glory with far more clarity. For we will see Jesus, the Lamp of heaven (Revelation 21:23), face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12). 

So don’t neglect the corrective lenses of God’s living and active word (Hebrews 4:12). You won’t be able to see right without them. Rather, as you look through them today at everything around you may God enlighten the eyes of your heart “that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe” (Ephesians 1:18–19).