Staff writer, desiringGod.org
What we feed our eyes
will eventually rule our hearts. And I’m not just talking about pornography.
Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your
eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad,
your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness,
how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22–23; Luke 11:34).
Yes, our eyes will be drawn to what our hearts desire, but
they also often hold sway. Our eyes are not neutral. They influence and even
drive our hearts. If we feed them what is true, and right, and pure, and
lovely, and admirable, our eyes can grow our faith, heighten our love, and
intensify our happiness. But where the eyes wander, the heart quickly follows —
and falls. How many of us leave our eyes on too long a leash?
For some, tragically, it is pornography. For others, it’s
something less salacious, like sports scores or news headlines. For others,
Instagram or Facebook. For still others, it’s Amazon or Target, YouTube or
Netflix. Just because something isn’t inherently bad, doesn’t mean it can’t
fill our eyes so full as to crowd out the one who matters most. That’s what
darkened eyes are: eyes so full of something other than Christ that they can no
longer see him and enjoy him.
Lamp of the Body
When Moses warned Israel about idolatry, he stared directly
into their eyes:
“Watch yourselves very carefully. . . . Beware lest you act
corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure,
the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the
earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, the likeness of
anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the
water under the earth. And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when
you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be
drawn away and bow down to them and serve them.” (Deuteronomy 4:15–19)
The eye is the lamp of the body, he said to God’s people,
and if you allow yours to lust after the things you have made, or even after
the wonders God has made — your eyes will lead your heart astray and eventually
destroy you.
Moses didn’t mention sexually explicit images. No, he knew
the people would be tempted to worship even the good in creation — animals,
birds, and fish; sun, moon, and stars — the wonders God had placed all around
them. The wonder of wonders is that we often end up worshiping the wonder and
not the Creator.
What Your Eyes Say
How do our eyes lead our hearts away from God? When Jesus
says, “The eye is the lamp of the body,” he’s in the middle of a word about
treasure. Three verses earlier, he says, “Do not lay up for yourselves
treasures on earth” (Matthew 6:19). And then two verses later, he says, “No one
can serve two masters. . . . You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24).
Our eyes will always be drawn to what we treasure. But more than that, they
play a role in what we treasure. If our eyes are sick, we’ll inevitably have
heart trouble.
And money, as Jesus teaches, carves as many images as anything
today. If we’re not content to have him, we’ll fall in love with whatever else
we can have (or buy).
If we have little appetite for Christ, and a voracious
craving for sports, our treasure is free of charge at ESPN. If Christ cannot
keep our attention, but we hunt and shop for hours on Amazon, our treasure
should arrive in two business days or less. If we lack ambition to know Christ
and carry out his mission, but we work hard to advance our career and build our
retirement fund, we’ll finally receive our treasure as our time on earth
expires. If time with Christ is the first thing we surrender when we’re busy,
but we never miss a meal or our favorite television show, we have treasure, but
it’s not him.
And if it’s not him, every other good goes dark.
Eyes Full of Adultery
The apostle Peter says that the wicked “have eyes full of
adultery, insatiable for sin” (2 Peter 2:14). They have looked at Christ and
found him unlovely, so they lust after something else (often someone else).
“The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than
the light” (John 3:19). We were given the option between the fullest loveliness
and the weakest pleasures, and we loved the latter. That is wicked — and
pitiful. Eyes full of adultery have chosen cyanide over ecstasy.
Those were our eyes, but we were washed, we were sanctified,
we were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our
God (1 Corinthians 6:11). We received laser eye surgery from the one who
invented retinas. He stooped down and, with compassion, spit in our eyes to
heal those who had spit on his glory (Mark 8:23).
And if he has made our eyes healthy, our whole body will be
full of light.
Watch What You Watch
If you have let your eyes get out of shape, it’s not too
late to learn to guard them and keep them healthy. First, fill your eyes with
the words of God. If you want to make sure there is room for God, let him in
first. Before you’re exposed to everything else you will see today, decide to
see him. Let a fresh vision of him in his word be the day’s first wonder, the
sun that eclipses and illumines every other beauty. Steep your soul in
Scripture long enough that you begin to see God in all the other wonders around
you.
Second, compare your prayer life with your screen life —
which will humble almost anyone alive today. When we set the time we spend on
our phones, or in front of televisions, next to the time we spend on our knees,
what do we learn about our eyes and our hearts? The decisive concern here is
not with the time spent, but with the commitment, passion, and affection we
exert. Where do we run for rest and pleasure? Too many of us have not closed
our eyes and bowed our heads enough to find the rest and pleasure we think
we’re getting from a screen.
Third, do not train your eyes to overlook ungodliness or to
tolerate immodesty. Neither will happen passively or accidentally. Godliness
will require vigilance in what we watch, especially in a society aggressively
marketing everything else. Some of us have drawn the lines to forbid the worst,
while allowing an endless stream of sexually suggestive or immodest scenes into
our eyes. We have also learned to ignore (and even indulge) the gods in our
entertainment, instead of discerning and exposing them. This is not a call not
to watch, but to watch what we watch, lest we raise our eyes to deceitful
desires, are drawn away, and bow down and serve them.
Eyes Wide Open
The warnings from Moses and Jesus are not meant to limit
what we see, but to focus and expand what we see. They want us to see more, to
have healthy eyes wide open for God. Steve DeWitt writes,
The beauties of this world whisper to our souls that there
is someone ultimate. But the ultimate is never found in the wonderland of
creation. We keep looking and longing for the beauty behind the beauty, the One
who will satisfy the cravings of our soul. This explains why the drug addict
keeps shooting up and the porn addict keeps looking and the materialist keeps
buying and the thrill-seeker keeps jumping. On the other side of one thrill is
the constant need for another. (Eyes Wide Open, 71)
As you walk through the wonderland of God’s creation, watch
your eyes carefully. These thrills are whispers of Wonder, mere shadows of
Light. They’re meant to make us more in awe of Christ, and to prepare us to
spend eternity looking to him. “He is coming with the clouds, and every eye
will see him” (Revelation 1:7). We all will see him. How we use our eyes today
will determine whether he is lovely when we do.
Marshall Segal
(@marshallsegal) is a writer and managing editor at desiringGod.org. He’s the
author of Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness & Dating
(2017). He graduated from Bethlehem College & Seminary. He and his wife,
Faye, have a son and live in Minneapolis.
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