- by Gabriel Voorhees
Eating From the Wrong Tree
When Knowledge Becomes Blindness
There is another layer to this story—one Jesus exposes gently in His disciples and forcefully in the Pharisees. It is the blindness that comes from eating off the wrong tree.
The disciples stand before a suffering man, and instead of compassion, curiosity, or hope, they reach for knowledge. They reach for categories. They reach for explanation: “Rabbi, who sinned?”
It’s the same tree Adam and Eve once reached for—the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
It promises insight, but births separation.
It promises wisdom, but produces suspicion.
It promises enlightenment, but leads to self-reliance.
The Anatomy of the Diagnosis
The disciples don’t mean harm; they simply want to understand. But the desire to understand becomes the desire to diagnose, and the desire to diagnose becomes the desire to define what God is doing.
Suddenly, they are no longer standing with Jesus—they are standing above Him, evaluating what He should be explaining to them. It is the ancient temptation: “I know better.”
We do this too. We want to know why. Why the sickness? Why the loss? Why the delay? We gather information like doctors gathering data—talking endlessly about the broken wrist yet never putting on the cast. We are 90% diagnosis and 10% solution.
The Subtle Blind Spot
The disciples mistake knowing about things for seeing God. They think blindness is the problem, but Jesus reveals that their assumptions are actually dimming their sight.
They See...Jesus Sees...SinOpportunityA VerdictA VesselBlamePurpose
Jesus is not reacting to sin; He is revealing the Father. When He says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” He isn’t saying sin doesn’t exist. He is saying: “You’re using the wrong lens.” Sin is not the explanation; God’s glory is the destination.
The Pharisees: Knowledge as a Weapon
If the disciples eat from the Tree of Knowledge out of curiosity, the Pharisees eat from it out of pride.
They do not ask questions to learn; they ask to win.
Their investigation is not a pursuit of truth; it is a resistance to it.
They prod the healed man not to understand the miracle, but to dismantle it.
While the Light of the World stands in front of them, they are too busy proving what they know. They stumble in their own darkness because the light hurts their eyes. Spiritual arrogance is the most sophisticated form of blindness.
Two Kinds of Knowledge
To navigate this, we must distinguish between the two sources of information:
Knowledge that Explains God: (The Tree of Knowledge) Our attempt to master understanding, define truth, and gain control.
Knowledge that Comes from God: (The Tree of Life) Where wisdom flows from relationship and presence, not analysis.
Jesus does not diagnose; He restores. He does not label; He liberates. Where they see a problem to categorize, He sees a person to heal.
The Great Reversal
The healed man has no theological training or Pharisaic lineage. He eats from the Tree of Experience.
The Pharisees: Move from physical sight to spiritual blindness because they refuse to be wrong.
The Blind Man: Moves from physical blindness to spiritual sight because he trusts the Light more than his logic.
Facing Our Own Blind Spots
Real sight is not how much we know; it is how deeply we see. Every time we diagnose instead of love, or explain instead of obey, we return to the wrong tree.
The Invitation:
The miracle of John 9 is not simply a miracle of sight—it is a miracle of vision. Jesus heals the eyes of a man and the hearts of all who will confess their blindness.
“Lord, I do not see as I should. Heal my vision. Open my eyes. Lead me back to the Tree of Life. For I once was blind, but now I see.”