Blind curse

Blind people are not themselves cursed. Jesus made that clear. Yet blindness is a sign of the curse. It signals the possibility of objectification, the possibility (unknown in Eden) of gazing at a person who cannot return the gaze, the possibility of a unilateral gaze. In blindness is embedded the possibility of sexual abuse, of totalitarian regimes, of anti-humanism.

But Jesus came to give sight to the blind, which is to say, to give the gazed-at the dignity of a return gaze.

In healing the blind, Jesus is busy healing human sociality and giving freedom to captives.

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