Men as Trees



 Then they came to Bethsaida. They brought a blind man to Him (Jesus) and begged Him to touch him.  He took the blind man by the hand and brought him out of the village.  Spitting on his eyes and laying His hands on him, he asked, “Do you see anything?”  He looked up and said, “I see men - they look to me like trees walking.”  [Mark 8:23,24]
These two verses have always interested me.  They feel pregnant with more meaning than I myself could ever gather.  I’ve read theological interpretations, basically all agreeing that the mans sight was initially healed in part (seeing men like blurry trees) so that his own faith could help bring about complete healing.  Although that sounds nice, it didn’t seem to click with me as being ‘it.’
 I began reading a book called “Who Switched Off My Brain? Controlling Toxic Thoughts and Emotions by Dr. Caroline Leaf.  This book is revolutionary in proving the Proverb that states “For as he thinks in his heart, so he is.”  Dr. Leaf discusses the notion of epigenetics, which simply put, is that our perceptions of life shape our biology.
 I did a little more studying on the concept of the epigenome to find that it is basically cellular material that will tell your genes how to express themselves and their resulting appearance. When we consciously use our free will and simply ‘think,’ we are making the determination of which genes will be expressed; which genes will shout, and which ones will whisper.  Simply said, what we think about shapes and forms the appearance and function of our genes, which in turn, tells our bodies how to maneuver and its overall health. 
 The way that our body acts is all due to the fact that our thoughts are either healthy or not.
So it’s easy to then add that our behavior, along with our genes, follows our thought life.  The way we believe things to be is our filter for everything else.  We react out of those filters and produce either healthy or unhealthy reactions.  If our minds are negative, we will act out of fear based and insecure reactions.  But if our minds are renewed, cleansed, and focused upon what God has called us to think upon (whatever is lovely, pure, noble etc.) than we will naturally act out of those things.  Whatever we act on originates from what we think and believe first. Actions are simply reactions to thoughts and beliefs.
 Thoughts in our brain, look like little trees.  They are electrical impulses that grow stronger and have more interconnectedness the more that you meditate upon and believe in them.  So going back to the whole men as trees thought from earlier.  I think that as this man whose entire life was transitioning from being physically blind to suddenly seeing, displays our own spiritual blindness of believing lies as truth, which really does make you blind.  The blind man first saw men as trees walking, and in a sense, he was right.  I don’t think his eyes were foggy, I think his sight was very keen.  Discerning that men were nothing more than walking thoughts, acting out of their beliefs, and that those beliefs, regardless of the accuracy or truth, have the potential to root us down with great strength.
 The good news however, is that God calls us to daily renew our thinking.  How do we do that?  By meditating upon His truth...nothing more, nothing less.  And when we consistently have our thoughts upon him, our brains are hard at work creating new branches, healthy branches, that can tie our entire network of thoughts together and be created new and fresh.  We are all men as trees walking, let’s just make sure we are not dead trees to ourselves, or this world!