Through Their Eyes

Eight years of university training before I was commissioned as a medical officer in the United States Army I was specializing in the eyes. The human eye is the window of the soul. It is also one of the best diagnostic methods for the health of the body.

A doctor with an ophthalmoscope (a lighted magnifier enabling the examiner to look inside the eye through the pupil). One can determine the clarity of the anterior chambers as well as the health of the retina, optic nerve, arteries and veins that supply the eye with nourishment. Such diseases as diabetes, arteriosclerosis, hypertension, etc. will show up on examination or at least lead to further exploration by other specialists. Immediately, one can see a cataract (an opacity of the lens of the eye, the lens is the structure in the eye which determines light rays entering the eye). The cornea is easily studied with the ophthalmoscope as well as another instrument called a slit-lamp. The cornea is the same histological tissue as the finger nail. The difference, the cornea is transparent, the
fingernail is translucent.

While on duty at Army hospitals where retirees, FBI and CIA agents and others seeking military care underwent the examination process, it was required that I examine the exterior and interior of these eyes. These physical examinations of military and federal agency employees are critical because it often determines their cases for disability. Guesswork is not a product of good health care. The dilemma with Medicare and Medicaid in recent years has resulted in much assembly line care in the civilian clinics. One can only imagine the laxity and resulting conflicts with socialized health care.

Patients like the general public have an expectation and admiration for professional people who know what they are doing. There was a time in this country when the pastor and physician were the most admired citizens in the community. Polls have revealed that 97% of our population no longer hold the clergy as positive role models. All it takes is a few stories about Catholic priest pedophiles, Jim Baker’s problems, Benny Henn’s $100 million dollars a year (his private jet, his lavish lifestyle), Jimmy Swaggart’s fooling around with prostitutes or the many other backsliding church members.

If you belong to a church, you can be sure that if you are popular in the church, community and among Satan’s crowd at the country club and golf course, you are a backslider. A pastor said to me some years ago a group of men at my church will be engaged in conversation, when I walk up all conversation stops. I said, “Don’t feel alone. This same thing has happened to me my entire life.” The scripture tells us that you will not be popular with the world if you are totally committed to Christian principles.

This is another reason that 40% of our young people even those whose parents made sure they were in church and church activities do not feel that there is anything wrong with lying, cheating and stealing in order to get ahead. Once, I was speaking of my son’s missionary zeal. A cynical church member asked me if he, like one of her friends a missionary to the Outback Aborigines in Australia, was going to teach them to lie, cheat and steal like people in the USA. I said no. Missionaries like all church members, us included, have the great commission of Jesus Christ. .Matthew 28:19-20 (King James Version) 19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
 20Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

In this nation where we have become slaves of an atheist media and effortless technology, the eyes of children have no thought for Bible reading and prayers at the family table as was the case in my family and my ancestors. Home has become a “filling station” and very few families ever eat a meal together.

I saw my first television set when I was a freshman in college. The University of North Carolina (these were the Charlie Justice days) was playing Notre Dame the first time at the Polo Grounds in New York. Some of the boys in the dorm said, “There is a television set at a furniture store in downtown Chapel Hill. We should go down and watch the game.” This country boy had never seen a television set before then. Years later, in speaking to a large youth group at a Southern Baptist meeting I said, “If Satan had wanted to design something to make children just as mean as possible, he would have designed a television set.” From then until now, nothing has changed my opinion. In David Kupelian’s book, “The Marketing of Evil To America” he states that the eyes of children, look to the true American idol, the television set, or more recently the internet has taught every evil practice that can be imagined to the young people of America.

In my youth, the dirty book stores were in a discredited section of town. Today, every dirty practice one can imagine found in a dirty book store, you will find now in the homes via internet with on-line excursions to Hell itself. In Dante’s Inferno, the sign above the exit to Hell reads “Last Chance”. The eyes are too precious (only those without eyes know how precious) to use them for anything but the seeing of good things. When the evolutionist questions the infallibility of God’s word and God’s greatest miracle the human body. Ask this question, “explain why the chemical composition of the tears of joy are different then the chemical composition of the tears of sorrow?

Still a precious sight in this Nation is a family, in the family car, on the way to church. Once in my sister’s beautiful home, I noticed charts on the walls with gold stars for many activities such as Sunday School attendance, good grades, etc. Perhaps this is the reason her two sons (now both outstanding lawyers in this state) were Eagle Scouts and her daughter (a graduate of Salem College and a masters at a state university) went to the top in the Girl Scouts and all three were great readers and superior students. Perhaps this is the reason that my two grandsons (a lawyer and engineer) though raised on a foreign mission field were superior students, far advanced from their American counterparts and achieved scholarships for their entire education.

Every outstanding man I have ever known was a reader. The eyes are too important to use them for anything except good things. Francis Thompson, the great English poet said, “love is a many-splendored thing. The eyes, window of the soul, a many splendorerd-thing.”