A reflection on John 9.
Yeshua healed a blind man on the Sabbath. In John 9, the Pharisees interrogated the man and his parents. The man's sin (or his parents' sin) had caused his blindness—or so they believed. This was the operating assumption of the time.
His parents were afraid to speak. Verse 22 tells us why: "His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, for already the Jewish leaders had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Yeshua was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue."
The synagogue was not just a place of worship. It was the center of community life. To be put out was to lose family, livelihood, identity. Everything.
So the parents stayed silent. They were afraid.
But the blind man wasn't afraid. After his healing, when interrogated by the Pharisees, he said simply: "Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!"
He had something more powerful than the fear of expulsion. He had his own experience. He had been transformed. No authority could argue him out of that.
The Pharisees, meanwhile, were trying to maintain control of narrative. They couldn't permit an unauthorized healing on the Sabbath. They couldn't permit a man to have his own spiritual experience without their mediation. They couldn't permit his testimony to stand.
So they expelled him.
But here's the thing: His expulsion was actually his liberation.
Listen to the end of John 9:
"Yeshua heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he asked, 'Do you believe in the Son of Man?'"
And the man answered: "Who is he, sir? Tell me so that I may believe in him."
And Yeshua said: "You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you."
And the man said: "Lord, I believe." And he worshipped him.
His expulsion from the synagogue was his introduction to Yeshua himself. The authority that tried to silence him ended up pushing him directly into relationship with the one who healed him.
That's the paradox of institutional control: The harder it grips, the more it pushes people into direct encounter with God.
This is what I think about when I see people leaving institutional religion.
They're not always leaving God. They're not always giving up faith. Sometimes they're just getting expelled from a wagon.
And sometimes that expulsion is the best thing that could happen to them.
The backlinks below represent the broader theological ecosystem this piece is part of:
Unpacking #12: The Heist Nobody Noticed
Unmasking the Tithe Trap: Exposing Manipulation in Modern Preaching
The Church's Quiet Crisis: We've Taught Conclusions, Not Discernment
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