But Where Were His Parents? A Reflection on the Man Born Blind

This past Sunday my parish read the gospel story of Jesus healing the man born blind (John 9:1–41). Now we heard the shortened version of that story, so it left out the part that always bothers me a bit – the portion of the story with the blind man’s parents. That portion of the text says:

Now the Jews did not believe that he had been blind and gained his sight until they summoned the parents of the one who had gained his sight. They asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How does he now see?” His parents answered and said, “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. We do not know how he sees now, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him, he is of age; he can speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone acknowledged him as the Messiah, he would be expelled from the synagogue. For this reason his parents said, “He is of age; question him.”

John 9:18–23

I think when we reflect on this story, we often overlook the family dynamics here. In the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, for example, the only comments on this part of the text highlight how the parents function to establish the identity of this person as the man who was born blind since earlier in the episode the members of the community could not agree on whether this was him or just someone who happened to look like him (John 9:8–9). This reference to the parents also allowed the evangelist to highlight the theme of the “fear of the Jews” (John 9:22) if they were to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. This likely addressed a fear of persecution in the community for whom this Gospel was written. This aspect of the fear of persecution is also what Pheme Perkins highlights about this episode in Reading the New Testament: An Introduction (3^rd edition, Paulist Press, 2012, p. 230–1).

But what really bothers me about this episode is the neglect that his parents show. Of course, we live in a different time and morally judging the practices of the past can be difficult, but perhaps we can also see in this story a critique of this family dynamic. The story tells us that the man born blind is “of age” and so “can speak for himself” (9:21). We also know that he is identified as “the one who used to sit and beg” (9:8). Unfortunately, that is really all the information we get from this story about the man and his family beyond that the text refers to his “parents” in the plural. So what this story is giving me is a portrait of a family in which, for whatever reason, the parents have either completely abandoned their disabled adult son, or are forcing him (as perhaps a more sympathetic “charity case” because of his disability) to beg on behalf of the family. Either narrative is troubling to my modern-day sensibilities.

Now, I can speculate about numerous reasons why his parents might have abandoned him, especially given his disability. There is nothing in the story that provides us with a sense of the socio-economic status of the family. Clearly, if we assume a comfortable middle class or upper class lifestyle, our judgment on their actions would be harsher than if we assume that they themselves were destitute and unable to care for their blind son. The latter case reminds me a bit of the only comment that Victor Hugo makes about Jean Valjean’s sister and his children after he has gone to prison to steal bread for them. Hugo wrote that the only news that Valjean had about his sister was that “she was living in Paris, in a poor street near Saint-Sulpice, with only one of her children, the youngest, a little boy. Where were the other six? Perhaps she herself did not know” (Les Misérables, Penguin Classics, 2012, p. 94).

All of this is to say, again, that this story of the man born blind really upsets my contemporary sensibilities, especially in relation to the tradition of Catholic social teaching. This week in my Social Justice Ethics class we are talking about the principle of “Call to Family, Community, and Participation,” which addresses, in part, how our family is supposed to be where we learn about how to work for justice in the community. As Marvin L. Krier Mich describes it, referencing the ideas of Pope John Paul II:

John Paul II encouraged families to work for structural reform, claiming that the Christian family “is not closed in on itself, but remains open to the community, moved by a sense of justice and concern from others, as well as by a consciousness of its responsibility toward the whole of society.” The family’s commitment to the hungry, the poor, the old, the sick, the disabled, drug victims, ex-prisoners, and those without families, especially abandoned children and orphans, leads it to social action and “active and responsible involvement in the authentically human growth of society and its institutions,” extending even to the international level.

The Challenge and Spirituality of Catholic Social Teaching, rev. edition, Orbis Books, 2011, p. 109

The ideal of the family expressed here starts from a commitment not just to itself, but to the whole of society and especially those most in need, which would absolutely in this case include the man who was blind since birth. Note that Mich mentions the disabled specifically in his list of those who are most in need and who the family has a responsibility for in their greater community.

While this is clearly a more modern expression of this teaching, the importance of caring for those in need is rooted in the teachings of the Hebrew Bible, which consistently asked people to care for those who were most in need, especially the stranger, the orphan, and the widow (see Deut. 26:12–13). So I can’t help but wonder in the case of the gospel story of the man who was blind since birth, who is responsible? The story is introduced by asking “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Now, Jesus rejected the premise of this question itself, but I would ask: Who failed this man such that he was reduced to begging on the side of the road? Did his parents have enough and yet abandoned him due to his disability? Or, was it a societal failure to take care of the needy families in their midst? In either case, I hope it might lead us all to reflect on how we—either as families or individuals—are living out our responsibilities to our communities.