Cleaning the Lens: How Lewis, Jesus, and Scripture Diagnose Our Failing Vision

Editor’s Disclaimer: The editor of this piece wears glasses. Thick ones. The kind that fog up when you come in from the Midwestern cold. Any references to dirty lenses, smudged vision, or spiritual glaucoma should be interpreted with the appropriate level of self‑awareness.

C. S. Lewis once wrote in Mere Christianity that “horrible nations have horrible religions” because “they have been looking at God through dirty lenses.” A bold claim—especially from a man who smoked a pipe thick enough to fog a cathedral. But he’s right. When the lens is filthy, even the glory of God looks like a smudged fingerprint.

However, dirty lenses are better than blindness only if we’re willing to clean them. Otherwise, we’re just wandering around like someone who insists they don’t need glasses while holding the menu six inches from their face and pretending that’s normal.

Jesus made this point long before Lewis. “The eye is the lamp of the body,” He taught. “If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness” (Matthew 6:22–23, ESV). Translation: if your spiritual vision is off, everything is off. No amount of squinting will fix it.

The Slow Accumulation of Blindness (Or: Why You Shouldn’t Trust Your Eyes)

Scripture is brutally honest about our tendency toward blindness. Paul says “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 4:4, ESV). Jesus calls the Pharisees “blind guides” (Matthew 15:14, ESV). Isaiah laments people who “see many things, but do not observe” (Isaiah 42:20, ESV).

In other words: humanity has a long history of thinking we see clearly while walking into spiritual furniture, walls, and even glass doors —stumbling around with the misplaced confidence of Mr. Magoo navigating traffic.

Blindness rarely arrives all at once. It creeps in slowly, like cataracts—those cloudy films that thicken over the eye until the world looks like a double‑paned window with a slow leak fogging up the inside.

Jesus didn’t just talk about blindness—He healed it. From the man born blind in John 9 to Bartimaeus crying out on the roadside in Mark 10, every miracle of restored sight was a living parable: only Christ can give true vision.

Spiritual cataracts form when small compromises accumulate:

  • a little pride here,
  • a little resentment there,
  • a little political idolatry sprinkled like seasoning,
  • a little self‑justification to taste.

Before long, the lens fogs so thoroughly that God seems distant and His commands seem optional.

Spiritual glaucoma narrows our field of vision. We stop seeing the poor, the outsider, the enemy, the inconvenient neighbor. Our world shrinks to the size of our tribe. Our peripheral vision—where compassion lives—quietly disappears.

This is why Jesus teaches us to pray for “daily bread” (Matthew 6:11, ESV). Bread sustains the body, but the prayer sustains the soul. It is a daily lens‑cleaning ritual. A spiritual microfiber cloth.

When the Lens Needs More Than Cleaning

Sometimes the problem isn’t dust—it’s the prescription.

Anyone who has ever received a new pair of glasses knows the experience: suddenly the world sharpens. Edges return. Colors brighten. You realize how much you were missing. But even the clearest prescription will eventually fail if the lenses are never cleaned, or if the eyes themselves change. As Mrs. Riley put it in My Cousin Vinny, “I’m thinkin’ of gettin’ thicker glasses.”

Jesus confronted this deeper issue in those who thought they saw clearly but were, in truth, profoundly blind. “If you were blind, you would have no guilt,” He said, “but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains” (John 9:41, ESV).

This is the most dangerous blindness: the blindness that believes it sees.

Jesus warns that many will come to Him with impressive spiritual résumés—prophecies, miracles, ministries—and He will say, “I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23, ESV). Not because they lacked activity, but because they lacked relationship. They mistook spiritual busyness for spiritual sight.

This is similar to the seed that “sprang up quickly” but had no root and withered under pressure (Matthew 13:5–6, ESV). Initial clarity is not enough. A new prescription is not enough. Without ongoing care, ongoing humility, ongoing cleansing, the vision fades again.

When our faith begins to resemble our preferences more than Christ’s commands… When our convictions harden into self‑righteousness… When our “discernment” becomes indistinguishable from suspicion or tribal loyalty… When our vision of God shrinks until He looks suspiciously like us…

…it may be time to admit we don’t just need a cleaning. We need a new prescription.

Light in the Eyes vs. Darkness in the Soul

Scripture loves the contrast between light and darkness. John tells us “God is light” (1 John 1:5, ESV). Jesus declares Himself “the light of the world” (John 8:12, ESV). The psalmist says God’s words “give light” (Psalm 119:130, ESV).

Light reveals. Light clarifies. Light exposes the dust on the lens.

Darkness, on the other hand, is not merely the absence of light—it’s the refusal of it. Jesus warns that “people loved the darkness rather than the light” (John 3:19, ESV). Darkness is cozy. It hides our idols. It flatters our pride. It lets us pretend our vision is fine.

But Jesus refuses to let His disciples live in the dark. He calls us to walk in the light (1 John 1:7, ESV). He calls us to let His words cleanse our vision. He calls us to daily repentance, daily humility, daily clarity.

The Discipline of Seeing Clearly

Lewis’s metaphor is pastoral, but it’s also a little embarrassing. It reminds us that vision is not automatic. It must be tended. It must be guarded. It must be renewed.

So how do we keep the lens clean?

  • Return daily to Scripture, the original anti‑fog solution (Psalm 119:105, ESV).
  • Confess sin quickly, before it calcifies into cataracts (1 John 1:9, ESV).
  • Resist the devil, who loves smudged lenses (Matthew 4:1–11; 2 Corinthians 4:4, ESV).
  • Walk in humility, because pride is spiritual sandpaper (James 4:6, ESV).
  • Ask Jesus to search you, because He sees what you don’t (Psalm 139:23–24, ESV).

The goal is not perfect vision but honest vision. Not flawless clarity but faithful clarity.

A Final Word of Light

Lewis was right: horrible nations have horrible religions because they’ve been looking at God through dirty lenses. But the hope of the gospel is that no lens is too dirty for Christ to cleanse, no cataract too thick for Him to remove, no glaucoma too advanced for His light to reach, no darkness too deep for Him to pierce.

The question is not whether the lens gets dirty. It will. The question is whether we will clean it daily—and whether, when the world blurs again, we will have the courage to ask Jesus for a new prescription.

Because the One who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” is still shining “in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 4:6, ESV).

And that light is enough to see everything clearly—even for editors who wear glasses.