For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. (2 Peter 1:5-9 ESV) Being nearsighted can be disastrous. I’m not making fun of you people who actually have physical nearsighted eyesight. I’m talking about an aptitude and attitude toward being a one-trick pony that can’t see anything else except that which consumes you for the moment. For example, when we become so obsessed over something like the next tech gadget– we spend our waking moments, our free time and our money on purchasing the luster that quickly fades away and then we realize that it was worth our money, our time or the stress we put ourselves through– yeah, I’m talking about those people who wait on line for days, weathering nature to buy something so unnatural. Maybe technology isn’t your thing, but relationships are. You get so consumed by a boy or a girl and you decide you are going to drop everything and everybody and chase after him or her and that person turns out to be a dud. Everybody could have told you that he or she was a dud, but you were too nearsighted to see it. In fact, you can say most of our failures and shortcomings are a result of some type of nearsightedness– a failure to see objectively, understand completely, and a lack of self-control. The Apostle Peter writes about the failures of nearsightedness as a problem with being obsessed with the wrong thing! The way he sees it, nearsightedness is forgetting what is important in light of everything else in life. If we were obsessed with the salvation we received in faith through Jesus Christ, we would understand our humble position and posture ourselves to see things in light of receiving grace and forgiveness. But because we take what we have in faith and then look somewhere else for effectiveness, we become unfruitful– that is, our faith becomes useless because of our inability to see the BIG picture. Being nearsighted keeps us from acting consistently and produces an irrationality unbecoming of people who received so much without the demands of anything in return. Yes, I’m saying that our faith makes us spoiled and causes us to be nearsighted because it is so easy to return to the ultimate forgiver in Christ. Don’t stick your head in your hands wondering why your last obsession failed you miserably. Understand that if you’re going to be obsessed with something, make sure it is an obsession grace upon eternity. It’s bad enough we are nearsighted with our penchant towards an impending physical death; do we really want to hang our heads on an obsession with petty ideas, cheap toys and virtueless people? I didn’t think so. If you don’t forget and if you obsess over the power that set you free from death and the slavery of sin, we won’t fail because of nearsightedness and that is where we want to live life today and for all eternity.