What If Ice Cream Cost You Your Vision?

(Originally published on the Musings Blog on 5.4.2005)

I really like ice cream. My favorite treat is a warm brownie (thin, slightly under baked) under several scoops of Blue Bell ice cream. I can taste it now.

But what if I knew that for every bowl of ice cream I enjoyed I would lose 1% of my vision? My initial response would be to swear off ice cream completely – my vision is way too important to throw away on a short-lived pleasure.

I suspect after awhile I would wonder if it were really true – does ice cream really cause me to lose vision, or did someone make that up to keep me from getting fat? Eventually I would try it out. I would eat some ice cream and then look at some words to see if they were blurry. I’m guessing I would see just fine – one percent wouldn’t make that much difference. But just to be safe, I would only have ice cream once a month.

After a year of ice cream that amounted to a 12% loss in vision, I think I would notice a difference. In a blurry street sign I would see some consequences of my indulgence. The eye doctor would change my prescription and I would have to get new glasses. And then I would see clearly again.

In seeing clearly again I wonder if I would be tempted to eat just a little ice cream, since the consequences appear manageable. In fact, eating just a little ice cream would still leave me many years before losing my eyesight completely. Stronger prescriptions, laser eye surgery, and eventually a walking stick or seeing eye dog … I’m adaptable, I think I could still make life work.

Sometimes I wonder if little acts of sin smudge the window of my soul. I confess, ask for God’s cleansing and all, but while I’m confident of restored fellowship with God, I wonder if I’ve lost something I can’t fully recover?