Rose-colored glasses ............. Parables 780

February 2003
In the late 1980's, Randall Wise sold his profitable computer-software company to focus on producing and selling colored contact lenses for chickens. He claimed that the birds were happier, ate less, produced more eggs, and stopped fighting when they looked at the world through blood-red lenses.

Eliminating the pecking order, particularly in the crowded conditions of egg-producing hen houses, was supposed to make life easier for chicken farmers, save consumers about 2.5 cents a dozen for eggs, and give Wise a projected 1992 income of $24 million.

However, in 1991, Dr. Nedim C. Buyukmihci, Associate Professor of Ophthalmology in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California offered a report: “The red plastic lenses are at the very least uncomfortable for the chickens . . . also appear to cause corneal ulcers . . . (that) can rupture and lead to blindness. Pain always is a significant component of corneal ulcers or ruptured eyes.”

By 1996, Mary Finelli, senior researcher for the Humane Society of the United States, said, “Today’s intensive confinement systems for chickens are notorious dusty and rank with ammonia and other irritating gasses. To permanently set contact lenses in the eyes of birds who exist for 1 to 2 years under such conditions is grossly inhumane. The problem is that the birds are inhumanely housed. Under natural conditions they live peacefully together in small groups. The only true solution to the abnormal aggression which their mistreatment causes is to provide these sensitive animals with humane living conditions.”

In this case, science beat the entrepreneur. While the stories and his lenses are still advertised on a veterinarian supply site, Wise seems to have left the building.

What does this story have to do with us, or our spiritual lives? One is that the world seems to have its own version of a pecking order. Crowded conditions may provoke it, but it seems part of human nature to be bigger, better, taller, stronger than the person next to us — so we knock them down, just to make sure they know we are. God has a better, albeit more challenging plan: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves . . . your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. . . .”

Furthermore, rose-colored glasses from a human vantage point are just as misleading as the avian version. They keep their wearers from recognizing that selfish competition and one-upmanship are genuine problems. Not only that, these lenses that seem to make people more mellow also produce indifference — too laid back to make a fuss about anything, even when it is important. “That’s just the way it is,” they say, without caring to change it.

Chickens don’t have many options, but we can make choices. We can try rosy lenses — they might work for a little while. Or we can live in spiritual darkness — which may sail us without much fuss to the grave. Or with God’s help, we can really live with our eyes wide open — in this life and for eternity.

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This is the final entry in this series. God gave me the privilege and challenge of writing for a weekly newspaper for about seventeen years. I had about ten editors and a wonderful experience. As I posted the entries, God surprised me. First I did not remembering writing most of them — and second that God deeply blessed me, sometimes to tears, as I read the words He gave me more than a decade ago. Because of that, I leave these online hoping that others will experience His blessings also.

My daily devotional thoughts are also published online — daily for several years and at this LINK. They are personal and point to the reality that faith in Jesus Christ is practical and possible to live out in the power of His Spirit.