In 1997 the American psychologist Arthur Aron conducted an experiment to see whether intimacy between two complete strangers could be accelerated. The study involved them asking each other a series of 36 increasingly personal questions. They were then asked to stare into each other’s eyes for four minutes. Six months later one of the pairs were married, with the other participants all invited as guests!
Clearly this technique isn’t going to have the same effect every time, but it does go to show what can happen when two people are prepared to be open and vulnerable with each other. It also echoes something that the Bible has to say about our eyes, and the way that what we see in them can reveal much about a person’s character. Jesus once said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.” No wonder strong connections are sometimes made when we gaze into another’s eyes.
If eye contact has the power to affect the way we live then the Bible also has helpful advice, the writer of the book of Hebrews urging his readers to “Fix [their] eyes on Jesus”. As has often been observed: what we focus on expands.
