Blind Spots

Two Sundays ago, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel reading was John 9:1-41, in which Jesus heals a man born blind.  One set of characters in this story is a group of powerful religious leaders, whom Jesus engages in conflict.  (It's remarkable how often the good, proper, diligent religious leaders come in for quite a hard time with Jesus!!)  These religious leaders are sure that they know the truth.  Their certitude blinds them to dimensions of grace, truth, reality, neighborliness, mystery, and compassion.

This story makes me wonder about our own "blind spots."  What are the things that keep us from seeing life clearly?  What dimensions of reality, truth, grace, mystery, and life are kept hidden from us?  To what aspects of life are we blind?  What aspects of life are we unable to see?

Our biggest blind spots are often directly related to the primary ways that we like to think of ourselves.  When our sources of identity and self-esteem are threatened in some way, we may lose our ability to perceive things accurately.

For example, imagine people who base their identity and self-esteem on how much money they have.  The more money they have, the better they feel about themselves.  Now, imagine those people losing an enormous percentage of their money in the stock market.  If these folks genuinely believe that their self-worth is tied to the amount of money in their accounts, their capacity to see any beauty, joy, or abundance in the world will be severely diminished at that moment.  They may begin to panic.  They'll be blinded.

Or, imagine people whose self-esteem is based on whether people like them or not, whether people approve of them or not.  When people praise them, they feel terrific.  But now, imagine those people  being severely criticized for something.  If these folks genuinely believe that their self-worth, their identity, is based on whether people like them or not, then their ability to think clearly and calmly may be threatened when they get criticized.  They may panic and be unable to see clearly.

Who are you?  On what do you base your self-esteem?  For many of us, we may have built our lives and our identity around becoming a success, or being thought of as nice, or being acknowledged as right, or around staying safe, or around being really popular.  We may have become really good at these things!  The trouble is that these things never last.  They can be transient, fleeting, and taken away from us.  And our zealous pursuit of these things can blind us to larger, deeper, more lasting dimensions of life.

This is why the Christian faith insists that the only firm foundation for our lives is God's gracious love for us.  Everything else can be taken away from us.  We haven't earned this love, we don't deserve it, and we can't control it.  But God pours it out on us, abundantly, anyway.  And it will never be taken away.