On Blind Spots (Or, Lessons from a Failed Teen Un-Romance)--August 14, 2019

On Blind Spots (Or, Lessons from a Failed Teen Un-Romance)--August 14, 2019

[Jesus said:] "Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye." [Matthew 7:3-5]

I think apologies are due all around to anybody who knew me in seventh and eighth grade.  I am sorry. (It may well be that I owe apologies to everyone who knows me still, but at this rate, it could be another 25 years until I get around to that round of sorries.)

In particular, I think I owe everyone who knew my thirteen-year-old self an apology for my uncanny ability to see faults in others that I could not see in myself.  Maybe I have never gotten much better since the days of junior high school, but it seems at least to be clearer to me in hindsight now, just how bad my blind spots were in early adolescence.

Now, in all fairness, I don't think I set out to be a jerk.  But the trouble with being a jerk is that so often we (the jerks) aren't aware how much we are being jerks in the act of jerkiness.  We just don't get it.  That doesn't let us off the hook, but it does suggest that the first step in our recovery from being jerks is about learning to see ourselves more clearly, rather than just taking etiquette classes without dealing .  The old line I learned in seminary puts it well:  "Never attribute to malevolence what could be attributed to stupidity."  We don't usually intend to hurt one another--we just can't see the jagged edges all over us that are jabbing the people around us all the time.  It doesn't mean the cuts don't hurt, but it does mean that the first step to ending the blood loss is to learn to see ourselves more fully and more honestly (and therefore more courageously)--even if that means seeing things about ourselves we didn't want to admit were there.

Let me offer a case in point.  Seventh-grade me had a short-lived stint with junior-high "romance" (if it can be called that).  For a period of, oh, maybe five or six weeks, I was in one of those "we're-going-together" things with a girl in the same class.  I don't think it warrants being called a "relationship," because it basically consisted of a handful of group gatherings and talks on the phone of small-talk level conversation.  Honestly, I don't know that either of us particular "liked" each other so much as there was this unspoken social pressure to be "going" with someone (or else you weren't "doing 7th grade right"), and we each liked the idea of going places with someone else, and of being seen with someone else. It was not about affection so much as it was about "having something to do" and "feeling like less of a loser because I could say I was 'going with' someone." And even at that, we never actually did much together or went very many places, but I think seventh-grade me thought the idea of "going with" a girl made me look more mature, more popular, and cooler.

Now, the price of that coolness and social acceptability was what it did to me, in ways I didn't see and couldn't perceive in myself.  For one, it sucked up time out of my limited number of hours with each day, at least for the five to six weeks in which the "un-romance" began, withered, and ended.  That meant less time available for parents, family, and friends--the relationships that were all going to last a lot longer than this non-dating-relationship. That meant I was withdrawing from them without realizing it (when you're the one in the boat, it looks like the shore is the one that's moving, after all), had less time to talk and process things with/ them, and was more likely to be short-tempered with them for not making time for me, when it was really more accurate to say that I was making less time available for them.  It meant that I was more likely to be secretive from my family and real friends about "going with" this other person, because, well that's just how seventh-grade brains work, I think.  And it meant that I was more likely to lash out at a friend or my brother and accuse them of acting like I was less important to them, or more distant from them, when in fact I was the one who had been treating them all like chopped liver.

And this is the log-speck thing that Jesus talks about.  Here I was accusing other people around me of acting distantly or differently, when I could not see the ways that I myself had changed--all for the "idea" of being in a relationship with someone when there were already actual relationships with people who loved me longer and more authentically, who were all willing to put up with my jerk-ness.  It wasn't just that I was spotting specks in the eyes of the people around me while I had a log in my own--it was that I could not even recognize that I had a blind spot.  That's just it--logs don't just affect your ability to see the sawdust in your neighbor's eye; they prevent you from even seeing the logs themselves that are in your own.  I was getting upset by little things others around me might do, but was unable to see that I was really the one who had changed, and that I was really the one who had been treating others around me differently, all as the price of admission for looking cool and feeling more socially acceptable.  

That's the danger of our blind spots.  It's not just that we can't accurately see what our neighbors are, or aren't, doing rightly--it's that we can't see our own ways that we are causing hurt to others.  And when someone comes along--usually someone who cares about us deeply--who says, "Do you not see what is happening here?" we have a way of getting defensive, assuming that "I" have always stayed the same and that it must be "everybody else" who is acting weird.  That's always how it is for us, because admitting we might have a blind spot means acknowledging that our picture of the world might have to be revised--and we will do anything to hold onto our picture of how things are.  Remember what Respectable Religious people did to Galileo when he suggested that it was the Earth that moved in an orbit around the Sun, and not the other way around--we decried him a heretic and arrested him for seeing what the rest of the world did not want to see.  Nobody wants to admit that we are the ones who are changing, because we all assume that we are constant and it's "everybody else" who's wrong.  At least seventh-grade me didn't want to see it.  And I'm pretty sure almost-forty me doesn't like seeing my blind spots, either.

The thing is, even when it's uncomfortable, and even when it is humbling, we have the capacity, if we let Jesus touch our eyes, to deal with our blind spots.  We can have the courage--that itself is a gift of grace--to look first at ourselves before we go accusing others of things we have been doing first.  We can summon the strength to ask others to help us to see the things we cannot spot in our own hearts, and we can ask others whom we trust to help us recognize the places we have been jabbing others with our unseen jagged edges.

My teen un-romance ended just as abruptly as it had begun, as it turns out.  And I am probably a better person for not letting that drag on any longer (and I think the young lady with whom I had been "going" knew it, too, and quicker, since she was the one who said in a phone conversation, "I think we should break up," even though we really hadn't been "together" in a meaningful way up to that point, other than happening to be at a few parties or ball games at the same time).  I could not see then the ways that I had been distorted, and my other relationships had become warped, by my eagerness to look cool and seem popular by "going" with someone in the seventh-grade shallow way it happened.  I could not see the ways all that hoopla caused by doing what I thought was socially expected of me to do was affecting the genuine relationships in my life that still endure today.  It's a difficult thing to see in my rear-view mirror now, but I am glad that I can see it at least now, in the hopes that I will be more courageous (or at least less cowardly) about looking for my blind spots now.  Maybe I will be less defensive, too, when someone else has the courage and love to call me out on something I have been unable to see in myself--some way I have been arrogant or self-centered, some way I was hurtful or prejudiced, or some way I was complacent or indifferent to the needs of a neighbor.  

I need the honesty of others, and I need the willingness to look at myself honestly, so that I won't miss what has been blurring my vision all along.  And above all, I need the assurance of Jesus that he will, lovingly but truthfully, call me out on whatever lumber has gotten into my eyes so that it can be removed and my eyes can be healed.  And when I can then see places where I have been a jerk, I can take the next step of turning from the old patterns, making the appropriate apologies, and making things right.

I am sorry if I am a jerk to you sometime.  I hope you will be able both to forgive me, and to call attention to my blind spots, so that future me can be less of a jerk.

And we will start over, by grace.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to let you, and the people you send into our lives, touch our eyes and help us see our own blind spots, whether large or small, so that we can be healed.