What you don’t know you don’t know

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment,

 so that those who do not see may see and those who do see may become blind.”

John 9:39

Dear Friends,

On Sunday, I portrayed a blind man to whom Jesus restored his sight. The blind man knew that we had lost his ability to see because he knew what it was like to see. On the other hand, consider an animal like the golden mole. It does not have ability to see and so it does not know that it doesn’t know that it can’t see. It is not bothered by its inability to see because it has no awareness that it can’t see! Why am I talking about golden moles?...

In our lives, we tend to be aware of the things that we KNOW WE KNOW (or at last think we know!) and the things that we KNOW WE KNOW WE DON’T KNOW. I know how to tie my shoe laces, make a peanut butter & jelly sandwich and drive a car. I don’t know how to speak Russian, fly an airplane, or repair the zippers on my backpack. I could learn to speak Russian, fly an airplane and repair the zippers on my backpack (with some effort!). Then these things would move from what I know I don’t know into the category of the things I know I know.

There is one more very large category of knowledge. Those are the things that we DON’T KNOW THAT WE DON’T KNOW! Can you think of something that you don’t know that you don’t know?... The answer is NO. If you knew you didn’t know it, then it wouldn’t be in that category!

One of the things that I didn’t know that I didn’t know about myself was that for as long as I can remember, I was driven by a compulsion to DO THE RIGHT THING. I’ve talked about it before in sermons. It sounds like an admirable thing but there was a dark side to it. If I didn’t do the right thing, I had it in my mind that I would not be liked or loved. (This included God!) You might say this was dwelling in the subconscious. I didn’t know that I didn’t know that this was driving me. A good word for this sort of thing is that this was a BLIND SPOT for me. Since it was in MY blind spot, I could not see it. The only way for me to know that it was there was for SOMEONE ELSE to point it out to me! That’s what started happening in my mid-twenties. People that knew me well (and had my best interest at heart) started asking me questions like, Do you always have to try to do the right thing? My answer was, “Of course. Isn’t everyone else trying to do that?” They would say, “No.”

Such an obvious thing to almost everyone else was a startling revelation to me! That is what allowed me to start having some awareness of this BIG BLIND SPOT that I had that was one of the major drivers in my life! The awareness of it didn’t mean that I stopped trying to do the right thing. It had two major implications for me, though. First of all, I actually had the ability to choose to do the right thing (instead of it being a compulsion). The other—bigger one—was the awareness of the possibility that I could be loved for who I am NOT for what I can do! This opened up the possibility of knowing and accepting God’s grace… for me!

Again, the key to recognizing and dis-empowering blind spots is to allow someone to point them out to you! This is what a good coach can do. The challenge for the one being coached is to be coach-able… To be coach-able is to be able to acknowledge that one does not know something about themselves and to be able to consider and look at what someone else is pointing to. It doesn’t mean there is something wrong. It just means there is something that one doesn’t see…

Quite often in the Gospels, Jesus is encountering religious leaders who just can’t seem to get their minds around Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God and who Jesus was. They had a blind spot and were not open to Jesus’ teaching. They were more attached to being right about what they believed and it kept them from seeing who Jesus really was and the access he gave to abundant life.

We ALL have these blind spots in our lives. The more “powerful” ones have been in place in our lives for a very long time. The access to them, fundamentally, is humility… Humility and a desire to be set free in order to live a more abundant life. I invite you to read Scripture and allow Jesus' “coaching” to show you your blind spots. Also, listening and considering the observations that people who love you offer you will also give you access.

One HUGE CAUTION… DO NOT GO AROUND TELLING PEOPLE THEIR BLIND SPOTS! Instead, observe Jesus’ teaching,

"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 7:5

 Peace,

Pastor Phil