Check Your Blind Spots

Lately our Sunday school class has been doing a video study based on Sharon Hodde Miller's book Nice: Why We Love to Be Liked and How God Calls Us to More. I've been reading through the book as we watch the videos each week, and I want to share with y'all something that she talks about in there that really jumped out at me.

While offering some tips on how to cultivate discernment, Miller brings up James 1:19: "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry." This, she says, is "our greatest resource for practicing discernment." But why does James insist (along with the book of Proverbs) that God's people need to be good listeners?

Think about a driver's blind spots in the car, the little gaps in your vision that even the mirrors don't show you. She writes,

The interesting thing about blind spots is that everyone else on the road can see what you cannot. If you try to change lanes and a car in in your blind spot, the driver will likely blare their horn. In that instance, your greatest help is the vision and warning of others.

Followers of Jesus must be good listeners because other people will see things that we don't, things that we may desperately need to be aware of.

But she doesn't stop there. Miller goes on to bring up Paul's picture of the church as the Body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12. He writes that "the body is not made up of one part but of many... The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!' And the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you!'" (12:14, 21) Paul wanted the Corinthians to understand that every member of the body (the church) has a role to play, and the members that seem "weaker" to you are in fact indispensable. (12:22)

When you think about certain members of your church, you may not feel like they’re particularly “indispensable” for your faith journey. In fact, you might imagine you’d get along just fine without them. And, sure enough, when disputes arise between Christians, often our impulse is to separate ourselves from each other. But Miller (who is not Methodist, if you were wondering) worries that these divisions ultimately harm the Church, because homogenous groups of believers can’t see their own blind spots. “We cannot see our blind spots without the help of people who are standing in a totally different place with a totally different point of view.” Sometimes the only thing between us and a theological or ethical wreck is the vision and warning of others. Their different point of view is indispensable.

What Sharon Hodde Miller's saying here is pretty counter-cultural, and I think she leaves us with a couple of important questions to ponder:

• Are you “quick to listen” to people with very different perspectives than yours, or do you mostly listen to those you agree with?
• Are you surrounding yourself with people who can see your blind spots? Or are you surrounding yourself with people who share the same blind spots you do?

Listen to this week's devotional right here!