If you caught last week’s message then you now know you have blind spots. But what are they, and how do we identify them? The good news is that God hasn’t created us to walk alone. You are part of a community that can not only sustain you when you’re down but also help you see and change your blindspots. This week we talk about the tools God uses to help us to identify and tackle our blind spots.
Next Steps
We’re in this series called Blindspots. We looked last week at how the truth about you is you don’t really know the full truth about you — that the general level of human self-awareness is incredibly low because we all have blindspots.
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Part of the problem is we hear that and say, “Yep, I know that’s true. I know some people who for sure have blindspots. They’re amazingly non-self-aware.”
You see, no one thinks a slack of self-awareness is their problem. If they did, they would be self-aware.
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Which brings us to a great question — who’s going to help you see your blindspots? Who’s going to tell you the truth about you?
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This brings us to a great story in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 20.
Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”
Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Jesus with her sons and, kneeling down, asked a favor of him. “What is it you want?” he asked. She said, “Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.” (Matthew 20:17-21)
This is an amazing moment. Jesus tells his disciples he’s on his way to die.
Matthew says, “Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came…” In other words, immediately after Jesus says he has to be betrayed, condemned, mocked, flogged, and crucified. She says, “Before that happens, can I get in a quick favor?”
“Jesus, would you do me a solid? You know my boys here, Jimmy and Johnny. Before you’re humiliated and martyred in the ultimate act of self-emptying, sacrificial love, could I get my boys a promotion? Could I get them an upgrade? I know you have twelve disciples and all, but could you make sure my boys are disciple number one and disciple number two?”
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Now this is repeated in the gospels numerous times — Jesus talks about his need to humble himself, to suffer, and then the disciples respond by arguing about who’s the greatest.
This happens actually three times in the gospel of Matthew and three times in the gospel of Mark.
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Here Mom is talking to Jesus and the boys are standing right there. You notice the collusion of this little group. We’ll talk more about collusion in groups.
The boys don’t have to ask Jesus themselves because Mom is going to do that for them.
They can just stand there and look sheepish and modest as if, of course, they wish this wasn’t happening but they just want to make Mom happy.
Mom can convince herself this is purely an act of altruism, of motherly love. She’s not asking anything for herself, of course. She’s selflessly seeking the well-being of her sons.
She has a bumper sticker she’s just waiting to put on her car. — “My sons are honored students at Jesus’ Discipleship School.”
In the ancient world, parents would sometimes gratify their own egos through the accomplishments of their children. Isn’t that a weird culture? Can you even imagine a world in which parents would try to do that kind of thing?
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Mrs. Zebedee here is one of the first helicopter parents, swooping in to make sure her boys outshine other boys.
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Just a word about this. It’s possible to be a parent and to be sucking the life out of your kids by gaining status through their achievements and to deceive yourself, to make yourself think it’s just about love and wanting them to do well.
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You can design a family system where the kids feel this pressure, they bear this weight. But the reality that all parents have egos and that a parents’ ego can get fed by their kids’ achievements, never gets named, never gets acknowledged, and the kids are actually taught self-deception.
That’s what’s going on here.
It’s so interesting. It’s so human. She kneels before Jesus. This is a posture of humility and surrender. In other words, it’s possible to deceive yourself so that in an act of incredible entitlement and arrogance and grandiosity that everyone else could recognize, you actually think you’re being and coming across as humble. That’s what’s going on with her.
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Now just as an exercise in imagination — imagine for a moment that Mrs. Zebedee is in a small group at her church. She goes to her group later that week. They ask her, “What did you do this week, Mrs. Z?”
“Well, I went down to where Jesus was teaching. He was saying something about going to Jerusalem. I didn’t pay much attention to that because I had a lot on my mind. I actually got down on my knees and asked him if my sons could sit on his right and his left, if they could be disciple number one and disciple number two.”
How do you think the other members of the small group at her church responded?
I’ll tell you how they responded. They said things like, “Mrs. Z, you didn’t ask for anything for yourself?”
“Nope, just my boys.”
“You’re a great mom. I hope your boys realize how lucky they are. Did Jesus say yes to you? He must have said yes. Jesus had to love a mother who loves her boys like that. We’ll pray you get exactly what you asked for.”
Now inside, other people in the group are thinking, “Who does she think she is, trying to elevate her children like that?”
Or they’re thinking, “I wish I thought of that first.”
But no one in the group says those truths out loud.
Churches sometimes call small groups “growth groups,” but if we collude with each other, if we connive with each other to help each other fail to understand the truth about ourselves, they can actually turn into “growth prevention groups.” We can keep each other from growing.
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So there’s this amazing story. Mrs. Z gets down on her knees. In her heart she’s all worked up about what a humble thing she’s doing, how she’s humbling herself by kneeling to worship.
She makes the ask. “Can my boys be number one and number two?” They all look at Jesus. It’s an amazing moment.
Now the main thing for you to know about Jesus is Jesus — who loved children, who went looking for lost sheep — never liked to hurt anyone’s feelings, so in good Jesus style he says, “Well, that’s a noble request. I cannot make any promises, but I hate to disappoint people, so I’ll check with my Father and see what I can do.”
Right? Is that what he said? Not exactly.
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. (Matthew 20:22)
That phrase “to them” is significant. He’s calling them on their collusion here.
In the text it’s quite clear Mrs. Z intends this to be a conversation only between Jesus and her.
That maintains the pretext that she’s in it only for the boys and the boys are there only for her sake. Little systems, little groups, little families go this way.
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A writer by the name of R.D. Laing said family systems that protect self-deception and brokenness always have three rules.
Rule number one — “Don’t. Just don’t.”
In this case, “Don’t betray the family by failing to achieve high status.”
Rule number 1A is, “Rule number one does not exist.”
Rule number 1B is, “Do not discuss the existence or non-existence of rules 1, 1A, or 1B.”
Because as long as they don’t talk about it, it can’t be going on.
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Jesus is always breaking these rules. He’s always talking about it.
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Ironically, religion is associated with rules and Jesus with religion, but he gets in way more trouble for breaking rules than he does for making them.
Here he breaks the rules. He responds “to them.” In other words, the boys as well as the mom. — “Don’t you boys hide behind your mom and don’t you, mom, hide behind your boys.”
This gets to the core of what we’re talking about today.
At the church I used to attend in Chicago, there’s an expression for having the courage to speak the truth in love in a difficult situation to another person. They talk about having the courage to tell the last 10 percent.
The idea is that very often in human relationships, especially often in churches where we suffer sometimes from terminal niceness, we will address a difficult problem with another person, but when it comes to the most important, most sensitive, most needed, most honest, but hardest part of the truth, we shrink back.
We say the easy 90 percent, but then, instead of saying something like, “My observation could be wrong, but my observation is you were talking way too much,” we’ll say something like, “I didn’t think the meeting went all that well. What do you think?” We get fuzzy or vague or indirect precisely when the truth is needed the most.
We may tell ourselves we’re doing it to be loving or to spare the other person’s feelings, but the real reason is fear. I’m just afraid. I’m afraid you might not like me. I’m afraid you might get mad at me. I would rather not have to deal with the anxiety and the unpleasant emotions that go along with plunging into the chaos of the last 10 percent.
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I was having a tough conversation with my wife recently and she was pointing out some things about me that I have a hard time seeing. Honestly, in that moment, even though I’m in the middle of teaching a series on blindspots — I realized I didn’t want to hear the truth about me, because the truth about me is I need to change in ways I don’t want to change.
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Now does that mean that when Kathy and I have a talk like this she’s always right and I’m always wrong? Most likely, but only God knows for sure.
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The truth about me is I will never know what the truth about me is if I don’t have some people close to me who love me enough and have the courage to tell me the last 10 percent.
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This is core to what it means to be the church.
This is why Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus.
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. (Ephesians 4:15)
Most of us have mirrors in our bathrooms because when we wake up in the morning, we want to know the truth about what our physical appearance looks like.
Well, in the same way we need to have other people in our lives, because other people are the most important mirror God will ever give you.
All the time, you and I are sending off little signals by how we listen, by our body language, by how we respond. — Am I open to the last 10 percent or am I closed to it? I’ll guarantee you if you are closed to it, you will send that message to other people and they will stop telling you and pull away.
Then we will never, ever know the truth about ourselves and we will never “in every respect” grow to become the mature body of Christ.
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Well, Jesus speaks the truth in love. Jesus tells the last 10 percent. We want to be a “last 10 percent” church.
“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?” “We can,” they answered. (Matthew 20:22)
Jesus is looking for any kind of glimmer of self-awareness in James and John here, so he starts by saying to them, “You don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t know about the cup.”
The cup in the Bible is very often an image for human destiny, particularly as it relates to the judgment of God that’s coming to earth because of sin. Jesus is going to have to take that on.
So he says to them, “Can you drink the cup I’m going to drink? Before you respond, let me give you a little clue about the correct answer. Here are three really important words — You don’t know. You don’t know about the cup. You don’t know about my fate. You don’t know about the cost. You don’t know yourself. You don’t know what motivates you. You don’t know what’s in your heart. You don’t know what you’re capable of. You don’t know what God is up to. You’re generally clueless. You don’t know. This is a big hint before you respond — you don’t know. Now can you drink the cup?”
“Heck yeah. Easy. Piece of cake. No problem.”
Jesus said to them, “You will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant.
Even here there’s this very humble, self-limiting dynamic to Jesus. “It’s not for me to give.”
These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father. (Matthew 20:23)
So that’s the scene with Jesus and Mrs. Z and her two boys.
Then there are the rest of the disciples. They find out about this. We don’t know how. Wouldn’t you love to know how they found out about it?
If you’re James and John, probably you don’t want them to know. Probably you engineer a conversation like that to try to make sure it could just stay a secret. “Now Jesus, don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”
But as a general rule, it’s really hard to build authentic biblical community, speaking the truth in love, when we’re trying to keep secrets.
However it happens, it leaks out.
When the ten heard about this, they were indignant with the two brothers. (Matthew 20:24)
Why are they mad?
It’s not because they’re any more noble or pure.
It’s probably because they’re thinking, “Why didn’t I think of that first? What’s left now? If disciple number one and disciple number two are taken, all I can do is jockey for number three through twelve. That’s all that’s left.”
They’re probably mad because James and John are the two disciples who tried to pull this off.
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I want to say a word about this.
The dynamics in that little community of disciples are really instructive and really important for us to know about.
Sometimes we can put Bible characters on a pedestal and not realize that we learn from them because they’re like us. Jesus had twelve disciples, but three of them, Peter, James, and John, formed an inner circle, and the Gospels are quite clear about this. Those three are the only ones with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration who see him radiant in glory in this amazing moment. Those three are the only three who Jesus takes with him to the home of a man named Jairus to perform one of his greatest miracles. They’re the only three who when he goes to the garden of Gethsemane accompany him all the way. He tells the rest of the disciples to stay behind. In other words, they see depths and vulnerability of Jesus that other disciples don’t see. Which is kind of curious. I was thinking about this this week — why would Jesus, who is so adamant that all human beings are equally loved by God and matter the same to God, deliberately create an inner circle that would leave some disciples feeling like they’re on the outside? || Look what happens when the others get mad. Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:25-28) Jesus never allows a destructive hidden agenda to go unnamed and undiscussed. He never skips the last 10 percent. So he calls all of the disciples together to talk about what’s going on. A lot of Jesus’ greatest and most transformative teaching happened in these unplanned moments. || When he calls them together, it’s interesting to me what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “You know what, guys? I’ve been spending too much time with Peter, James, and John. I can see where they would look like my favorites. I’ve hurt your feelings. I’m sorry. From now on I’ll divide my time into 12 equal parts. You can all keep score. You can all keep track and make sure everyone gets the same amount of time with me.” He doesn’t do that. He became a real finite flesh-and-blood person and, of course, it was impossible for him to give equal time to every member of the human race. He doesn’t try. So there are these different circles. There are seventy-two he sends out in Luke. People’s feelings about that — their jealousy or envy or feeling left out or feeling inferior or feeling superior and puffed up — will all be things they need to die to if they’re going to be formed spiritually. Jesus will bring it into the light, into the open, time and time again and call everyone to name it and to die to it and to live in humble servanthood. || I say this about the disciples because sometimes people think, “I would experience richer, || If our church had a goal of “We want all of the unhealthy people to go away and only healthy people to remain,” our church would be a lot smaller than it is right now. || So the question is — who have you asked to speak the truth to you in love? Where are you doing that? || I want to say this. If you’re in a small group or you lead a small group at Blue Oaks, we want that to be a growth group, not a growth prevention group, and that will only happen if we actually learn to speak the truth in love. || If you’re a small group leader, you don’t start to make that happen by telling other people the last 10 percent about them. It happens when you say as the leader, “I’m open to that.” || Well, this is going on with the disciples. By the way, James and John in this little inner circle are no picnic for Jesus. People often think about Peter as this rash, impulsive character, and if they think about John at all, if they know him, they think about him as this kind of mellow beloved guy. Not so much. Jesus gives to Simon the nickname Peter, petros, rock. The only two other disciples he gives nicknames to are James and John. We’re told when he picks the disciples there are James and John, sons of Zebedee, to whom Jesus gave the nickname Sons of Thunder. Now what kind of temperament and verbal style would they most likely have to have to get the nickname Sons of Thunder? John is all about “I want to be number one.” And not just in this story with his mom. Look at this sequence in Luke 9. An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. They had this problem all the time. Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. Then he said to them, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.” This is John’s direct response. “Master,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.” (Luke 9:46-49) Jesus says, “I’m telling you the least is the greatest.” John’s immediate response was, “You know, Jesus, speaking of the greatest, some guy out there is looking greater than us. We tried to make him stop relieving people of their misery and oppression, because he’s not part of our little circle and we know you love our little circle more than you love any other little circles. But we couldn’t stop him, so you have to make him stop so he doesn’t look better than us.” Jesus responds, “No, don’t stop him. Whoever is not against us is for us.” || The circle is infinitely larger than you know. The very next verse, they’re walking through a Samaritan village. The Samaritans were generally enemies with the Israelites, so this Samaritan village doesn’t welcome them. No surprise there. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” (Luke 9:54) “We’re better than them, those Samaritans. Shall we destroy them?” Jesus turns and rebukes them. He doesn’t send fire to the Samaritans; he rebukes James and John. || How long do you think this unhealthy, destructive competition, comparison, “Got to be better than everyone else.” How long do you think that went on with John? It’s quite remarkable. Even after Jesus is crucified. John, chapter 20: So Peter and the other disciple [John] started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. (John 20:3-4) Even on Easter morning they’re having a race. There’s this competition between Peter and John — who’s the fastest disciple? And it’s John. Who wrote the gospel of John? I picture them getting to the tombs and John is like, “Hey, I won,” and Peter says, “Yeah, but I got to go inside first, and there was the angel saying, ‘Christ is risen! He is risen indeed,'” and John says, “I know, but still I won, I won. I was here first.” || Then Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost and the church is born. All that Jesus taught them when he was with them transforms them. They begin to suffer. One day, King Herod had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword. I wonder when that moment came if James remembered that day when he knelt down before Jesus with his mom and asked to be first, because he gets to be first at something. He’s the first to give up his life for Jesus. || John is the last. John ends up an old man living in exile on an island called Patmos. If you read his letters — 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John — about all he can talk about is love. || The truth about you is you will never know the truth about you unless you invite some brothers and sisters to tell you the truth about you. If you never know the truth about you, the truth is you will never grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. || We all need that. I don’t care how old you are. I don’t care how long you’ve been around the church. I don’t care how spiritually mature you are. We all need that. So, just to get real concrete — How do you do at telling other people the last 10 percent when it needs to get told? If you wait until you can do it perfectly, guess how long you’ll wait? You’ll wait forever. You have to start by doing it imperfectly. || Sometimes I’ll start like this: “This is really important and I might say it wrong. It might not come out the way I want it to. So let me try to say it the best I can, and if it comes out wrong I’ll try again. But it’s a really important thing and I want you to know.” || We have to work at telling the last 10 percent, and for most of us, it’s just going to take courage and a willingness to do it wrong and get better at it. And we do it because we love. || Another question — How do you do at receiving the last 10 percent? I’ll give you a few wrong ways to do this. This is from experience. || Some people when they’re told the last 10 percent just get mad, defensive, stubborn, fired up, and get this hard shell. || The message of that says, “Don’t tell me.” Some people just crumble. They’ll respond like, “Oh, I’m so awful. I’m terrible. You could never love me. No one could ever love me. Jesus could never love someone as bad as me,” which is really just a subtle, sneaky, manipulative way to try to make you feel guilty for telling the last 10 percent so you never do it again. || * Some people give superficial empathy. “Thank you for telling me. I appreciate your honest feedback,” but inside they don’t agree. Inside they have no intention of going through the pain of facing consequences or trying to change. They’ve just developed a response technique of soothing you into oblivion. || So sometimes people fight back immediately, sometimes people crumble, and sometimes people soothe. Those are not good responses. || Or I can listen in humble, repentant openness and seek to learn without crumbling. One place — at the cross of Jesus. || Now, what we’re talking about is a way deeper reality than just psychological self-awareness. This is truth before God in the soul of eternal beings. The darkness we have to try to get our arms around and our eyes open to is sin. It’s dark beyond our capacity to even understand or bear. || You see, the truth about me is that sin is a much worse problem in me than I know. || The only place where we can receive the power to see the truth and bear it is at the cross of Jesus, because Jesus came to give his life a ransom for me, to buy me back from darkness and deception. He died on the cross to forgive all of my sins, even the last 10 percent. Yours too. || There’s an old song that I grew up singing when I was a kid in the Baptist church. It’s called Just As I Am. It’s about coming to God just as I am. And I was thinking, “What if we could be a ‘just as I am’ church in ‘just as I am’ relationships with each other?” Just as I am — just honestly open to the truth about ourselves before each other. || So today the question is — Who will you ask to tell the truth about you? Maybe it’s the person sitting right next to you right now. Maybe they’ve been looking forward to this opportunity for a long time and it’s going to be a great day. || This is the question for you and me — are you willing to go to another human being and tell them, “I want you to have an open door to tell me the truth about me”? Are you willing to do that? I know, this is hard work. Are you excited about this series? || Now, this is between you and God. Talk with God about this. It’s about learning and we’ll make mistakes and it’ll get messy. The disciples were so messy. The early church was so messy. They didn’t get it right. Their raw humanity and pride and arrogance and entitlement bled all over the place, leaked all over the place, but they were at least real about it so Jesus could get at it. When he can get at it, when we get real with him, man, that’s when transformation will happen. That’s when change will happen. We want to be that kind of place. Not the kind of place where we all look like we have it together and everyone looks healthy and mature, but where we just get honest about, “I’m a mess. I would love to be disciple number one. God help me.” The truth about us is we need the truth about us. Would you bow your head and close your eyes? Would you take a moment right now, as best you can, to tell God, to declare, to decide, “God, with your help, I want to be open to the truth about me.” The Bible is full of these statements where people ask God for this. “Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me. Know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me.” God, we know it’ll sting and it’ll hurt, but we know Jesus gave his life on a cross to redeem us from our sin so we could walk in the light, and that’s what we want to do. Would you help us to do that? I pray, God, this week, that you would help relationships, that you would help families and marriages, parents and children, small groups and ministries, little communities, become places where truth is spoken in love. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen. Blue Oaks Church
There are the Twelve.
There are the three inside that.
deeper, closer, more joy-filled community if I just had healthier people in my relational world.”
The problem with this is if all of the people in your relational world were super healthy and wanted to restrict their relationships to other super healthy people, what would happen to you?
By the way, this is noted only in one gospel — the gospel of John.
Heavenly Father, we ask that you do that. We want to step into the light.
Pleasanton, CA
