Blindness and Walking By Faith: Lessons from John 9:1-7

Today, T.D. Jakes preached a message from God to me.  It was about the blind man Jesus healed by making clay from spit and telling him to wash in the pool Siloam after the disciples asked whose sin caused his blindness:

John 9:1-9 (NASB) 

As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?"  

Jesus answered, "It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him.  We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world." 

When He had said this, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and applied the clay to his eyes, and said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam"(which is translated, Sent). 

So he went away and washed, and came back seeing.

As usual, the Bishop made many excellent points.  I am only recording a few that speak to me in my moment...

1. Blindness was this man's particular weakness, allowed by God, that facilitated God's glory.  My strengths and weaknesses are increasingly public and difficult for me to handle.  But they facilitate God's glory--and my humility.   There is no fault; nothing wrong with me and no punishment I am suffering.  It is just my particular set of weaknesses that facilitate my utility.

2. The disciples viewed the man as a public display of the costs of sin.  For them, the man existed as a site for casting derision--derision that extended even to his family.  This despite the disciples deserving the same consequence (i.e. if blindness always results from sin--parental or otherwise--we should all be blind).  I should be careful that I can survive the measures/condemnations I use against others.

3. Jesus covered the man's eyes with clay, then told him to go to Siloam.  This is a picture of faith (and I would argue recreation).  The man is already blind, but now Jesus has heaped more "blinders/barriers" on him.  From the looks of it, his situation is made even more difficult after a genuine encounter with God.  The man must now publicly grope his way, doubly blind, through the city to where he was "Sent/Siloam."  I, too, must publicly grope my way through this particular phase of my life--one I have long feared and feel like my life has not prepared me for much at all.  ... but there is a promise....

4. The man washed in Siloam, where he was sent, and God gave him sight.  If I grope my way, understanding this a process of practicing and developing faith, I will also be healed--of fear, troubling circumstance, ignorance.  And, like the formerly blind man, I will come to know God better.

5. The process that dramatizes my weakness and results in healing glorifies God.

Mental Audiences

It's 1:17 am.  I should take my butt to bed, no doubt.  But I want to say this briefly.

I write less often and with more difficulty that is necessary because I have not settled on a good imaginary audience.  In my mind, I alternate between three audiences: friends with who I believe will add insights I do not have; complete morons who know absolutely nothing; and my future self, who has God-like omniscience on all things "me."

Consequently, writing always seems arduous.  When I want to discuss something with friends, I feel compelled to give complete background about the topic, the origins of my question/thoughts, and my thoughts themselves.  All three parts feel necessary to enable what I want, namely informed commentary with my friends.  My assumption being that they will always provide things I simply cannot.

When I want to express myself, the writing feels even worse!  I either have to breakdown every thought, as though speaking to a moron, or anticipate the mockery of my omniscient future self.  (The arrogance of it all is palpable, even to me, but I suspect everyone struggles with internal audience problems.)  Of course, I don't really assume I am writing to morons.  That's me being overly self-critical.  What I mean is that I assume the reader is intelligent enough to understand any argument I can produce, but the reader is also completely ignorant of me as a person.  Without sufficient background, the reader cannot possibly make true meaning from the literal words.  I do not believe that anything--words, data, phenomena--speaks for itself without context.  So I busy myself, and drone needlessly, trying to provide enough context to make my words make sense so that I can feel that I actually expressed myself.  Otherwise, I would feel that I did little more that paint an unintentional Rorschach text in which readers have no choice but to see themselves thinly veiled in "Glenn-face."

On the other hand, writing for my future self feels simultaneously unnecessary--future me knows me better than present me does and future me can express me to me better too--and self-defeating.  I feel like a child telling an adult the interesting things I learned in school as if I'm the first person on the planet every to learn it.  New to me is not the same as new to everyone.  And new to me is definitely not new to future me.  Future me can only laugh at his embarrassingly ignorant, childish self.

So I guess this is as much a cry for help as it is an expression of self.  I need a new mental audience.  I'm open to suggestions.  I assume the mental audience should be different for professional writing than for personal stuff.  My professional audience is increasingly my version of a first-year graduate student--curious, intelligent, and ignorant of academic precedents like reigning theories and seminal work.  You know the debacle that is my personal audience.  Any suggestions?

Recording a Lesson about Fear and Anxiety

Just recording a lesson here for myself.  After a week of unprecedented productivity, I suddenly couldn't write a single paragraph in 12 hours of trying last night.  I panicked, thinking my grace was gone and the anxiety had won out.  But, thank God, my therapist corrected me.  I am excited about the writing, and I am enjoying the process.  Thus the week of productivity.  It all stopped when I tried to finish (final edits) an article and submit it for publication.  Suddenly, no production.  My therapist said, it's because completing the project introduced my fears of having my writing rejected.  The only way to avoid the correction/rejection process is not to submit.  Of course, that is not an option for a professional academic.

So...I'm shifting my attention to recognizing a few things:

1. Academic review--even the fiercest rejection--is not that bad.  Certainly nothing to panic about.  Review is part of the profession, and it's part of joining any conversation.

2. Academic review, including and especially rejection, will be a tremendous blessing to me because it will reinforce God's attempts to help me walk in humility.

3. Academic review, including and especially rejection, will be a tremendous blessing to me because by confronting and surviving it, I will be far less likely to catastrophise the unknown the next time I finish up and submit an article.

4. Most importantly, academic review, including and especially rejection, will be a tremendous blessing to me because it is a reminder that my self concept, focus, and source for evaluation are not external.  The goal of my life is not to produce memorable and praiseworthy work.  The goal of my life is to manifest the me God created.  That means producing the best work I can as a reflection of who I am, not an attempt to impress the academy or anyone else.  

Ambiguity and the Writing Process

Ambiguity has been my arch nemesis throughout my life.  Since the earliest phases of elementary school, I have consciously avoided the ambiguous.  Give me 100 pages to read, but please don't ask me to clean my room.  I know when a book is finished, but when, exactly is a room "clean?"  And now, I find adulthood is a series of ambiguities.  And worse, yet, that my job is to confront the ultimate embodiment of ambiguity--the blank page.  To date, I the implicit task in my mind was figuring out what is supposed to be on a blank page and trying to write that.  Consequently, I wrote from an insecure place, and it manifested in my writing.  Now, I am transitioning from asking "what is supposed to be on a page" to simply delving into myself and representing whatever thoughts I have on the topic.  And that is a far superior project because what is in my head, in my mind, in my spirit, is not ambiguous.  It is sharp, clear, and valuable...And I know when it is finished...  :)

Things I've Learned Over the Past Few Days

The race is not given to the swift...

Last week I “discovered” that the measure of a good professional academic is not the same as the measure of a good student. Being a good academic is about sustained effort; it is about labor.

We’ve been taught to believe there is an inverse relationship between talent and labor; the more talented a person is, the less s/he has to labor. The trick, then, has been to find a way to profit from one’s talents, which come easy. A labor intensive life indicated some failure to profit from one’s certain talents. Said failure may be due to ignorance of one’s talents and how to maximize them, some social impediment (e.g. racism, sexism), or some other barrier.

For me, that errant teaching has produced a great deal of frustration and self-doubt for some time now. There is any number of things that I simply did not pursue because deep-down I believed that if it did not come easy, it was not right. Fortunately, I have always been a very good student. Academia has always come easy to me, and I figured I was lucky federal laws mandating school attendance effectively forced me into my talent-field.

I advanced through high school and college mostly on talent alone. Somewhere in elementary school, I figured out that an 80% effort and a 100% effort earned me the same grade. Giving that extra 20% didn’t make any sense, so I stopped doing it. Now, that has to change. But the shift is not a matter of increasing my work ethic so much as figuring out the rules of the game. The extra 20% isn't in the extra thought like is was in grade school and college.  The extra 20% must go to post-creation labor.

Being a good academic is not about talent, at least not for me. Everyone here is talented. Being good at this is about polish. It is about bearing down and really exhausting every data source. It is about going back over my writing 4 or 5 times, taking others’ criticisms, and reworking every paragraph again to make every thought as clear and potent as possible. It is not about the ease of thought anymore. No one cares how long it took me to think of something or write it. They only care how meaningful and well-supported the thoughts are. My worth as an academic does not depend on my nerd-whit and debating skills; it depends on my humility and willingness to slowly work through every issue.

For years now, I have been increasingly stressed and frustrated because I did not think I measured up. I have honestly considered giving up and finding another line of work. If not for my friend, Daniel Delgado, bluntly defining my alternate plans as “self sabotage,” I would never have confronted this issue. Speed has been a large part of my self esteem. Now I realize that speed is of little use and importance. My career will be largely defined by my level of dedication to perfect each project and my courage to confront and incorporate criticism. Ironically, it seems I am among the last to learn these lessons. “God mocks proud mockers” (Proverbs 3:34).

Pray for me. I really have to a lot of growing to do.