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.

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...  :)

These Wounds I Suffered in the House of My Friends...

I credit my mother with the great majority of my Bible teaching.  She bought me my first Bible when I was 14 years old.  She drove me to Bible study for the 2 years following.  She taught me memory scriptures from my earliest days, and so beautifully sang gospel music that I still hum her songs to comfort my soul when it is troubled.  Mom gathered the family for Bible reading and prayer periodically.  She also called me to help pray through the family's toughest times.  My spirituality is mostly a reflection of hers.  Nevertheless, the two verses my father taught me reverberate in my mind as often as all the others.  One verse is about having to show yourself to be friendly if you hope to make friends.  The other is the subject of this entry. 

And one will say to him, "What are these wounds between your arms?" Then he will say, "Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends."  --Zechariah 13:6

 Despite being raised in New Jersey, my father has a Southerner's gift for memorable phrases.  His sayings, like, "What they do with you, they'll do to you" have served me well.  His quotations of Zechariah 13:6 were given like an old country saying, and I have internalized its wisdom accordingly.  The context for Zechariah 13 is God's prophecy of a devastating military defeat for Judah, and the verse itself centers on a false prophet whom the Jews reject.  Again, I never learned the context for the verse.  In fact, I don't recall Dad ever giving a citation for it all--beyond it being in the Bible.  So, I've learned the scripture and used it as folk wisdom.  Even still, the word of the Lord is never void. 

We've all heard the saying, "you only hurt the ones you love."  Standing alone, Zechariah 13:6 pretty much means the same thing, but from the victim's perspective.  Paraphrased, "I am only hurt by the ones I love."  Through my many hours of therapy  :)  I almost exclusively talk about the "wounds I suffered in the house of my friends."  Though the events are years, even decades, old, I spend countless hours rehashing hurtful incidents--incidents that refuse my best efforts to bury them beyond my memory.  Usually, folks had no malice when they hurt me, but the wounds are so deep that I am still tending to them all these years later. 

The scripture speaks to that sentiment.  The wounds the false prophet bares are actually from his mother and father, who attempted to kill him because of what he spoke (Zech. 13:3).  Though no one tried to kill me, the wounds are so deep and obvious to everyone that it appears the wounds came from a murder attempt.  I'm sure everyone relates to that.  We all carry very deep wounds.   

The point being, the wounds we suffer in supposedly safe and nurturing places hurt the worst and mark us for years.  As Paul Simon said in "Graceland", "Everybody sees you're blown apart.  Everybody hears the wind blow."  Simon concludes by saying, "I'm going to Graceland."  My next post demonstrates why the metaphorical "Graceland," i.e. Heaven, represented by the Church, may not be a sanctuary for safety.  When it comes to race, white Churches apparently function as "the house of your friends." 

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.