RTG2: Facing our Blind Spots

(Please note that RTG part 1, the introduction to this series can be found here.)

During my student days, I had the great privilege of spending almost a year in the wonderful but troubled island of Jamaica. It is a place of almost indescribable natural beauty in which the extremes of poverty and wealth sadly coexist side by side. Whilst there, three days per week, I would catch two buses from my surprisingly comfortable corrugated tin hut where I was living and head off to Webster Memorial Church in downtown Kingston where I was placed as an assistant. It was frequently a fun journey. Painted large on the outside wall of a school for the blind that I always passed en route were the following words: “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” As my year moved on, I grew to very much like the point they were making to those tempted to gaze at their school or its students with derision or, for that matter, pity. Their point is one that those of us so very sure about our faith on this island need to consider ourselves. As evangelicals we often make the assumption that blindness only occurs in others. Indeed it’s rather painfully characteristic of us. As one leader expressed it a little too well for comfort, “Because evangelicals are right with God, they think they are right in everything else.” Yet Jesus’ wry comment on specks and planks (Matthew 7:3-5) warns us more than adequately of our vulnerabilities. Could it be that we have developed unrecognised blind spots in our response to the Gospel?  If so, are we willing to face them and change whatever we need to in order to more faithfully bear witness to its truth?

Please click here for the next in the series.

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