For nearly a year, a mentor of mine asked me this question at our weekly meeting: What are my blind spots? It’s one of my most enduring memories of him. He knew there were things he didn’t know. He saw there were things he didn’t see. And rather than pretend it wasn’t the case, he leaned into it, and he asked for help.
In her book Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do Jennifer L. Eberhardt writes about the implicit bias that creates disparities in the way we see or don’t see others, treat and don’t treat others. Focusing on racial biases, she also notes that we hold biases based on other things like age, weight, height, gender, etc. These biases are fueled by stereotypes fed us by parents and culture and nurtured by institutions and even by churches. We all have blind spots, biases we’re not even aware of. And tragically they lead us to treat others in harmful and hurtful ways.
This is why Benedict’s third rung on the ladder of humility is so important: “The third step of humility is that we submit to the prioress or abbot in all obedience for the love of God, imitating Jesus Christ, of whom the apostle says: ‘Christ became obedient even to death’” (Phil. 2:8). Ideally, the prioress or abbot was a deeply spiritual, widely respected, and uniquely insightful person to whom you could turn for illumination. Humility begins with the recognition that we have blind spots and biases and that we need the help of others to identify them and address them. Humility is the willingness to seek what we know we don’t know from deeply spiritual, widely respected and uniquely insightful people. These people could be authors, like Dr. Ebehardt. They could be community leaders. They could be personal friends and acquaintances. One of the first steps toward living towards union with God and others is surrounding ourselves with people whose insight leads us to greater illumination about ourselves.
