Way back in an undergraduate psychology class, I learned about the Johari window. A psychological tool created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955, the model assists your understanding of personal self-awareness. 
The four quadrants depict four aspects of every person:
- Transparent Area: the you known by you and your peers
- Hidden Area: the you known only by you, hidden from your peers
- Blind Spot: the you known by your peers, hidden from yourself
- Potential Discovery Area: the you unknown by you and your peers
To get a sense of what’s known and unknown, you choose traits from a list that best describe yourself, and then your peers choose traits that best describe you. The choices go into some sort of calculator, and it spits out a snapshot of your Johari window. (You can take the test here.)
These are the sorts of things that I get completely sucked into. I want to know who I am, who you are, why are we the way we are, what can we know about each other, and how can we learn and grow? Our inner-worlds are complex. We will always be discovering something new about why we feel, think, or act the way we do. Which is why the Johari window came to mind as I sat down to complete today’s post for the Write 31 Days challenge.
Zombie-like faith is the result of an inner-world that’s numbed out and wasting away—it’s a heart suffering from acedia. We may not even aware that our insides are wasting away, because it falls into either our Blind Spot or our Potential Discovery Area.
The Johari window stresses the need for us to known ourselves in relation to others. We were created for community, because we cannot possibly know our true, full selves without the help of those who can see our blind spots or beckon us to come out of hiding or encourage us to discover new things.
Jesus models this sort of community shaping for us in Revelation 3. The people in the Laodicean church saw themselves as rich, accomplished, requiring nothing. But Jesus had a different assessment; He said they had no idea that they were wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I’m no expert in the Johari window, but I think His assessment would fall under the Blind Spot quadrant, Known to Others / Unknown to Self. (I’m not sure where to place their incorrect personal assessment, as there isn’t a Self Deluded / Wishful Thinking quadrant.)
Blind spots are tough to hear about, aren’t they? But if we’re going to be fully functional, inside and out, we need to hear truth from people who see what we cannot. We can’t wake up from zombie-like faith if we aren’t even aware we’ve been sleep walking through life.
Write 31 Days Challenge // Wake up from Zombie-Like Faith
