Day 11 -- The Johari Window: Windows of Acceptance

Named for its creators, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, the Johari Window is a model for understanding the processes of human interaction. The model describes four quadrants or windows. Imagine if you weill a four paned window.

In the upper left hand corner there is the "open" window which is comprised of things that I know about myself and you know about me. This is the public windw. Examples would include titles, skin color, education, relationship status, gender, etc.

Next to it in the upper right hand corner is the "blind" window and it comprises everything that others know about me, but that I am not aware of. This could be anything from personal subconscious behavioral ticks to an open fly.

In the bottom left hand corner there is the "hidden" window. This window encompasses everything that I know about myself but that others do not. This could be anything from my favorite undisclosed ice cream flavor to very personal family history.

The last window, the bottom right hand window, is called the "unknown" window, and comprises all those things about myself that neither I nor anyone else knows. They may be things that may come to be discovered in conversation, reflrection, etc., but these things are neither immediately apparent to either myself nor any one else.

Perhaps the greatest insight of this model is that it describes the limitations of our knowledge about ourselves, others knowledge about ourselves, and our knowledge about others. Though we might like to think our awareness is absolute...when you dig down there's just a boat load that's not readily apparent.

This is unsettling. We human beings are both light and dark, beautiful and ugly. In each of us you'll find the range of the best things to be found in humanity as well as the worst.

But it's in the midst of our own sense of being "flawed" that things get really out of kilter. How many things about yourself are you unsatisfied with? Your hips, the lines on your face, the size of your gut, your inability to perform certain job tasks with competence, or your inability to connect with certain human beings that are important to you? My guess is that each of us has a laundary list of things that if we could rub the magic lamp and make them go away, we would.

Let me let you in on a personal hunch: people who have a problem accepting themselves have problems accepting others. It's just the way it works. The more unaware we are of our own unseen personal judgments, the more life acts like a mirror reflecting us back at ourselves...a ready made mirror that would reveal so much about who we are if we'd just get up the courage to take a look.

In the midst of all of this unacceptance, we project on to the universe and especially on to God our own sense of judgment and then have a hard time imagining a Deity that might just love us exactly as we are.

Acceptance. Total, unconditional, and powerfully transformational.

This is what the author of Ephesians has to say about this whole dynamic: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." Ephesians 2:8-10

You are God's perfect workmanship. Accept it. Not even the thrall of sin can conceal the beauty that you are in Christ Jesus. God sees it. And because he sees it, he will never leave you, never forsake you, never let you go. He won't let you go, and he won't let your neighbor go.

This is the basis of acceptance, both for you, and for the world entire.

My prayer for you today: that when you look in the mirror you might see the beauty that God sees. And that when you look at each other, that again you might see the beauty that God sees.

May your day be beautiful...

Pastor Nathan