How to Recognize Blind Spots
Michelle and I now have all five kids at full-day school. It has definitely marked a new season of life for us as we have our daytime back for the first time in more than twelve years. We’ve gone to coffee and lunch and begun to explore how we can best use this time.
One of the realizations is that we can actually attend a gym together. This is something we’ve tried over the years but schedules and kids made it impossible. We signed up for our local Orange Theory and have gone to three classes so far this week. Which coincidentally reminds me of this hilarious video:
I would have normally told you that I’m not a cardio guy, so it’s a bit of a shock that we’re doing this. But I love it. I even won the golden ticket on my second day (for most calories burned in class). Part of why I’m enjoying it is that I actually feel great doing the workouts. Over the years I’ve done Crossfit, big-box gyms like LA Fitness, and even private training. Throughout most of those workouts I felt like I would pass out (which never happened) or throw up (which did happen). The common denominator through all of them is that I ate whatever I wanted and then attempted to exercise my way out of it. The cheeseburger body was still on.
I put too much emphasis on exercise at the exclusion of other things. I had a major blindspot to feeling better in my own body.
Which if you don’t know, isn’t exactly a winning strategy. These days I’ve incorporated a number of healthy habits around the food I eat. This has caused me to carry a lot less weight on my body. Both of these factors have greatly altered what a workout feels like. This is a bit of a no-duh moment for me and I can’t help wondering why I never did this earlier in life. But I’m realizing how we often fail to connect the dots.
Getting to a healthier version of yourself is probably not about any one decision you can make. It’s likely about the connection of a bunch of them. When we omit this reality and overemphasize one thing we end up creating blindspots to our lack of health.
And it’s not just physical health either. I started that new podcast about Mars Hill that tons of people have been talking about. It’s about the rise and fall of the church under the leadership of Mark Driscoll. It also documents much of the dysfunction in the church in America today and makes you wonder how this can happen as frequently as it does. It should come as no surprise that this is a conversation I’ve explored a lot this past year as my relationship with the church has changed a bit. It’s also a great echo of some of the things in the book Jesus and John Wayne (see: Amazon link).
There was a quote from Mark where he explained that all he was called by God to do was love his family and preach the Bible. It was Mark’s ability to charismatically and entertainingly teach the Bible that covered over a multitude of other glaring faults. Click here to find the podcast.
He (and the church) put too much emphasis on teaching at the exclusion of other things. This led to a myriad of blindspots in the church and in his ministry.
If you want to get in better shape, you need to incorporate multiple habits around food and exercise to get you there. If we want healthier churches, we need to care about more than how compelling someone is as a teacher (or any other number of things we can focus on in ministry). Blindspots will always work against us.
We tend to overemphasize single decisions we make and underemphasize groupings of decisions we can make. A healthy lifestyle incorporates food and exercise. A healthy church incorporates culture on the inside as well as what they show on the outside.
- What’s one quality or decision you may be overemphasizing in your life?
- What’s one quality or decision you can add that supports something else in your life?
(Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, I may earn commissions from qualifying purchases from Amazon.com).
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