When I was a teenager, I worked as a salesman and bike and ski mechanic in a small, independent sporting goods store. In so many ways, it was a dream job for a kid growing up in a family of slender means because it gave me a chance to afford a nice bike, sneakers, and ski equipment. (It was also so preferable to my first job serving as a busboy in a restaurant, which wasn’t so gratifying and left me smelling like french fries no matter how often I showered and laundered my clothes.)

In my first few weeks on the job, I was asked to straighten up the storeroom for the athletic shoes. Of course, I thought that this meant that I should not only clean the storeroom, but organize it and make the stockroom more efficient. I assumed this because I couldn’t figure out why the boxes were arranged the way they were; it seemed totally random that hundreds of shoe boxes were piled the way they were. Clearly, some deranged employee short on time or competence must have just unloaded a shipment and just stacked all the boxes the way they did as a short term solution.

I took it upon myself to spend the whole summer afternoon in this hot, enclosed storeroom, generously and with great care and intention, rearranging and organizing hundreds of shoe boxes into a new “system.” I must admit, by the end, I was tired, but feeling pleased with myself and was eager to share my project with the store manager, whom I was eager to impress. I was also feeling fairly confident that seeing the evidence of my capability, I would be given a promotion and a raise on the spot.

Maybe you can already see where this is going?

I was mistaken… Dean, the manager, stepped into the storeroom, looked at the “system” I had created, and turned to me with an expression that simultaneously included amazement, a flash of anger, and thankfully, a touch of amusement. “What have you done?!” “And what were you thinking?”

I sheepishly replied that I couldn’t see any order to the way the storeroom was organized, so I took the initiative to do it for him. He replied, “Did you think to ask?” I said, no, I just assumed that I knew better. At which point he used an expression I’d never heard before and have never forgotten since. Dean said, “When you assume, you make an ‘a_s’ of you and me!” At which point he showed me the small round sticker on every box, the basis for the stockroom system which I had entirely scrambled, and promptly had to figure out and put back in place.

A lesson I will never forget.

Why do I tell this somewhat embarrassing story? When the author of John’s Gospel narrates this long, involved interaction among Jesus, the blind man, the religious authorities and various bystanders, he uses blindness in a symbolic way. Yes, Jesus heals the man of his blindness, literally. But what John is pointing to is the way that the assumptions and biases of the religious authorities are also a form of blindness, just as potentially problematic for perceiving reality, let alone understanding truth, or acting in a constructive manner. Assumptions can make a mess of things, despite our best intentions.

In this case, as we know, the bias of most of the powerful religious authorities of Jesus’ time is that the Messiah will be a King like David, a military commander who will use his coercive power to drive out the Roman occupiers and restore Israel to its former glory. As a result, they can’t imagine that the Messiah could be anything other than a powerful, wealthy ruler who will command his armies and restore the religious and political status that they lost eight centuries before. They are figuratively so “blinded” by this assumption that they cannot recognize that this miracle worker is the Anointed of God.

While these religious leaders do have the good sense to ask Jesus if he is the Messiah, their biases have hardened their hearts against his answer. In this way, they are both blind and deaf to what God is up to right before their eyes. Not only can they not perceive God in the words or actions of his Son, but they judge that he is possessed, inferring that his power is from the Devil. And so, they take decisive steps to reject and even exterminate this man whom they perceive to be a threat to their identity, power, and the status quo they serve.

Clearly, assumptions can not only be problematic, but even fatal… and in truth, we don’t have to think too hard about examples from our own lives, or from recent or current events, where assumptions that have hardened into biases have been destructive. A bias is essentially an untested belief that directs action. Racial or ethnic stereotypes are just one of many such prejudices, but assumptions are a broader category of inclinations and ways of making sense of reality based on partial data.

We might wonder, if error is human, how can we avoid assumptions and biases? Good question. Notice that Jesus rarely takes actions without first asking questions… “what are you looking for?” for instance. Or in the case of the blind man, even though it would seem to be obvious, Jesus asks him, “what is it that you would like me to do for you,” (in the Synoptic accounts of this healing).

So if we suspect that we are making an assumption, or that we are holding a bias, an untested belief about the way that we’re seeing reality, we should follow Jesus’ example and ask clarifying questions. We need to test “reality” and illuminate our blind-spots. We need to clarify the facts and be cautious about the stories that we create about people, their characters and motivations. We need to humbly admit that no matter how much authority we have, or education, or experience, that our perspective is partial and limited.

As leaders, Jesus calls us to shine like him as light in the world, reflecting God’s love to the best of our abilities, and to pursue what is true, let alone The Truth. This requires us to be humble in our sensemaking of reality, to test our assumptions by asking genuine questions, and to work together with diverse others to truly understand the complex circumstances that we encounter in our lives, communities, and organizations. Without such a humble, inquiring, and collaborative stance, discerning leadership isn’t possible. We will fall into the trap and the consequences of acting on our assumptions, as I did in that storeroom years ago and many times since. This is a kind of blindness that doesn’t require a miracle to heal, but rather the willingness to admit the partiality of our perspective, to ask genuine questions, and openness to perceiving a fuller, more true view of reality .

With you on this Lenten pilgrimage,