The Johari Window
Why criticism is such a serious thing
In this article:
C S Lewis has a life-changing realisation
C S Lewis became an atheist at the age of 13. He spent the next number of years “angry at God for not existing.” Lewis vigorously resisted conversion, noting that he was brought into Christianity like a prodigal, "kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape." Then in 1929, “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
A serious roadblock in the way of Lewis’ conversion, was the idea of a God who gave himself the right to condemn people to hell. Who was this God who applied his own impossibly high standards to condemn us? A great turning point in Lewis' came when he meditated on Matt 7:1-2 – “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” It occurred to him that every time he made a criticism of someone (and Lewis was quite a critical man), he was setting a level by which he judged them. He was setting a standard which he expected them to live up to. Every criticism implies a standard. Then it dawned on Lewis that all God had to do was collect all these criticisms together and judge him by all the standards he had set for other people. Then, Lewis said, God would have no difficulty condemning me to hell.
Later, Lewis said, “Don't judge a man by where he is, because you don't know how far he has come.” And this is the key – there is so much we don’t know about another person. Every time we criticise, we presume to know. But this is actually a great pride – and pride is a capital sin.
Two psalms are crucial to our understanding of ourselves as human beings.
Psalm 139
“Lord, you have searched me, and you know me. You perceive my thoughts from afar. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.”
There is a certain hiddenness, secretiveness about being human. ‘Secret place’ doesn’t just refer to my mother’s womb; it implies a hiddenness about my whole being. Mystery is an integral part of being human. There are great depths within every human being. That is why the Psalmist asks God to search him – he acknowledges that much about himself is inaccessible unless God reveals it to him. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. So is every other human being. To be in the presence of a human being should include a sense of fear and wonder. The psalmist goes on to say, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” This is not referring to esoteric knowledge about God, this is referring to knowledge about myself. Full knowledge about myself is utterly beyond my grasp. There are many things about myself that I will never know unless God reveals them. And what I do know is greatly outweighed by what I don’t know.
If knowing myself is way beyond me, how much truer when attempting to know another? Therefore, whenever I am tempted criticise or confront another, I need to be highly aware of how little I know. The old song got it right: “How small we are, how little we know.”
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Psalm 8
The the writer asks a question: “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour.”
This is an incredibly high view of mankind – we stand just a little below the angels. The only reason we don’t gasp with amazement at that statement is that we have a very low view of these powerful, glorious heavenly beings. Every time people in the Bible encountered angels, their reaction was fear – often causing people to fall flat on their faces. Angels surround the throne of God in ineffable light and are able to look on the face of God, which would be death for a human being.
And we human beings are just below them. It is hard to over-emphasise the enormity of this statement.
Even Hamlet in his neurotic, cynical state burst into magnificent poetry when describing the human being: “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals- this quintessence of dust.” Quintessence literally means “fifth essence” – that is, the greatest level of perfection and purification possible. Human beings are the greatest thing that God could make at a physical level. When he formed Adam from the dust of the ground, it was the best he could do.
Therefore, when we come before another human being, it should be with a sense of awe and wonder and reverence, always bearing in mind how little we know and understand. We should always be humble.
Every time we criticise somebody behind their back, we risk pride and arrogance, and we risk denigrating, belittling, diminishing one of God’s magnificent creatures.
Our understanding of human beings.
The Johari Window
The Johari window is a model that helps people better understand their relationships. It focuses first on what I know about myself, and second on what other people know about me. It was invented by two psychologists in 1955 to help us understand what we do and do not know about ourselves and about other people. The word “Johari” is not some esoteric psychological term, it is simply formed by a combination of the first names of the two psychologists – Joe and Harry! Each of the four quadrants represents a different combination of what you know about me and what I know about myself.
The first quadrant
Joe and Harry called this the “Arena.” This is my open area. It includes things that I know about myself and am willing to share. These are things that are clear to everybody – I can see them; you know can see them. This is not usually a problematic area. You probably won’t feel the need to criticise me in this area, because you can see that I am aware of it. I know I’m a perfectionist, you know I’m a perfectionist, and we both know I can be a bit of a pain. In the best relationships, both parties accept these things, and live with the uncritically. It's a lovely thing to see a couple who are both aware of other's faults, who are both working to improve on them, and who both accept the other as they are. This is possibly the greatest secret to a long and successful marriage.
Generally speaking, the bigger the first quadrant is the better. Obviously this will vary from one relationship to another. A great key to good relationships is to be as open as is appropriate with every person as possible. The ability to discern the appropriate level for each relationship is a key to mental health. On the one hand Jesus said, “Don’t cast your pearls before swine.” On the other, he said of Nathaniel, “Here is a true Israelite in whom there is no guile.” To be without guile, to have as little hidden as possible is a good aim in life.
The second quadrant
Before I dare correct someone else, I need to be very sure that I have earned the right to do so. We do this by the road of personal friendship.I need to be sure I have built up a positive “bank balance” with you before I presume to correct you. You need to know that I am on your side, faults and all. A generally good rule-of-thumb, is that I need to have put two positives into your life for every criticism I attempt. Absolutely crucial is that I use the right tone: my tone needs to indicate a complete lack of criticism, and no threat of rejection.
Joe and Harry called this quadrant “the Blind Spot.” These are things that you can see in me, but that I can’t see in myself. I have a blind spot. This is the quadrant (probably the only quadrant) in which it might be appropriate for you to correct me, or to help me to become aware of things I was not conscious of in myself. With the help of feedback from others I can become aware of some of my positive and negative traits as perceived by others, and overcome some of the personal issues that may be inhibiting my personal relationships. (It is to assist in this process that God invented brothers and sisters!)
Is essential for personal growth that we be open to such insight and correction. Call Young, the famous psychologist, was asked: "After all your years of counselling, what is the greatest thing you have learnt?"
He answered, "Not to be defensive."
The third quadrant
Joe and Harry called this quadrant the façade. There are things I am fully aware of about myself, but I choose not to let you know. I put on a façade or "face.” This is by no means always a bad thing – some things are perhaps better not communicated with others. There are certain people to whom it is not safe for me to reveal everything. A key to healthy living is to judge correctly when and with whom it is safe to open up. There may be extremely painful things in a my background which I am keeping from you, and which would throw a very different light on my behaviour, if only you knew about them. But not knowing about them, you are tempted to “correct” me, and in your ignorance you might cause great harm.
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The story is told of a man who was sitting on a train between New York and Newark. His children were running up and down the corridors screaming and shouting, while he simply looked out of the window. At this point, a woman sitting opposite him took it on herself to tear strips off him about how badly he was disciplining his children. She spoke without pausing to think that there might be things going on which she was unaware. Imagine her horror when he said, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t notice. My wife – their mother – died in hospital and hour ago.”
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It is better to bite my tongue than to wish I had.
The fourth quadrant
The fourth quadrant is the most important of all. It is called the “Unknown.” There are areas in my life which I am not able to know or understand in myself, and there is certainly no way in which you are going to understand them. This is what Psalm 139 is all about. For example, things may have happened to me before I was two years old which greatly affect my current behaviour. But I cannot remember them at all, therefore it is very difficult for me to deal with them or to change my behaviour. It can be very difficult to change behaviour when we are unaware of what causes it. That is like topping off the top of weeds without removing the route – they simply grow back. Sometimes it requires a supernatural healing for change to take place.
It is so easy to criticise a person for their behaviour, but forget that it may arise out of things of which you and they are totally unaware. They may actually be doing spectacularly well considering their background.
How big is the fourth quadrant?
It is my opinion that the Unknown quadrant is by far the biggest of the four. The things we don’t know about ourselves and about others far outweigh the things we know. The earth needs to be covered three quarters by water for the land to be habitable. So with us, we need the vast ocean of the unconscious for us to be able to operate on a conscious level. The human being is a great mystery. It is “no-man-fathomed.” Before God created the world, “Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” All creation grew out of darkness and impenetrable depth.We diminish our concept of human beings when we forget the amazing depths within each one. When Psalm 42:7 says, “Deep calls to deep,” it could have been describing what happens when two people reach out to each other.
Conclusion
True humility demands that we realise how vast is the universe within each person we meet, and how little we know. When we stand before another person, there should be a sense of awe, wonder and reverence. We should always remember we are dealing with God’s greatest creation, one he loved enough to send his Son to die for. This applies to every human being – irrespective of race, religion, intelligence, status, sexual orientation, popularity, or attractiveness. And before we criticise anyone behind their back, we need to be aware that that is almost never helpful to them, and almost always diminishes them in others’ eyes. And we are diminishing someone deeply loved by God.
And, above all, before we presume to correct another, we should be aware of vast and deep is their inner life, and how little of it is known to us.
O the mind, mind has mountains;
Cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.
Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there.
Gerard Manley Hopkins