What does Tribe teach about spiritual blindness?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At Tribe, the teaching on spiritual blindness starts with a simple but unsettling claim: most people who are spiritually blind have no idea that they are. Brian Hunter draws this out through John 9, the account of a man born blind who is healed by Jesus, and through the repeated pattern he sees across Scripture, that blindness is not primarily an intellectual problem. It does not matter how educated, how religious, or how open-minded a person is. As Brian puts it, "It doesn't matter how smart you are, how much you read this book as an intellectual, how learned you are, how open minded you are, you're blind." The Pharisees in John 9 are the clearest example: they launched a formal investigation, questioned the man twice and summoned his parents, and still walked away from the most significant miracle anyone in Second Temple Judaism could have witnessed.
Brian is careful to frame this not as condemnation but as the first move toward a remedy. He points to Paul on the road to Damascus, the sharpest religious mind of his era, who was physically blinded precisely so he could see what he had been missing. The same thread runs through the Isaiah 9 teaching: "the people who walk in darkness will see a great light" is not a warm holiday sentiment, it is a diagnosis followed by a promise. Brian says the most compassionate thing he can offer anyone who has not surrendered their life to Jesus is exactly that honesty, because Jesus does not name the blindness to shame anyone. He names it because He can cure it.
The John 9 narrative also carries a particular word for people who feel pushed to the margins. The man who is healed does not get to celebrate. His neighbors doubt him, his parents will not stand with him, and the Pharisees expel him from the synagogue entirely. Brian slows down on what happens next: Jesus hears about it and goes and finds him. The man did not find Jesus. Jesus found him. Brian connects that directly to anyone feeling rejected, cast out, or overlooked, and says, "If you feel alone, abandoned, rejected, outcast, like you don't fit in, you, my friend, are a prime target for Jesus to find you right where you are."
Taught from John 9:1-41 · 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 · Isaiah 35:5-7 · Isaiah 9:1-7 · John 7:52
“If you feel alone, abandoned, rejected, outcast, like you don't fit in, you, my friend, are a prime target for Jesus to find you right where you are.”
From Open Blind Eyes
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 4:3-4
3 Even if our Good News is veiled, it is veiled in those who are dying;
4 in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- August 5, 2024 Open Blind Eyes Brian Hunter walks through John 9, the healing of a man born blind, exploring physical and spiritual blindness, what Jesus reveals about suffering, and how he finds the outcast.
- August 4, 2024 Open Blind Eyes A man born blind receives his sight, and a Jackson Hole congregation talks through what that miracle means for anyone still in the dark spiritually.
Mentioned along the way
- December 23, 2024 A Government That Will Never End Brian Hunter walks through Isaiah 9 verse by verse, asking whether each prophecy is past, present, or still coming, and why it matters this Christmas.
- December 22, 2024 Fuel for the Fire Brian Hunter walks through Isaiah 9:1-7 verse by verse, asking whether each line points to something already fulfilled, unfolding now, or still coming when Jesus returns.
- April 17, 2023 TTCA WEEK 7 Wrap Up Brian Hunter walks through Jesus' letters to seven churches in Revelation, asking what it looks like when a congregation finally turns and faces the right direction.