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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Confirming our bias


If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to liberate or honor women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an out-dated, irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it. This is why there are times when the most instructive question to bring to the text is not "what does it say?", but "what am I looking for?"…  If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.”
                                                                        Rachel Held Evans
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At some level we are the Sacred clothed in flesh
Ah that Sacred presence
It guides us
Empowers us
It opens us up
Makes us generous
And hopefully kind

It fills us with love

But oh that humanity…

When we come to God
And to God’s word
The world clings to us
(like stick-tights to fleece)

And we carry with us our greed
Our fear
Our anger
Our hate
Our need to power

Anne Lamott once noted
“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out God hates all the same people you do.”

We do create God in our own image
And we use an abuse the scriptures

For we approach God wanting God to change the world
And change our situations
Rather than wanting, hoping, that God changes us

We turn to God wanting a God of retributive power
Rather than a God sacrificial love
Who demands we follow in that way

And we turn to the scriptures
Looking for something, anything
We can use to confirm our bias

Rather than allowing the Word to
Infiltrate us
Permeate us
And bring us to a newness of understanding

It is indeed critical for us to ask
“What am I looking for?”
We know we will find it every time

I know no easy way to solve the problem
Instead of looking to confirm what we want
We went with a null hypothesis,
And tried to disprove, reject or nullify our bias

If our bias is that God is love
Can we prove that God is instead arbitrary, demanding, judgmental, and retributive?

If our bias is that God wants us to have a theology of service
Can we prove instead that God wants his people to dominate?
To control and coerce?

This is truly a difficult and dangerous task
For as Rachel so aptly noted, we can in fact prove anything
By using the scriptures

Anything
Even killing a child

So what do we do with this?

There are certainly warnings that being open to who God really is
And what God really wants of us is not something we do well

That we are in fact often pulled away from what is true
and chase after other priorities and agendas

In 2 Timothy (4) we read, “The time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths”

In Roman’s Paul suggested that many people “exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised”

So how do we escape confirmation bias?

Paul (again in Romans) suggests that “… the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”

So now we are back where we began
With the Spirit
With that cleaning fire
That powerful wind

With that troublesome presence

Even when clothed in flesh
Sacred Presence has the power
To make us new

Even when clothed in the flesh
If we are awake to the Spirit
It will lead us to truth

I do not know how to be sure how to differentiate between
Truth and falsehood

That is indeed a difficult task
Every one of us, when we think we have discovered God’s truth
Need to be willing to utter those profound words,
“but I might be wrong”

But I think there are some questions we can ask that will help
Is it consistent with the idea that God is love?
Is it about service rather than domination?
Will it create reconciliation rather than enmity?
Will it bend the world toward love?

I know of no greater challenge
Then to be honest about what I bring to God
And what I bring to God’s Word

I know of no greater challenge
Than to let God be God

And no greater reward

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