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

_______________________________________________________________________

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