Yesterday, my mom heard me preach for the first time in years. I’m not sure how many years, but I know I was still a pastor, so it’s been at least seven. She’s always been one of my biggest fans (as big as 5’2” and 120 pounds can be). Now 80 and suffering from macular degeneration, she really can’t see what I look like, but she still thinks I am one of the two best looking “young” men in the world (my brother is the other one).
At the end of yesterday’s service, she said, “I know I’m biased, but that was the best sermon I’ve heard in a long time.” Just because she’s biased doesn’t mean she’s wrong. I often talk about my son, the actor. He’s fantastic, and the fact that I am biased doesn’t make me wrong either.
Neither Mom’s bias nor mine make us right either. The quality of preaching or acting is largely subjective and very much in the eye of the beholder. An actor seeks to make a character believable, generate an emotional response, and get the audience caught up in the story. A preacher seeks to make objective truth accessible, clear, compelling, and applicable, and call the listeners to response. If those things are accomplished it can be called good. HOW good probably depends on the bias of the audience.
My pondering today has led me to three conclusions:
1. Bias is not bad. There are multiple reasons for bias: family connections, religious upbringing, geography, education, personal history … the list could go on. Our biases are usually formed out of deeply impactful experiences that generally lead to our beliefs, values, and convictions. When we get upset about someone else’s bias, it is usually not the fact that they are biased that gets a burr under our blanket; it is the fact that their bias differs from ours.
2. Everyone is biased! Liberals are biased. Conservatives are biased. Democrats, Republicans, Evangelicals, Catholics, Muslims, Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, Anglos, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, Politicians, Non-politicians, Southerners, Northerners … you get the point. We all need to admit that we are biased. The problem is not bias. The problem is when we let our biases lead us to be jerks and do stupid stuff. (Social media comes to mind).
3. Being biased doesn’t mean we are wrong and can’t be objective. I have personal biases that our lives matter to God, that the Bible is true, and that there is one true God who is interested and involved in the world, and there is one way to know Him. I’ve yet to hear a reasoned, compelling argument that would lead me to believe otherwise, but the fact that I believe does not make it so. Neither my biases nor my beliefs affect the nature of truth. I am willing to have a calm, cordial, and objective conversation with someone with different biases. If we are able to identify and admit our biases, we can journey toward truth together.
It is my prayer that how I act on my biases and beliefs will never hinder someone else from finding objective truth.
Question: In what way could our biases and beliefs in action actually undermine the chance that someone else might come to believe the way we do?
