Neighbor Groups: Seek Justiceনমুনা

Blind Spots

Good news: Another package is on your doorstep. This time, let’s imagine you ordered it online. The timing, warehousing, shipping, and routes that got the package to you are too complicated to explain. But you only had to click a few buttons, and the rest took care of itself. Your brain works like this too. 

It’s estimated that the average adult makes about 35,000 remotely conscious decisions each day. That’s 24 decisions per minute, or a decision roughly every three seconds. Luckily for us, our brains avoid decision fatigue by creating hacks that allow many of these decisions to happen in a complex, subconscious supply chain. 

Sometimes, though, our brains form these hacks based on incomplete or outdated information—without us even being aware of it. When this happens, some of these hacks can be harmful to ourselves and to others. Let’s call them our unconscious biases. We don’t exactly intend them, but they happen. 

These biases are often shaped by how we view or interpret the world we live in. And that worldview is shaped by our past experiences, the information we take in, and the relationships we have. 

Having biases is human, but they can get in the way of our job to reflect God’s image in the world. 

Our brains desire survival and safety, so we find relationships with people who see the world like we do. We lean toward information that affirms our worldview and away from information that challenges it. This is called confirmation bias, and it’s all happening behind the scenes—before the package ever arrives at the doorstep of our conscious thoughts. 

Left unchecked, confirmation bias can rapidly become a supply chain for the building blocks of an unjust society. 

Have you ever wondered something negative about a group of people, and later read an article that agreed, or heard a friend affirm your thought? That chain of events can confirm a personal bias that’s not necessarily based on well-researched facts or extensive personal knowledge. 

What’s more, thought processes like these can justify systems that hold people captive to disadvantaged situations. God made all people in His image, and lumping groups of them together based on incorrect or incomplete information doesn’t help people out of difficult situations, extend grace and compassion, or bring justice to improve people’s lives.

So what do we do about our biases? We take every thought captive and make it obey Christ. We audit our relationships, examine our hearts, and invite the Spirit to daily renew our minds and give fresh sight to our eyes.  

To do this, we’ll need people in our lives who see the world and reflect God differently than we do, with different upbringings, from different cultures. Proverbs puts it like this: 

The first to speak in court sounds right—until the cross-examination begins. Proverbs 18:17 NLT 

Our perspectives sound right until we’re confronted with more information. So take a second to picture your closest friends, your small group, your workplace, and your church. Do they look, think, vote, believe, and speak mostly like you? How about your social media feed? How could you seek out perspectives you’ve never heard before? 

Pray: Heavenly Father, thank You for making every single person in Your image. Please show me how I can seek people who reflect You differently than I do so that I can learn even more about You. Reveal where I have unjust biases, and show me Your truths to defeat them. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Challenge: Begin seeing the world in a different way by starting a conversation, listening to a podcast, or reading an article that has different views than the ones you currently have. Ask God to test your biases and renew your mind.