The Thing Beneath the ThingEsimerkki

Biases That Drive Narratives

While still living in California, my friend Andy and I went to tour the newly rehoused Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles. We joined about fifty people in the lobby area and waited for our assigned guide to meet us and begin the tour. After a few minutes, an older gentleman in a sweater vest and freshly shined shoes made his way to the center of the room and introduced himself. And he asked us all to consider a question.

“Before we start this tour through our new Holocaust Museum,” he began, “I want to ask a simple question. Do you know what your own personal biases are? Do any of you prefer one race over another or practice any stereotyping, prejudice, or racism in your life? If you answer yes to any of this, please make your way through door number one. If not, walk through door two.”

Everyone except my friend and I quickly shuffled through door number two. We stood there for a few seconds, looking at each other. We had just been having a conversation on the drive over about the ways our prejudices affect us even when we’re unaware, and now this seemed like some sort of reckoning. I was sure I was overthinking it, but I couldn’t be 100 percent sure that I didn’t harbor bias of any kind. At the same time, neither of us wanted to look like the real jerks—in the Holocaust Museum, of all places. Thankfully, the guide came to our rescue. We walked through door number one with him and were surprised to find the rest of the group waiting on the other side.

The tour guide continued. “We all, in fact, have bias. It is much more dangerous to deny or pretend you do not than risk looking bad and admitting the truth. We cannot fix what we cannot name. The Holocaust was not caused by a few bad apples, it was enabled by the thousands who preferred to pretend it wasn’t happening at all.”

Wow.

I have to think it was more than just the solemn nature of the topic at hand that kept our group quiet and introspective for the remainder of the tour. I know I personally left changed, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one.

Biases are alive and well, my friends, and if we are going to be able to move into the kingdom Jesus proclaimed, we must have a bias cleanse. Acts 1:8 captures Jesus’ words as follows: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” 

Not just to the people who look like you, live like you, vote like you. And not just to the ones you look down on, but even to those whose ideology you fundamentally can’t stand. He could have left it at that—let us humans just sit with that for a while, trying to sort out how on earth we are supposed to remove our implicit biases. But nope. Jesus wasn’t done yet. He added for good measure that we should take this good news to the ends of the earth—to “the other.” As in, a person we don’t need to understand or agree with.

The truth of the matter is that heaven is going to be multicultural—a transcendent and beautiful reality of existing with God in the fullness of his love. But since we live in the not yet as well as the now, we can treat each day as practice for heaven.

Every person you encounter is an opportunity to live with love, grace, and peace. To be as biased toward love as our God is, to search for the good in others, and to refuse to allow our fears to become barriers that keep us disconnected.

If we’re ever going to be Jesus’ witness, fueled by the Spirit’s power to the ends of the earth, we may need to implement a whole new operating system. 

Thanks be to God there is a better way.

Respond

Describe a time when you shared the gospel with someone outside your normal sphere of influence.

What impact did it have on your life and your relationship with Jesus?

Prayer 

Lord Jesus, please open opportunities for me to share your message with people who need to hear.