Bias: Blinding Us To God's Presence In Our Midst

Bias: Blinding Us to the Presence of God In Our Midst

I attended a Diocesan conference one year and the speaker stated something that stuck with me: “Don’t put God in a box.”

That’s exactly what we see taking place in Matthew 6:1-6. The people of Nazareth placed Jesus in a box and became offended when He removed Himself from those confines.

“And when the sabbath was come, He (Jesus) began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were in admiration at his doctrine, saying: How came this man by all these things? and what wisdom is this that is given to him, and such mighty works as are wrought by his hands? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joseph, and Jude, and Simon? are not also his sisters here with us? And they were scandalized in regard of him.” – Mark 6:2-3

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

When we think we “know” someone, we tend to discount and discredit their advice, advancements, and accomplishments. How dare they do what we didn’t think they were capable of doing? How dare they know what we didn’t know? How dare they defy our expectations for them?

This passage illustrates for us the dangers of bias, the beliefs, ideas, assumptions, and stories we tell ourselves about who people are, what they’re capable of doing, and what to expect from them. That bias blinds us to God’s presence in their midst and prevents them from receiving the graces He has in mind for them.

Bias creates a box where we place the things and people we know. We don’t like either the  things or the people we know to escape the confines of that box. That’s because keeping them in the box creates a feeling of safety and security. We think we know what to expect from them and how to operate around them.

We become angry and offended when our biases get challenged because it threatens our sense of safety and security, making us feel vulnerable and uncertain. After all, if we’re wrong about this person or thing, what else are we wrong about?

Jesus: Challenging Our Biases

Jesus comes to set us free from the boxes we place one another in and to get us to look at one another in a different light. He wants us to see past the circumstances of our upbringing or our past experiences to the limitless possibilities that open up to us when we allow our Father to work in and through us.

Challenging bias isn’t easy. It requires constant vigilance and a willingness to accept that we are finite creatures attempting to grasp at an understanding of an infinite being. It requires accepting that our perspective limits what we can see and know about the world around us. It requires us to humble ourselves, re-evaluate what we think we know, and open ourselves up to the possibility that there is more than we can imagine to the story.

In straight order, it requires us to humble ourselves. We must admit that what we think we know is but a drop in an ocean of a universe filled with oceans of things that there are to know. We must accept that our expectations are often unreasonable and based on flawed data. Above all, we must accept that we can’t afford to become complacent or to stop asking questions because there will not ever be a time or a place when we know everything there is to know about anything or any person.

Challenging Our Biases Opens Us Up to Experiencing Miracles

“And he could not do any miracles there, only that he cured a few that were sick, laying his hands upon them.” – Mark 6:5

Our brains operate on a belief-based operating system. The brain will actively reject any information or experiences that challenge our beliefs because it sees those beliefs as essential to our survival. That means if we can’t believe it, we can’t achieve it, see it, or experience it. Miracles can take place right in front of our faces and we will dismiss them out of hand, finding ways to explain them away.

Bias is the reason the Children of Israel couldn’t see their long-awaited Messiah standing right there in their midst. He didn’t come the way they thought He would as a military leader in full might. He came to conquer the hearts and minds of all people, and the battle he waged was on a spiritual, not a physical, plane.

The beauty of allowing Christ to challenge our biases is that we open ourselves up to experiencing the miracles God is working in our lives because we remove our expectations for how those miracles are going to appear. We stop dictating the terms and conditions by which God should operate and instead allow God to be God.

We agree that He can do things which are beyond our capability of imagining.
We “become as little children,” (Matthew 18:3) as Christ tells us we must in order to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, and we adopt a spirit of curiosity and wonder rather than remaining closed-minded and self-assured.

Helping Us To Become More Empathetic

When we learn to effectively challenge our own biases, we grow in empathy with other people. We are able to put ourselves in their shoes, see the world as they do, and navigate relationships with greater ease.

We stop making assumptions about why people do what they do and approach them with the curiosity of a child, asking why they see things as they do and listening as they share their experiences with us. We can then make more informed and compassionate decisions.

Facilitating Effective Evangelization

“And he said to them: Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” – Matthew 18:3

Jesus gave us all the Great Commission to teach the Good News about God’s love to all people. This is a challenging task, one that requires overcoming other people’s biases about what that Good News is and what it means for them.

Unless we’re willing to listen to them and try to see things through their eyes, we’re going to struggle to do that because we’ll be operating under our assumptions about what they mean by the things they say. We won’t truly be listening to and responding to their concerns and challenges.

We can’t learn from them. We can’t grow with them. We can’t build relationships with the person they truly are. All we can do is build relationships with the image of them that we’ve constructed in our mind based on our biases. That means we aren’t truly relating to them at all. We’re relating to an illusion.

Opening Our Hearts to Authentic, Genuine Love

When you relate to an illusion, you can't love the person behind it. You can love the illusion, but not the person. When we conquer our biases and meet people where they are and as they are without putting our own limitations and expectations upon them, we open our hearts to being able to love the real person behind the illusions our biases create.

We improve the quality of relationships we’re capable of having. We give room for genuine, authentic love to take root and grow. We become truly capable of fulfilling Christ’s commandment to “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” – John 13:34”

Learn to B.E. S.E.E.N.

It is possible to use the existing knowledge of human behavior to help us recognize and challenge our biases and while helping us overcome the biases of others. That’s what the B.E. S.E.E.N. training developed by PTP Press is designed to do.

You can learn more about that training by visiting https://ptppress.com/course/b-e-s-e-e-n.