Biases, Public Education, and the Bible

The only time you truly look at something without the screen of your bias is the first time. Once you've made up your mind, that bias forever colors your thinking. It's possible to change your bias, but it's hard.

A bias is the way you look at things. Think of glasses. If you have rose-colored glasses, everything has a rose-colored tint. The analogy of changing biases doesn't quite extend fully to glasses, though, because it's easier to change glasses than to change biases. But I hope you get the point; everything looks different through your bias.

Here's something to think about:

You take a monkey who's never seen balls or color (or at least red and green), and set two balls in front of him, a red ball and a green ball. This is the moment of decision. Which will he choose? He looks back and forth from one to the other, indecisive. Each are presented to him equally. Finally he chooses the red ball. Next, five green balls and a red ball are presented to him. It's automatic, he chooses the red one, no matter there are more green ones.

Like so it is with issues, facts, and biases. Say the initial red and green balls were issues. The monkey chose one side. Say the additional balls are facts. Though there are more facts for the green side than the red, the bias leans towards the red.

Why do you think public education is so "important"? Because if they can get their opinion in your kid first, your kid is biased to their bias. If they are teaching untrue things, your kid is biased to their untrue bias, and will most likely stick to that bias no matter how many facts are shown them. (By reading this, I'm sure you can see my bias!)

The problem comes in when people read the Bible with a biased view. Everybody does, including me, because we all have biases. That is the problem. The solution is to put on God's bias. When Jesus was talking to the people, He didn't talk in worldly terms. He talked in Godly terms. From God's perspective, the only one that matters. The Pharisees tried to understand it with their understanding, and it didn't work. If we try to understand the Bible with our 21st century perspective, it doesn't work. It wasn't meant to be understood by people's perspectives at all. It was meant to be understood from God's perspective. God's perspective is radically different from ours. His perspective doesn't make sense to us in our sin-drenched view of things (though we should continually seek to have His perspective on things), but you know what? That's ok. I, for one, am glad I don't understand all of God because if I did, He would be a pretty small God indeed.