Confirmation Bias

That was a new term to me. According to Wikipedia it is "the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses." Welcome to most human thinking. You see it in our day when Trump does ... anything. Trump supporters will argue that it was great and Trump opponents will hold that it is an affront to the nation whether it was the way he combed his hair or a national policy he espoused. Or didn't. You see it in white supremacist thinking where every fact points to the superiority of the white race even when it does not and you see it in progressive liberal thinking when every liberal progressive idea is a good one regardless of the truth (a la AOC). If I've touched on one of your favorites, don't get defensive. My point is not you; my point is that it is all of us.

Christians are not immune. Even genuine Christians. We learn something at our parent's feet or from a favorite pastor or youth leader and the merest suggestion that it might be wrong is met with outrage. "Can't be. I know it's true. Look at what the Bible says!" And we can point out verses in the Bible that appear to support our idea. And if the Bible actually says something different, well, we can explain that away easily enough. Typically we do that by ignoring the contradiction, but sometimes we can get creative. "Oh, sure, your version says the Word was God, but mine says he was a god; not the same thing." Okay, fine, but every other reference to Christ on the topic lists Him as God, not "god". Well, we'll ignore those because they don't align with our confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias often determines who you will believe. In that last example I offered, a Jehovah's Witness would likely believe the "god is different than God" person while a non-Jehovah's Witness would immediately dismiss it. That's the kind of thing you see when liberals side with Huffington Post or conservatives side with Fox News. "They are confirming my belief, so they're right." Rarely is the question of "which is true" actually broached.

And that is the issue. We really ought to be in pursuit of the truth rather than in defense of bias. That requires, first of all, a valid source of truth, doesn't it? Jesus said, "I am the Truth" (John 14:6), so that's a valid source of truth, but beyond that we have the God-breathed Word, a valid and invaluable source of truth. With it we can hold up what others believe and what we believe to the light of truth and verify. In cases that are not covered in God's Word, we need to investigate rather than merely confirm our own bias. What did they say or do? What did they mean? Is the story I'm being presented a valid representation of reality, or is it a biased representation?

Oh, here, let's see if I can put it another way. "Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger." (James 1:19). Now, I know -- that doesn't really go with today's society. Everything is real-time, here and now, let's get on it and run. "There's someone wrong on the Internet." We're watching Fox or reading HuffPo and we're expected to agree. We're seeing that Internet stuff where those people are really, really wrong. "Slow to speak"??? Don't be ridiculous! Except that's what the Word of God says. Instead, be quick to hear and slow to speak and slow to anger. Investigate. Examine. Test. Because "the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God" (James 1:20). And we want to do that. Even if it means we are wrong in our bias.