{"id":19894,"date":"2021-03-03T09:33:43","date_gmt":"2021-03-03T14:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19894"},"modified":"2021-03-03T10:37:49","modified_gmt":"2021-03-03T15:37:49","slug":"jesus-and-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19894","title":{"rendered":"Jesus and Bias"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wGvfagBOHJE\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>Learning how to see our biases is a\npsychological exercise, but one with immediate theological and social\nimplications. It demands self-knowledge and the crucial need to recognize (1)\nwhen we are in denial about our own shadow and capacity for illusion; (2) our\ncapacity to project our own fears and shadows onto other people and groups; (3)\nour capacity to face and carry our own issues; and (4) the social,\ninstitutional, and political implications of not doing this work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If some Christians think that this is mere\npsychology, then they surely need to know that Jesus himself was a consummate\nanalyst of human nature. He was really a brilliant psychologist and named many\nof the issues that we call today \u201cdenial,\u201d \u201cbias,\u201d \u201cprojection,\u201d and \u201cthe\nshadow self.\u201d He also emphasized the necessity of inner healing of hurts to\navoid continuing to hurt others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Brian McLaren offers this perspective on why\nJesus\u2019 teachings were so effective in freeing people from an over-attachment to\ntheir own way of seeing: <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When you\naggressively attack people\u2019s familiar ideas, they tend to respond defensively.\nThey dig in their heels and become even more firmly attached to the very ideas\nthat they need to be liberated from. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s why\nJesus, like other effective communicators, constantly told stories, stories\nthat grabbed people by the imagination and transported them into another\nimaginative world:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>. . . there once was a woman who put some\nyeast into a huge batch of dough [Matthew 13:33]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>. . . there once was a man who had two sons\n[Luke 15:11]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>. . . this man was traveling from Jerusalem to\nJericho [Luke 10:30]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>. . . a woman\nonce lost a coin [Luke 15:8] . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through these\nshort \u201cimaginative vacations\u201d to another world, Jesus helped people see from a\nnew vantage point. He used imagination to punch a tiny hole in their walls of\nconfirmation bias, and through that tiny hole, some new light could stream in\nand let them know of a bigger world beyond their walls. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[Jesus] didn\u2019t\nspend a lot of time repeating or refuting the false statements of his critics,\nand he didn\u2019t counterpunch when he was attacked or insulted, but instead, he\nused every criticism as an opportunity to restate, clarify, and illustrate his\ntrue statements. He had, to use a contemporary phrase, <em>message discipline<\/em>, which\ndrew people to his central simple message: an invitation to overcome long-held\nbiases, to think again, and to see and live life in a new light. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s so hard to be vulnerable, to say to our neighbor, \u201cI don\u2019t know everything\u201d or to say to our soul, \u201cI don\u2019t know anything at all.\u201d Yet Jesus says the only people who can recognize and be ready for what he\u2019s talking about are the ones who come with the mind and heart of a child (see Matthew 18:3). The older we get, the more we\u2019ve been disappointed and betrayed by life and others, the more barriers we put up to what Zen masters call \u201cbeginner\u2019s mind.\u201d We must never presume that we see \u201call\u201d or accurately. We must always be ready to see anew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"305\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-5-500x305.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19897\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-5-500x305.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-5-300x183.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-5-768x468.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/image-5.png 1854w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Learning how to see our biases is a psychological exercise, but one with immediate theological and social implications. It demands self-knowledge and the crucial need to recognize (1) when we are in denial about our own shadow and capacity for illusion; (2) our capacity to project our own fears and shadows onto other people and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19894"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19894"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19898,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19894\/revisions\/19898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}