It’s hard to watch the news nowadays and not get wound up. Our politics are so deeply divided, and our rhetoric increasingly harsh. Every day, it seems, a politician or pundit says something that leaves me feeling incredulous.
I wonder how these people, on both the right and left, can be so sure of themselves—certain in the most frightening sense of the word. They speak as though the matter has been settled and refuse to listen to opposing viewpoints.
And I wonder about their awareness of cognitive biases—two in particular: confirmation bias that leads a person to look for and use information that supports their existing beliefs, and anchoring bias that leaves them vulnerable to over-relying on the first piece of information they receive. While the psychological science of cognitive biases has only been around for fifty years, our susceptibility to these biases has been around forever.
In the book of Proverbs, there is a certain way to listen that is crucial for getting to the truth: “The first to plead his case seems right, until the other party comes and cross-examines him.” (Proverbs 18.17)
Those who are wise listen longer. They know that there is always another side to the argument, and they understand the importance of taking opposing viewpoints seriously. Wise people are committed to listening and are open to changing their minds. At some level they know that they need to listen past their biases.
When I first learned about cognitive biases, they had a real braking effect in terms of how confidently I read the world. I second-guessed myself more, and this uncertainty helped me become more wise; because I couldn’t trust myself as much, I had room to trust others more—especially those who saw the world differently than I did.
For example, I tried to watch both CNN and Fox News. Often, I’d be convinced of the truth of a CNN story, only to listen to a Fox story on the same topic and discover that CNN had, interestingly, left out one small detail. The math, of course, played out in both directions. And I learned that, like people, news networks shade the truth and call it as they want to see it. So, now I watch both networks, in an attempt to avoid simple answers and to hear both sides.
This can be hard on my progressive-leaning bias; it’s easier to have it confirmed than challenged. Certainty is far more comfortable. But if it means I’m contributing to the kind of avoidance of truth’s complexity that undermines community, then I don’t want to be that certain anymore.
Listening longer is also hard for me because of the incongruent state of my heart.
There’s a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that has haunted me for years:
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
In the book of Jeremiah, God also speaks a very uncomfortable truth: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17.9)
I have often witnessed the truth of these words in the hearts of others.
And that is precisely my problem—I’m not often willing to look into my own heart and really see what lurks in its dark corners, which I must admit include a stubborn pridefulness that always needs to be right, an intellectual sloth that doesn’t want to spend the energy to engage others, a persistent greed that continually wants, and a judgmental anger that’s addicted to self-righteous indignation.
When I look around, I get the sense that I’m not the only one with this problem. I’m part of a world full of people who are very much like those God pointed to via the prophet Isaiah:
Dull that people’s mind,
Stop its ears,
And seal its eyes—
Lest, seeing with its eyes
And hearing with its ears,
It also grasp with its mind,
And repent and save itself. (Isaiah 6.10)
To be honest, these words frighten me. Is God really calling Isaiah to prophesy with a method that makes the people even less able to repent? Does this mean that there is a point in an erring society’s life cycle where God leaves us to our own devices, to learn the hard way how to change? Surely none of us wants this. Yet we clearly seem to be on an ever heart-hardening path; with things only getting worse as we put all of the blame on others.
Maybe now is the time to take a different approach. Instead of looking at others in judgment, we could try looking honestly at ourselves.
Perhaps then we’ll realize that every time we’re quick to judge another, we’re actually judging ourselves. If we really had eyes to see, we’d see that every human being, no matter how politically or culturally different, is made in the image of God and worth our time and attention. If we had ears that hear, we’d listen as though the truth depended on it.
If we want to be part of the solution, we need to come to our senses. We need to put aside biases that we may have needed earlier in life—to perhaps help us get through a difficult situation—and re-examine what we think we know. We need to become wise enough to know how little we know, and how much we need the perspective of others.
This is a tall order. How can anyone ever know themselves well enough to get there?
Several years ago, while working on a lecture on cognitive biases for a seminary class at Ambrose University in Calgary, I came across The Cognitive Bias Codex, which has hundreds of biases captured in one graphic. After reading about dozens of biases, I found myself cognitively paralyzed—if I tried to avoid all of these potential blind spots, I wouldn’t be able to move. For just a few minutes I felt helpless. There is no way I can be cognizant enough to save myself from all of these pitfalls.
After God’s stinging indictment in Jeremiah 17:9, and His thought-provoking question about who can know the human heart, God answers with these words:
“I the Lord search the heart
and examine the mind,
to reward each person according to their conduct,
according to what their deeds deserve.” (Jeremiah 17.10)
Only the Lord knows the human heart.
And only God knows the truth in any given situation.
Perhaps the antidote for our deeply broken hearts is having a sense of humility that comes from living life before, and in relationship with, an all-knowing God.
When each of us lives in this fully seen, fully known, cross-examined place we’ll see our frailties for what they are, know without a doubt that we don’t know everything, and humbly turn to the God who does—a God whose every word we can wholeheartedly anchor on.
Perhaps the humility found in this place could then ripple out into all our relationships, and we’d be as gracious with others as God is with us.