How to Formulate a God-Honoring Response to Current Events: Part 3

What does the term "confirmation bias" have to do with formulating a God-honoring response to current events? Well, . . .  everything!

In this episode, we'll define confirmation bias, talk about its effect on memory and recall, and discuss the subtle ways it skews your outlook on events and your ability to properly discern truth. Confirmation bias in and of itself is not bad, but it is important to name and define it, so you don't fall into the trap of choosing a response that is unaware of blind spots. 

Pull up a chair 🪑 by joining the conversation (see below).

SHOW NOTES

Part 1 of this conversation.

Part 2 of this conversation.

Confirmation Bias on simplypsychology.org

Spiritual Disciplines on The Mentor's Table:

• Remembering: Part 1 & Part 2
• Silence: Part 1 & Part 2
• Sabbath: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
• Fasting: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Transcript

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Today we're going to take a less traditional approach in forming a God-honoring response to current events, and we're going to talk about the role that confirmation bias plays into how you respond to certain events. Honestly, it actually goes before that. It plays into what you remember of the current events and how you use that to confirm what you already believe. There's a lot to get into. I think this is really important and easily overlooked as we are trying to sort through all the current events happening right now. So please pull up a chair and I can't wait to hear your voice at the table talking about this with us. Welcome to the mentors table. My name is Joy, and I am the host here at this table. But as always, I always want this to be a conversation. And so when you listen to this, uh please share it with others, talk about it, comment on the website, joyabod.com, or on Instagram at joyabod.com, the dot spelled out, so that we can all have a conversation. This is a really, really important topic, and I'm feeling real spicy right here at the onset to share with you the information that I have for you today. But before I get too riled up and I get too in the weeds, let's take a minute to be still, to get back into our bodies, to quiet our minds, and to fix our eyes on Jesus, who is the author and the finisher of our faith. It's only Him, and we cannot operate outside of His authority, outside of His leading. We need to know our shepherd's voice so that we know where to go from here. So if you could take a deep breath in and release it slowly, we open our hands and our hearts in a posture of surrender. Lord God, let this not be my words but your words. We open the ears of those who are listening today when he already says Today we're gonna talk about the confirmation bias. Now we're talking, we're on the third of a series of conversations about how to form a God-honoring response to current events. And while I started this at the beginning of February, and I thought that we had already had so many current events hit us all at once that we we really needed to talk about this, and that was kind of at the height of what was going on in Minneapolis with ice. Little did I know that there was going to be events just like a waterfall, just continuing to pour and immerse us in all new things that you and I have been challenged to take a stance on and know what we believe and speak truth to and teach our kids and tell our friends and make posts on social media, and it has just continued to come even faster and even more furious than before, and I think that that is a good indication that what we're talking about is really important, and again, I don't want to be the person that says you have to do it this way. My goal is not to be prescriptive in these things, instead, it is to kind of like tap you on the shoulder a little bit and be like, hey, hey, hey, hold on a second. Let's think some of this through before you feel that you have to just jump in and give a reaction as opposed to response. Last week we talked about how important it is to stop, to slow down. The Bible says be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Right now, the world is encouraging you and prodding you to be quick to speak and quick to become angry. And as I said that, I thought, you know what, it's not even just the world, unfortunately, it's the church as well. The church Christian influencers or podcasters are also encouraging you to be quick to speak and quick to become angry, and we have forgotten about the slow to speak, slow to become angry. The only thing that God has told us to be quick about is listening, and we're gonna talk today about why we need to stop and listen, why we should be quick to listen. And listening takes time. Listening isn't something that you can do right away. Listening isn't something that's achieved when you skim. Listening isn't something that's achieved in a sound bite. Listening is something that requires time, it requires reading all of the information, listening to all of the information, and then continuing to follow along with slow to speak. It does not mean jumping into a reaction, it does not mean having an answer right away. The Bible does say that we need to be ready to give an answer for what we believe, but it doesn't say to be ready to give an answer the moment we hear a sound bite, the moment we see something that is traumatic online. Instead, the Bible says be quick to listen, listen to all. Isn't that what they say? Like there was the first time when you heard about them, that would have been the best time to start. And now is the next best time to start. Let's not put it off any longer. Also, I say that because you're going to find that as you're trying to build rhythms of spiritual disciplines in the midst of the battle, it's going to be really hard and really discouraging and potentially not feel that fruitful. Why do I say that? That sounds pretty uh doomsday and discouraging. But I'm saying that to say when the voices come in that are trying to get you to quit practicing or developing spiritual discipline in your own life, you can silence that voice with the truth that, hey, yeah, this is hard, this is discouraging, this is not as effective as I want it to be, because I waited until now to put these into place in my life. Not because they don't work, not because capital T truth has changed, but because I'm just a baby in developing these, I don't have a lot of time established, I don't have those neural pathways established, and so yeah, it's gonna be hard right now, but that is not a reason to quit. That is just a natural part of the beginning process. And so if you're facing that, silence that voice and keep on going because I promise you it's worth it. Okay, let's talk about confirmation bias. I'm gonna get some of these definitions and quotes from simplypsychology.org. First of all, let's just define confirmation bias, and I want you to listen for some key words in the definition, and I will try to highlight them a little bit just with the inflection of my voice. Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for information that supports rather than rejects one's preconceptions, typically by interpreting evidence to confirm existing beliefs, while also rejecting or ignoring any conflicting data. So basically, they're saying that confirmation bias is we have all this information that is just coming at us at once. It can create cognitive dissonance, which is just a science-y word for saying when a person holds two conflicting beliefs in their head at the same time, it provides some sort of a pain point. It's it's uncomfortable, it's difficult to hold both of those. And so what we are trying to do is to lessen the amount of pain points in our own mind or the uncomfortability and quickly sort through information so that we can have a unified singular thought towards whatever the belief is. But the problem is that because of confirmation bias, what scientists have found is that in order for our brain to be able to hold information that it feels comfortable with, it has to kind of filter out and so uh all the conflicting stuff because it gets so overwhelmed. And I'm using a lot of my own words here. So if you're a scientist and you're like, that's the wrong word, um, tell me, let me know. Joy Hello at Joyabod.com. I'd love to hear and understand this more. I'd love to have you on the pod. Anyways, the idea is that our brain is trying to sort through things and get to a level of comfortability. And because there is such an overwhelm of information right now, confirmation bias allows us to just kind of like sift through quickly all the information that's coming towards us and remember and hold on to the things that confirm what we already believe, and just quickly dismiss and reject things that conflict with what we already believe. It's just a way of our brain trying to simplify and just, like I said, be more comfortable with all the information that's coming in. So hear me when I say confirmation bias is neither good nor bad. Confirmation bias is a way that your brain is trying to sort through all the huge amount of information that is coming in. And so when we recognize, oh, this is what my brain is naturally doing, then we can recognize, okay, I understand that this is why my brain is doing it. There is so much happening in the world, there is so much coming at me at once, and I have a job, and I have kids that I'm raising, and I have friends that are going through difficult circumstances, and I'm a part of a church, and I and and and and and so your brain is just trying to like filter through and get to something that feels sustainable, and we need to recognize that what your brain finds easier to remember and easier to hold on to are the things that confirm what your brain already believed, what your brain already had established as the truth. Notice that is really important that your brain's automatically going to look for things that they that it already believes are true. So, what does that tell us? That tells us that our beliefs, the foundation of what we're looking for confirmation or evidence against is really, really important. Because if those are already our beliefs, then our brain is just going to continue to find more evidence to support our beliefs. And what's really important is our brain is going to purposely ignore the things that contradict our beliefs because it's just simpler to hold on to the things that we believe and the confirmation that we see. So this means that when we are watching out for confirmation bias and what we put back out into the world, whether it's talking to our friends or posting on social media, or if you're a leader or a teacher or a pastor, what you are teaching to your people, we have to recognize and we are responsible for naming and identifying what are our foundational beliefs. And once we name what those beliefs are, then we need to, we're responsible. You're responsible for your beliefs, and you take those beliefs and you hold them up against the standard of God's word. And if they align with God's word, great. That is capital T truth. And if they contradict God's word, then we need to take that to God and we need to get figured out what is the capital T truth in this belief. It is your responsibility to know and name what you believe. And then when you have named that, then you can begin to recognize, okay, if this is what I believe and this lines up with God's word, then when I am reading through all the different posts and I'm scrolling on the internet and whatever, uh my brain is naturally going to look for things that confirm those beliefs. And my brain is naturally going to ignore the things that do not confirm those beliefs. Another quote from the website, simply psychology.org. People exhibiting this bias, meaning confirmation bias, are likely to seek out, interpret, remember, there's a spiritual discipline, and give more weight to evidence that supports their views while ignoring, dismissing, or undervaluing the relevance of evidence that contradicts them. They go into some of the science has found that this is where selective memory comes into play. Our brain is able to remember easier the things that confirm what we already believe. Isn't that so interesting? This is why it's so important to get that foundation right first. Because then your brain is going to be looking for confirmation and it's going to remember it easier if it confirms what we have already established as our capital T, truth, and belief. So we have to get that straight first. To recap, I want to put it in an easy list. So number one, know what your beliefs and your preconceptions are. Number two, adjust them if they don't align with God's word. Number three, when we find that information that confirms our beliefs, we need to take time to validate and make sure that that is actually confirming it. Or are we just grabbing information that's easy to hold and letting go of the uncomfortable stuff? The word of God is to be our standard, not our confirmation bias, not the way that our brain was designed to keep comfortable, but instead it is our opportunity to continually go back to the Holy Spirit, to continually go back to God, to remember and read God's word and hide it in our heart so that we know and we recognize when it is the voice of a stranger. And all of those things take a foundation of truth and they take time. Like we talked about last week. It's time to stop. The urgency and the come up with a quick answer that we are hearing and feeling intrinsically through our social media feeds is not from God. Listen to me, it is not from God. That has been designed by man to build an algorithm that causes that cognitive dissonance in your head, to causes that to cause that uncomfortability and to urge you and push you and prod you into quickly dismissing things and just grabbing things that feel comfortable. That is not from God. Taking time to refocus. your heart and your eyes back on God alone. There's so much more I want to say, but this is already getting long, so I'm gonna stop here and we will pick up with this next week. By way of personal updates, there's not a lot of exciting things like I talked about before with traveling and different things like that that's been happening recently. Instead it's been more of learning a little bit more about my body. I just got some blood work done and it was really insightful and beginning to make wise choices to take care of my body in a better way that would really optimize it for health and I'm very excited about that. And then also just kind of embracing that I have spent decades living at this subpar level and just powering through. And when I got tired and when I got discouraged and when things didn't pan out the way that I wanted them to I blamed myself. I berated myself mentally I thought that my body I judged my body like that my body is somehow subpar because even though I'm doing this exercising and even though I'm eating properly and even though I'm taking all these supplements it still is just dragging and unhealthy and it's just not working right. I say all of that to say if you are struggling instead of turning on yourself could you learn from my decades of doing it wrong and instead turn to God and turn to others to get some answers and so if this is the encouragement that you need take my experience and don't wait three decades to get your blood work drawn instead do it right now and get some answers and stop blaming yourself. Instead you can surrender this you can take some action steps and God can use others to help work through this and bring about your healing I'll see you next week nerd alert nerd alert guys I am such a nerd I geek out on show notes. So if you ever want to know how to contact the show directly how to find us on socials links to books or anything that we mention on the show go to the show notes. And at the very bottom there's always a link that says support the show it doesn't matter how little or big or how often you want to give it super easy to do and I like to consider it a way for you to take me out for coffee and say hey thanks and you know what I say thank you. You guys are the best