On Removing the Log . . . by Milton Horne

An article in the Feb 27, 2017 issue of The New Yorker gave me pause to reflect on a saying of Jesus: “How can you say to your brother, ‘let me take the speck out of your eye’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you’ll see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matt 7:4-5). The title of the New Yorker article is, “Why facts don’t change our minds,” and the author, Elizabeth Kolbert, brings to bear the shocking and troublesome results of years of cumulative research on the human brain, rationality and its relationship to emotion. In a word, all of the fact-checking in the world will not overcome one’s emotional commitments and convictions to any particular issue. She’s not saying humans cannot think rationally and logically, but that it’s just a lot harder both to do it and to live by it.

While there are many complex possible applications, here, one of the most obvious is that communities of faith exist, not on the basis of fact, but of faith (our own New Testament says as much, doesn’t it: “for we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). It is a community that nourishes a confirmation bias in order to belong. No amount of fact-checking will change this (e.g., Job’s friends, for example). But in this election season, whether Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, capitalist or socialist, in order to keep peace with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and patiently to commit to truth, here are some suggestions: First, let us restrain ourselves from speaking out too quickly or at all, (“I lay my hand on my mouth,” Job says in 40:4—also known as, the doctrine of “shut up.” Second, consider the log in your own eye, “could my position actually be wrong, or at least not as right as I thought previously?” Third, let your prayer be devoted less to asking for stuff than it is to introspection about why you believe what you believe. Fourth, let your life be lived out in accord with the need to change your mind about any number of things. Fifth, extend a wide latitude (is this grace?) to your brothers and sisters who must live in the wake of certainty, whether facts support their positions or not. . . .