back to the drawing board
red ink change
I remember how proud I was of some of the rough draft papers I submitted in college. A week later, the paper given back to me looked like a crime scene: covered in red. Over time, I began to dread the red ink markups, even when professors would write encouraging things. To me, those red ink markups and notes symbolized imperfection and the exhausting tasking of editing ahead of me. Making changes to my paper would take work, draft after draft.
There is a vast amount of change in the world. In an ironic way, change is a constant in our world. Animals, plants, and people are fading and dying. But they are also being born and growing. There is a constant cycle of life and death. At the present moment, change is an unchanging reality.
Change is also an aspect of redemption in the Kingdom of God too. God is bringing about a redemption work in His beloved, chosen people. Christians are called new creations: a beautiful preview of the restoration God will bring about to His entire universe one day. Change is a part of the Gospel too. Repenting and believing in Jesus as well as being made holy by the Spirit of God throughout a lifetime are aspects of change also.
With so much change in the world, one might think that people would accept adjusting worldviews and shifting ideological positions as a part of life. With a Christian worldview grounded on God's redemption, believers might be assumed to be even more accepting and comfortable with these kinds of personal changes. Yet, recent research and data seem to point to the opposite being true.
the verdict is in
Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences Keith M. Bellizzi suggested that confirmation bias and identity formation attached to beliefs are leading people to be less willing to change their mind or ideas on some subjects.1
One study found that confirmation bias led people to interpret new information with skewed perception to protect their own view.2 Another study found that uncertainty leads people to argue even more strongly for their own side to those who disagree.3
Furthermore, a 2018 study found that people with access to a wide amount of information did not use very much of the information and knowledge they were presented to form opinions and beliefs.4
In 2014, Pew Research Center released data that indicated a rising polarization in politics. They discovered that less and less people are willing to vote across partisan lines, indicated by a growing percentage of people seeing the other side as a threat to their nation.5 This was further backed up by a more recent 2020 study published by Cambridge.6 Another neurological study found that brains 'fail to encode' opposing views.7 In other words, people are more influenced by others they agree with, rather than those who disagree with them.
The verdict is in. In an ever-changing world, people resist change.
In many ways, this makes sense. We want to keep the good things we have. We want certainty in an increasingly chaotic and uncertain world. As we all forage in the wilderness of post-modernity, we want to feel safe and assured.
But what if a complete or perfect certainty wasn't the ultimate goal? What if total certainty and protection from change is not what we should be chasing after?
Change is a part of the Kingdom and its economy - at least for now.8 So why are we so resistant to it?
take a look in the mirror
These statistics do not indicate how religion and Christianity vary the results. But I suspect Christians are not much better at handling change than the average American.
Do we ever change our minds? I am not referring to small changes and positional pivots, but changing stances on things that deeply matter to us.
As I search my own heart, talk with friends, and observe the world at large, I am beginning to wonder if the resistance to change points to a deeper problem. Perhaps, behind our zeal for unchanging certainty is a deep-seated fear and anxiety. Perhaps, fear of the unknown and a desire to control what we cannot fully comprehend leads us to build walls of certainty, refusing to let change inside.
I suspect a lot of pride and stubbornness are behind our resistance to change too. But ultimately, I wonder if behind all of this is fear.
In this present moment, I believe you and I should take a look in the mirror. Stubbornness, pride, or fear should not control the people of Jesus.
We are people of freedom, not fear. We are people of radical humility and love, not pride and ego.
Are we willing to read the scriptures with radical honestly? And if our traditional view and heritage is challenged and proved to be false or lacking, are we willing go back to the drawing board?9
Are we committed to a kind of reformation-honesty that challenges the traditional lines and boundaries of the past? The kind of honest exploration of truth that is willing to pioneer forward out of love for God. Are we willing to explore our world and seek truth with a loyalty the things that matter most? The Way of Jesus, the Spirit’s guidance, the inspired Text, and the foundational traditions of the Church - these things matter more than blindly following the status quo of our favorite political party, ideological group, or unchallenged assumptions on life.
Take a moment to reflect: what holds me back from admitting I could be wrong or mistaken on something that matters deeply to me?
the ultimate destination
Let's face it. There are a lot of unknowns in our world.
Who will be the next president? What will the economy be like next year? How will religious freedom be impacted by an increasingly secular world? What kind of educational system will be in place of the next generation of kids? How do I know I am making the right decisions with my life? What does it mean to be a faithful Christian in a chaotic world? How do I reflect Jesus and share the Gospel the best way possible with others around me? How do I speak the truth in love with so many different types of people who disagree with me?
The list of questions that a follower of Jesus faces goes on and on and on.
Nothing good will come from fear leading us.10 It will lead us down paths that end in disaster for the Body of Christ. Fear should make us run to the embrace of God with more and more dependency. Yet, sometimes instead we react to fear in other ways.
We might try to make the reality of God accessible and simple, at the expense of dumbing down the truth of God and His scriptures. Out of a desire to be certain and 'be right', we may over-generalize and take blatantly wrong views of complex issues. With the holy desire to see God's Kingdom 'here as it is in Heaven', we might build rigid and forceful public policy that forces people towards the Gospel and the Way of Jesus as slaves instead of adopted children. Yearning to feel safe and certain in the post-modern wilderness of our age, fear will lead us to dehumanize and mistreat anyone who disagrees with us or doesn't fall into our way of thinking.
Maybe absolute certainty shouldn't be the goal. Maybe unchanging and dogmatic positions shouldn't be the ideal.
What if, among the chaos of our world, we haven't arrived yet. What if we still need to grow and change, just like everyone else?
What we can be certain about is that God is our refuge and safety among the chaos of our world. We may rest and trust in Him. We don't need to build our own fortresses of ideological certainty and protection against all change.
One day, all tribes, tongues, and nations among God's family will gather in a restored world with an everlasting, unchanging peace. Until then, Jesus calls His followers to suffer well, to pioneer as citizens of another realm faithfully, to repent and grow as people who are being redeemed day by day, and to work together to seek truth from age to age to age.
https://today.uconn.edu/2022/08/cognitive-biases-and-brain-biology-help-explain-why-facts-dont-change-minds-2/#
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_is_it_so_hard_to_change_peoples_minds
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6310859/
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/democracy-in-america-partisanship-polarization-and-the-robustness-of-support-for-democracy-in-the-united-states/C7C72745B1AD1FF9E363BBFBA9E18867
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/327341#Confirmation-bias-at-work
I am willing to contemplate how different things could be in eternity of the new heavens and new earth, but that is not for now.
As a seminary student, this has been my life for a while now. I want to be as close to the truth as possible. I love God and so I yearn to perceive Him and His reality as clearly as possible. This has entailed: studying the original languages, wrestling with the different theological positions, examining my own biases, digging into ALL the details of history, and constantly re-alligning my allegiance to Jesus over other groups that try to market my worship. The more radically honest with myself I am, the more I am aware of how little I know, how easily influenced I can become, and how much I need all kinds of disciples to learn with TOGETHER!
Nothing ultimately good results in pride or stubbornness leading us either. But I think sometimes fear is the most hard-to-recognize factor when it comes to resisting change.