In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert. John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one crying out in the desert; ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’” (Luke 3.1-6)
One of the most interesting courses in psychology that I have taken had to do with biases. The term is usually defined as a preference in favor of or against any thing, person, or group. In other words, we have an automatic leaning towards or away from somebody or something. In ordinary parlance, a bias is often called a blind spot. Everybody has them. It is part of the way our brain functions. It simplifies, categorizes, and prioritizes. As a result, we end up with biases.
For example, when asked, most of us will say we’re better than most people at any number of daily activities. It doesn’t matter what the activity is. So, we believe we’re generally better than most people when it comes to doing what is right and good. Likewise, we think we’re better drivers than most everybody else. And the list goes on and on. Across the board, we inflate our self-assessments.
The problem, of course, is that it is statistically impossible for everyone to be better than average. And here is where it gets even more interesting. When confronted with that fact, another bias kicks in, making it easier for us to dismiss the statistical fact by one way or another. That bias is called the confirmation bias.
By definition, confirmation bias means we accept information that confirms what we already believe and we reject information that opposes what we believe. In other words, we weed out inconvenient truths, choosing instead to believe what we want to believe. And just to prove that we’re right, we find ways to confirm our belief. We can listen to people who think like we do, their attitudes confirming our own beliefs. We can turn on the TV to channels that only reconfirm what we already hold to be true, our attitudes reinforced in this way.
This process of confirmation bias is often called the echo chamber, a good name for it, all things considered. We surround ourselves with voices like our own, our thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors echoed back to us by others who hold the same worldview. We never expose ourselves to information that will challenge our beliefs or points of view. In effect we live in an information bubble, nothing new or different penetrating our bubble, allowing us to continue to live our lives comfortable in our beliefs and ensconced in our attitudes.
So, you’re asking what does this have to do with scripture? Well, a whole lot in fact. The selection that we have before us today on this Second Sunday of Advent is taken from Chapter 3 of Luke’s gospel where we’re introduced to John the Baptist, a prophet in the region of the Jordan who caused quite an uproar in the area by his teaching and by his preaching.
How so? By challenging people’s attitudes and behaviors, confronting them on the way they were living, countering their beliefs that they were living good and decent lives in the eyes of God. In other words, he pops the bubble in which the people have been living, offering a strong and direct counter-argument to their stance that they were above average in all manner of things.
The key word that we find John the Baptist using is repentance. Luke describes his preaching as one of “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Here again, our translation does not do justice to what the Greek word intends. The word used is “metanoia,” which is better translated as changing one’s mind or outlook.
Ah-ha. Now you see why I began with confirmation bias. Repentance means change. And change cannot happen if we believe there is no reason for us to change our ways. So long as we live in an echo chamber that confirms everything we already think and believe, we’re never going to change our ways of thinking or acting. We’re perfectly fine the way we are, thank you very much.
Typically, John the Baptist is considered an in-your-face type of person, telling it like it is, holding nothing back. Prophets, as a rule, are not warm and cuddling people. And Luke makes it perfectly clear to us that John has the credentials. How so? He uses a phrase that we regularly find in the Hebrew scriptures whenever a prophet was called. It is found in his statement that “The word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.” The word of God came to John. That’s the give-away that he’s a prophet in full standing.
So, if we step back a bit, we can see exactly what Luke is doing here in these few verses. He begins with historical information, telling us Tiberius was sitting comfortably on his throne in Rome, that Pontius Pilate was safely installed as governor of Judea, and Herod was definitely in charge of Galilee. He even gives us the high priests in Judaism, the former office holder and the present office holder, both of whom lived in Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish religion.
Listening to the parade of important people as Luke names them off the list, we are inclined to think little to nothing of it, assuming he’s simply giving us historical details. He is, but he is doing much more. That’s clear soon enough. Immediately after listing the who’s who of the powerful and elite, he then tells us that the word of God came to John.
Did you catch that? The word of God did not come to Tiberius. It did not come to Pontius Pilate. And it did not even come to the heads of the Jewish religion. No, the word of God came to a lone figure in the region of the Jordan River, an inconsequential and insignificant preacher some were quick to label a toublemaker or a madman.
Truly, it is a beautiful contrast that Luke gives us in these few verses. We have the important and the unimportant, the powerful and the powerless, the rich and the poor. And in one stroke of the pen, he topples all the higher-ups, telling us that the word of God came to John the son of Zebedee, one called by the Most High God because he, unlike all the big names, knew the heart of God.
And what did the Most High God tell John he was to do? He was to proclaim a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In other words, he was to tell everybody to change their ways. In other words, the beliefs and attitudes of people were not those of the Lord God and if people wanted to get right with God then it was high time for a change.
The Lord God asked John to penetrate the bubble, the echo chamber that people were living in, where they told themselves and made themselves believe that they were perfectly fine just the way they were, popping it open with one word that was like a broomstick bursting open a pinata, all their deceits and delusions spilling onto the ground. And that one word, of course, was metanoia. Change.
With that one word, John initiates a brutal assault on people’s mindsets, challenging their ideas and confronting their self-deceptions. If you want to live right by God, he tells them, then you better get out of your bubble, open your eyes, and allow the light of truth to penetrate your minds. Change your ways and then you can talk about your status before the Most High God.
All told, it is an excellent selection for this season of Advent, a time when we’re supposedly doing some work on our own souls, attempting to get our lives in conformity with the ways of God, in this way preparing for the birth of the Messiah who heralds the coming of the Kingdom of God, a kingdom of peace and justice, a kingdom of love and mercy, a kingdom of goodness and generosity.
In other words, we’re the ones standing at the banks of the Jordan now, listening to John tell us to change our ways. The big question is whether we’re truly open to making changes in our attitudes and in our way of living in the world. The answer, I propose, is in determining if and when we’ve made significant changes in the past. The past predicts the future.
If we can point to no significant changes in our attitudes and beliefs–aligning them more in conformity with the heart of God–then it is highly doubtful that we’re going to respond to John’s call to change. After all, change begins with the honest acknowledgement that everything we do is not fine, that we’re off course, and that we need to make a correction. This is heavy lifting for us.
So long as we’ve convinced ourselves that we don’t need to change, carefully picking and choosing the proof that we’re fine just the way we are, not allowing anything to budge our long-held attitudes about the poor, about the immigrant, about the ostracized, then John’s challenge is going to go the way of all our junk mail–right into the trash can.
The problem is plain as day. We’re all very good at truth-telling about others, but terrible at truth-telling to ourselves. Remember, we believe almost everybody else is a worse driver than we are. So, our first reaction to John’s challenge is to brush it off as being directed at everybody else, not at us. After all, we’re great drivers. And if there’s anything that would suggest otherwise, well, we ignore it or dismiss it because it doesn’t fit in with our preconceived notions about ourselves.
The bottom line is we have our work cut out for us. That is, if we want to make the most of John’s words as we anticipate the birth of the Messiah who came into the world to proclaim the Most High God as the ruler of the world, not Caesar and his cohorts, came to announce that the ways of the world were headed horribly in the wrong direction, came to say that time was running out for us to pull our heads out of the sands of self-deception and self-congratulations.
So, what are we going to do? Are we going to allow John the benefit of doubt? Are we going to allow the possibility that we aren’t as good as we think we are? Are we going to allow that one word–change–to enter our consciousness, causing havoc with our preconceived notions about us and our world?
Psychology says we can change. But it is not an easy path. It begins with being more open-minded about our attitudes and beliefs, listening to people who tell us the truth, not to people who just tell us what we want to hear. Years ago, a psychology professor of mine told the class that he read one book each month that he knew would offer a contrary point-of-view to his own perspective on matters large and small. He said it kept him more honest.
Maybe that’s where we need to start. We need to be more honest about ourselves, admitting that there are some things we really should change, that maybe, just maybe we aren’t the best drivers on the road.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 