Truth, Bias, and the American Way

Tuesday Re-mix:

Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 1:20-21

As a trial attorney, I suppose I have said it to at least a hundred or so jury panels during the voir dire examination of them, when the parties are trying to decide whom to strike from the jury panel. That’s the way our system works. The parties each get to strike a certain small number of prospective jurors, and the first 12 left comprise the jury. It is an examination for one purpose…to determine any relevant bias which may make a juror the wrong juror for a particular case. So, I have said this to all of them: “We all have biases. They don’t make us a bad person. They don’t make us liars. They don’t make us deceptive. In our area of bias, they just make us an unreliable finder of truth in that area.”

Those words rang so very true, I think, as little as 50 years ago in our culture. Truth cannot be found in bias. But, in more recent years, I fear that our bias-rich American culture is making it more and more difficult for us to explore truth without bias. I have stopped watching national news, pretty much completely. Why? Because every single national news syndicate in our country is hopelessly biased, whether by choice or by accident. I’m certain it does not matter which. What bothers me most about that sad fact is that real journalism was our last secular hope for knowing truth. Then again, maybe that was false hope from the very beginning. Maybe there is no real hope for truth in a secular world. Maybe the human condition forbids it.

So, if the secular world holds no hope for discovering truth, what about the spiritual world? What about spiritual discernment of scriptural truths? It seems that the church has had its share of struggles there as well. We are an intelligent and creative people. We are apparently capable of making scripture say almost anything we want it to say. And that is a problem.

And so, Peter’s words above shed some light on an awful lot of the debates raging in the church today over interpretations of scripture. Truth, as it turns out, is not born in the hearts of men…it is not a matter of our will. We cannot begin any genuine search for truth with a clear bias for what we want it to be. That, it seems, is one obstacle that makes any genuine search for truth, well, not so genuine. When an honest read of my heart has me starting my search for truth with what I want it to be, my search is flawed from the beginning…and my results will be flawed as well.

So, may I just suggest this tip in your ongoing search for spiritual truth? Stop and make an honest assessment of that search, and of your own heart and desires. On any given question about scriptural truth, ask yourself this: “What do I WANT the truth to be?” And if you have a truthful answer to that question, then factor that bias in to your process. Cop to it from the outset. If you miss that adjustment, you will miss the truth, and your time of searching (and the time and efforts of those searching with you) will have been wasted.

The term “voir dire” is actually a French term. Roughly translated, it means “to speak the truth”. Speaking the truth, in our culture, means owning our bias and making the necessary adjustments. Otherwise, we just become another talking head in a world full of op-ed talking heads. And there is no life-changing testimony in that.