Speaker: Vince Klassen
Bias. We all have them. We make generalizations based on race, age, colour of skin, gender, religious identities, etc. For some it’s conscious, for some it’s unconscious. Having a bias you are conscious of is difficult but tends not to cause problems, because you are aware of it (and hopefully are trying to change it). But unconscious bias is an insidious issue that can influence much of what we do. If we have an unconscious gender bias we might not hire qualified candidates based on their gender, without even realizing it. If we have an unconscious bias towards an ethnic group, we might react differently to them than others (think of your reaction to meeting a black man in a dark alley as opposed to a white man). And on and on the story goes.
Have you ever wondered what the Bible author’s unconscious biases are? From what we read, they seem to have them. And what is most scary, is their biases seems to have seeped into creating unconscious bias for us over the last 100 years. And that bias has done horrible things in the name of Christianity.
This week I want to make conscious what I believe the Bible author’s biases are, so that we can become conscious of what our biases might be.