There are definitely two camps on this. Some parents like to know the gender of their baby beforehand, some don’t. My wife, Kelly and I liked the idea of finding out right at the moment of birth. That was the plan at least, but about half-way through her first pregnancy, at one of the sonograms, the technician, as she was checking the monitor said, “Aww…pretty as a peach.” Kelly and I looked at each other, then on the way home concluded “pretty as a peach” could mean only one thing: a girl.
By the time we found ourselves at the hospital a few months later, this had settled in as Gospel. We were having a girl. We had bought a lovely ornate crib, the baby’s room color reflected our expectation. We even had a name picked out, Susan Patricia. After our mothers. We were gonna call her, Trish.
So we checked into the hospital got into the room, met the nurses and talked to the doctors. Pretty soon Kelly went into labor. The day then progressed easily (for me at least), and eventually the moment of delivery arrived. And at just that moment, right as the baby was being born, before the doctor could even make his “announcement”, before Kelly could even lay her eyes on Baby Trish, the room and all those present heard me exclaim, “It’s a boy!”
In that split second, Kelly, like me, having so much expected a girl, responded incredulously, “No, it’s not.”
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure,” the doctor said, quickly seconding my medical opinion, then gave to Kelly, our baby boy, who a day or so later became known as Hank.
And the point to the story is that, in both my surprise, and in Kelly’s response, we demonstrated the truism that once our minds settle on something as being true, it’s really difficult for us to imagine we could be, we might be dead wrong.
And this lack of agility in our human minds is especially true in the area of what’s known as moral reasoning. An example: In sports, on a close play that goes against your team, your attention becomes invariably super-attuned to the referee or umpire getting proven wrong. You can’t wait for the video replay. But, but if the same referee or umpire makes a bad call against the other team, you’re not motivated at all to see that he’s proven wrong.
You might say, well, of course, that’s because it’s sports and I want my team to win. Well, that’s exactly my point. In the heat of battle, the integrity of the game isn’t nearly as important as your team winning.
Let’s try another example. Politics. When the candidate we’re for is criticized, we quickly conclude he or she’s being treated unjustly. We begin to dig in a highly motivated way for reasons the criticism is wrong, the criticized behavior is excusable, or that even if it’s true, the other side has done far worse. Conversely, when the candidate we’re against is criticized, we quickly assume the criticism is just and fair, and long overdue. It’s all a result of good investigative reporting, or even if the story came to light in an unsavory way, it was still high time someone pointed this out.
Or think about this. You find yourself reading an article about a controversial topic, say, how we should address gun violence. If the article confirms what you believe, it’s a great study and you don’t look behind it. How it was derived. How it was put together. But, if the result of the study is not what you believe, you become highly motivated to point out the villainy of those who funded it, how it was poorly designed, how it’s polling was outrageously skewed, and how the author’s bias is so well-known that all of it should be dismissed out of hand anyway.
These are all examples of what scientists and behavioral psychologists call motivated reasoning. Our tendency to reason in a motivated way is partly why we humans find it so difficult to change our minds and opinions once they’re established, even in the face of new facts or signs. What makes it even worse is that when we seek out more information about these subjects, candidates or subjects, it’s almost always from sources, people, papers, websites and TV shows which repeat to us all the things we agree with already. And because of this confirmation bias, we unconsciously cultivate these, our own blind spots assiduously. We do it so well, that we become more and more adept at seeing each others blind spots, and at the same time, less and less able to recognize our own.
The TED organization is a non-profit which holds meetings around the world to spread innovative ideas in the form of powerful eighteen minute talks by compelling speakers. Recently they asked Julia Galeff, the co-founder of The Center for Applied Rationality, to speak at one of their conferences and she started her talk more or less like this:
Imagine for a second, she said, that you’re a soldier in the heat of battle. Maybe you’re picturing yourself as a warrior from the medieval era. Maybe you’re picturing yourself on a battle field in the civil war or perhaps as a modern soldier, but regardless of time or place, your adrenaline is elevated, you’re on edge and your actions in these moments are flowing from deep human reflexes rooted in a need to protect yourself and your side to defeat the enemy. You’re in a soldier’s mindset.
Now shift gears. Imagine something different. You’re in a different role now. You’re not a soldier, but a scout. A scout’s job is not to attack or defend. The scout’s job is to understand. You’re mapping the terrain, identifying obstacles, looking for ways across a river. It’s the scout’s job to know what’s really there.
Certainly in a real and actual army, both soldier and scout are not only necessary but essential, but Galeff says, if you start thinking of these two roles, as attitudes, as mindsets, you’ll begin to see that the motivated form of reasoning which sometimes keeps us from seeing the whole picture comes from the soldier mindset. That is, the side that isn’t looking for how things really are, but just intent on winning. When you’re in this mindset, she says, your perspective, what you see, how you construct context, fill in the blanks, and look at your opponent, is all strongly influenced not by how things really may be, but mainly by a desire for your side to win.
Whereas the scout mindset is not shamed, but perfectly happy, even intrigued with the prospect of changing one’s mind about all manner of controversial things. If that’s truly where the facts, and where the signs lead, that’s what the scout values.
With all that in mind, let’s try to apply this idea of a scout mindset to matters of faith. It’s a well-known story:
There was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council who came to Christ at night.
That’s just verse one and a fragment of verse, but let’s pause here to get the full picture. Can you see it?
A renowned rabbi, probably middle age or older, moving as quickly as he can, through a warren of dark streets, looking behind himself every so often to make sure he’s not being followed. Maybe he’s thinking, this is kind of absurd I’m having to sneak around, but the implication is that this meeting with Jesus is necessarily a secret meeting. Now, arriving at the house for the meeting, he turns his head left, then right to make sure no one’s looking, then pulls at his robe to ascend the steps before arriving at the door.
There was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council who came to Christ at night.
It’s really a remarkable sentence, but to get the full import of it, we have to leave Nicodemus here at the door a moment and rewind a few years.
Imagine a Jewish boy, part of a well known family in occupied Palestine under Roman rule just before the time of Christ. He’s an exceptional student, so gifted the most renowned rabbi in town has taken the boy under his wing. This unique boy reads the stories of the ancient faith of the Hebrews and his devotion to God grows. He’s taught the sacred texts, the Mosaic law, and quickly advances beyond all his classmates and soon, even his teachers. The boy comes of age and in accordance with Rabbinic tradition, in addition to memorizing the written Torah, he begins to learn the “Torah that is spoken,” the oral tradition, the thousands of laws, statutes and legal interpretations unrecorded in the five Books of Moses, but which have grown up around the law for hundreds of years. The young man takes an oath in front of three respected rabbis, three renowned Pharisees that he will not only obey each law, but will uphold each regulation, so help him God.
So now for decades, he’s not only done that, but sat with other the teachers of the law in the synagogues, interpreting for the community, his flock, how the law should be applied in disputed situations. He even begins to take on students himself. He’s a holy man, an intelligent thinker and soon he’s elevated to the ruling council, the Sanhedrin, the seventy member supreme court, holding jurisdiction over not just every Jew in Jerusalem, but every one in the faith all over the known world, overseeing the law, protecting the culture, the traditions, everything about the Jewish faith. He’s a man of good faith.
And all this time this man is accruing knowledge, he’s working hard and becoming an elite member of his society. As such, he’s also accruing wealth. This man is not only one of the most respected men, the most sought after minds in all Jerusalem, but also one of its richest.
Now, before we get to the rest of the story, let’s push pause again, and try to conceive of someone, who, not due to corruption, not due to a lack of good faith, but just due to human nature has more to lose if the system in which he has risen, earning his way to the top, is shaken, toppled, upset or turned over.
Can we conceive of anyone who would be more likely to fall into the trap of motivated reasoning, the echo chamber of confirmation bias, and the desire to hold on to his own way of thinking than this man.
Now, push play again and let’s continue the story.
It all started apparently at a wedding in Cana where this lowly carpenter’s son turned water into wine. Ever since then it’s been one episode after another. There was talk of a multitude being fed with only a fish or two and a few loaves of bread. Then this series of peculiar healings. Reports of the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the mute speaking, the possessed freed, the lame walking. Crowds of peasants are now following this carpenter’s son, and without any ready-made explanations for the miracles, the Pharisees, this wealthy religious leader’s brethren, have pointed out quite rightly that these miracles, these supposed acts of grace all run afoul of the law.
First of all, you can’t heal on the Sabbath of course. Everyone knew that. And after doing these miracles, this upstart, this carpenter’s son, often stayed with the people he’d healed, even eating with them. He’d shared meals with tax collectors, lepers, adulterers, prostitutes, half-breed Samaritans, Roman soldiers. It was almost as if you couldn’t come up with a sin so bad it’d keep him away. This man had not only a troubling tolerance for just about everyone, but an inexplicable affinity for the worst of society.
From where Nicodemus sat, it was completely implausible that the eight hundred year old prophecies of Isaiah & Jeremiah could possibly be describing a thirty year old carpenter from Galilee who lived down the street, magically turning water into wine. And by the way, none of the religious texts say anything about any prophet ever coming out of Galilee.
Nicodemus must’ve struggled with how visiting Jesus must’ve seemed disloyal to his brethren, to the law, to tradition, to his students, and to the memory of his own teachers, to his seat on the Sanhedrin Council. He must have struggled with the sense that it seemed like he was switching sides, was admitting he’d been wrong, admitting past hypocrisies. Nevertheless, with a scout’s mindset, not a soldier’s, he pulled at his robes, ascended the stairs and knocked on Jesus’s door.
We have to ask: Are we capable of doing that?
Nicodemus is on the Gospel stage only briefly. He has only four or five lines which take up only seventeen verses. But, just a little later, in what amounts to Act III of the Gospel in chapter 19 of the book of John, following Christ’s crucifixion, we see the completion of one of the most compelling character arcs in all of Scripture, second only maybe to St. Paul’s.
John 19: 38-39 reads like this: Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but only secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night.
It’s said that Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy pounds of the stuff, and taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it with the spices, in strips of linen in accordance with Jewish burial customs. Get this: Seventy pounds of myrrh and aloe can be estimated to have a value of between $150,000 to $200,000.
It was Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin who took the body from the cross and prepared the carpenter’s son for burial as if he was a king. Why? Because he knew that he was.
What if, like Nicodemus, we began to look to our faith, not to always reinforce what we think we’re right about, but rather, sometimes, to instruct us on what we’re wrong about. That’s what our faith, our religion should do: It should tell us what we’re wrong about, not just confirm what we’re so sure we’re right about. The example of Nicodemus, reasoning the signs out with grace, shows us that Jesus isn’t satisfied with us staying in the same place, in the same mindset forever, especially if the one we have doesn’t allow for the possibility that God is doing something new in the world that perhaps we don’t expect.