There’s a bumper sticker I like that says, “don’t believe everything you think.” Makes me laugh. Think critically about your own critical thinking. I suppose that can seem a bit scary for some who cling rather tightly to their own alleged ability to reason, to perceive, to discern and make judgments.
So myself, I have to constantly fight the absolutes, the part of my brain that picks up on patterns and categorizes everything, usually in a fatalistic way. “All, never, everyone, always.” Those are actually deceptions, lies. We cannot know “everyone.” We do not control “always.” So, He’s never going to change, it’s always going to be this way, they are all like that.
All lies.
Those assumptions actually stem from experience, from wisdom. Statistically speaking, 69.2% of the time, I’ve born witness to the fact that this cause will have this effect. The problem with that of course, is that we tend to embrace the bigger number as if it actually defined reality.
You see fatalism reflected in marriage a statistics a lot. The cultural narrative says, “half of all marriages end in divorce, so I’ve only got a 50-50 chance.” Except those numbers have never been true, it’s just a narrative, an urban legend. It also cannot differentiate between the people who have been married five times, versus someone who was married once, got divorced, and re-married for 45 years. That’s the problem with trying to apply math to people, people are a diverse, an ever-changing variable. In math a two is always going to be a “two”…..and then there’s George. George will not sit still long enough for us to properly plot him on or number line.
Language is so important and very revealing. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” We have the power of life and death in our tongues. We can speak one or the other over ourselves and others. I wrestle with this a lot and have to speak life over things, replace the fatalistic language with the Lord’s life affirming words. He spoke us into existence. We too can speak things into existence, we can a shape the narrative.
The Lord is just full of surprises. I think He looks at our statistics, our casting of lots, our pre-conceived notions, and just eats them for breakfast like a bowl of rice crispies.
So, never say never. Always. Everyone. All.
‘Applying math to people…..’ No can do. Love that observation.
The ‘math’ said that the Baptist should have lived to be 85 if he would have minded his own business and not went about preaching of this so-called Lamb of God. (apology here, no disrespect)
Math, as good as it is, does not possess the spirit of man, and this is where the shallow theories and unprovable opinions of godlessness die fast and hard. It makes no allowance for the intangibles. It cannot prove nor explain the lustrous fragrance of the lily of the valley. In the world of math, flowers have no life. (I have just crushed atheism with a single and fatal blow. 😉
Can this idea then be parlayed with your post? I think so. Many married people, according to the math, benefit from the odors of the flowers; they just have an issue with the Source.
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Hahaha, great post! Statistics can be so misleading. Reminds me of a meme that popped up a while ago: ‘ “Average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actually (sic) just statistical error. Average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave and eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted.’ Always watch out for the outliers. 😉
Jokes aside, you’re so right that often the first step to change is just “speaking it into existence.” We need to rewrite those internal scripts: ‘I am a failure, life is so unfair, God must hate me, I will never change’ before anything happens. Our minds are very powerful, they have the ability to even affect our biology. For example, people that die from a broken heart. That’s the psychological and the spiritual affecting the body. The body can be perfectly healthy, but if the mind is bent on destroying it, that is what will happen. The ironic thing is that as flawed as we are, we cannot lie to ourselves, so if you believe something negative about yourself and about others, you will actively set out to confirm that belief. If you believe in your heart that you are worthless, then you will set out to sabotage yourself, the so-called self-preservation instinct be damned. If you believe that people are always unkind and always terrible, then oddly enough you will surround yourself with those types of people. On the other hand, if you believe with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul that you are saved, that you are loved, that you are cherished by the Most High, then you will start to act in a way that aligns with that thinking. It’s inevitable.
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This is a great post IB. I wish I had time to read all that you write buddy.
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I think there’s a sort of confirmation bias that results from insular, self-selecting groups. Per time, most places become confirmation bias areas it’s just a “tribe” thing people do, and the internet isn’t much different.
And when all you see is one pattern of information that tends to be what you perceive.
These confirmation bias environments can cultivate some very weird, destructive, dark views of the world. Especially for people who don’t spend a lot of time in the real world interacting with actual nice human beings.
My mom for instance lives alone, watches reality crime shows and is convinced the world is a very very dark place.
Now…do those crimes happen? Yes, but in the real world most people don’t live next door to serial killers. Yet she is convinced they are everywhere, and it’s only her trusty door lock and a shot gun she’s never fired (and about 95 pounds bullets wouldn’t be the only thing flying if she ever used it).
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Ha! I’m sorry about you mom. She sounds so normal, so typical. I think I’ve met some just like her. Being isolated and consuming some form of media is just not healthy. I had an older guy consumed by fears of identity theft, the problem being he had no identity to fear losing. No money, no credit, no reputation. He’d just watch credit monitoring infomercials and get himself all agitated.
Tribalism and confirmation bias are kind of fascinating things to observe. As people, I think they are two biological urges we need to pay attention to, to question.
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Thanks.
Heh, on the bright side her eyesight is kind of poor (and she refuses to wear glasses) so she doesn’t read much.
That keeps her off the internet at least. 😆
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I struggle with this too, especially when it comes to the way I talk to myself. There’s a quote floating around the internet that says, “Life is 10% what happens to me, and 90% how I react to it” and I think that there is some truth in that. We really do shape our lives with the outflow of our heart. Applying scripture liberally helps. Thanks for the post. It’s thought provoking.
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Love that quote. 🙂
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Here’s my favorite quote, “Figures don’t lie, but lairs figure.” To prove my point here are some facts for you: “100% of all happy marriages last a lifetime.” “50% of all unhappy marriages end in divorce.” (Disclaimer: This survey was taken by all the white, males, who have been married 43 years and sit at my desk. Error rate is factored at 50%)
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LOL! Love that 🙂
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“Never say never”
Don’t tell me Bieber was right 😳
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