Why Your Brain Judges People Before You Think

One thing I know is I was blind, but now I see.

Last weekend, I had the great opportunity to give a parish retreat,
to a parish in Los Angeles, called St. John Fisher.
It is in Rancho Palos Verdes, a neighborhood that makes Los Altos
look like a poor neighborhood.
It is quite a beautiful, magnificent church,
and a wonderful community.

The three sessions were Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night.
For the first session, Sunday night, a huge crowd gathered,
over 350 people.
But about 100 of those were teenagers, high schoolers.
I was really impressed until I heard they had to be there.
It is part of the confirmation program.

They all sat in one section on their own,
and I could see them talking, and I thought,
Oh, this is going to be one of those nights.
They are just going to talk; they are not going to listen.
I had already prejudged them.
They are here only to check a Confirmation requirement.

You can imagine the shame I felt
when the next night, 75 of them returned of their own free will.
And the night after that, they came again,
some of them are still in their sports gear from school.
They showed up because they wanted to!  In our dialogue sessions, they were actively engaged,
and they rightfully made me feel guilty about my prejudgment.
I suspect I am not the only one who prejudges.

Whether it is because we know what young people are like,
or what old people are like,
or because of the color of their skin,
or their accent, or their community.
LGBTQ, married, divorced, immigrant, you name the list.
We put people into categories, and we prejudge them.

Now, in one sense, we are not bad people.
We are just a little blind when we do that.
We do not do it intentionally, but our brains work that way.

We have to understand‚ how our brains have evolved over the years.
Thousands of years ago, on the savanna,
the brain reserved its energy for fight or flight,
and so, everything else was categorized very quickly.
The brain developed categorization and generalizations
So it could save its power for the present danger.
The unfortunate part is we still do that categorization today, and we use very little of the power of the brain!

Brian McLaren in his podcast and book, Learning How to See,  tells us how we have inherited biases
over the evolution of the human species.
He categorized them into seven C’s,
and one of the most prevalent for us today
is the Confirmation bias.

What we do is see somebody, categorize them
by our predisposed categories,
and then every piece of data just confirms it.
You know the way kids are, they are not going to listen.
Or older people, well, they are a little grouchy,
that is just the way they are.

Once we acknowledge this confirmation bias,
it has a little less power over us.
But the first thing we have to do is to acknowledge it,
that this is inherent within all of us.
This has been around for two thousand years and
we hear it in today's readings.

In the first reading, Samuel comes to anoint the new king.
Jesse presents all seven of his handsome and impressive sons,
but does not even think to bring the youngest, David,
who is out working in the field.
He could not possibly have any value.
He is the smallest, the youngest, the least impressive.
And yet Samuel says, he is the future king.
And God reminds us:
It is not as humans see but as God sees. For God sees into the heart.

Then in today's gospel, we have the beautiful, layered story
of the man born blind.
John loves to have layers to his gospel.
The man who is born blind actually sees Jesus for who he is.
He calls him a prophet and asks him to heal him.

And then there is the other arc:
the Pharisees and the religious leaders who can physically see,
but are completely blind to who is before them.
They do not see the Messiah who is right in front of them.
They have all their categories:
you were born blind because you were sinful.
You are a sinner. He is a sinner.
Categorized, pushed away,
so they do not have to deal with reality.

The challenge for us is to say, as that song we sung says:
Lord, I want to see.
Open my eyes.
Open the eyes of my heart, so that I can see.

But first, we have to start by acknowledging that we are actually blind.
We are blind in so many more ways than we think we are.
Not just categories of youth and old;
it is gender, immigrant versus native-born, LGBTQ,
and yes, we even do it with our politics.
If you are on this side or that side,
then I am just blind to everything you have to say.
You are not with me, so you are against me.

We need help to acknowledge our blindness,
so that we can allow the Lord to help us see anew.
Because when we truly see others and really hear their story,
we realize there is not much difference between them and us.
But we have to see and hear them first.
And sometimes we need an aid to do that.

That is what Lent gives us.
The three pillars of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving
help us to do this metanoia, to turn back,
to move, as the letter to the Ephesians says,
from darkness into light,
to open our eyes and to see again.

I want to give you a personal example.
I now wear hearing aids, for the last year or more.
Without them, I literally cannot hear certain things
like the birds.
When I go out walking, I put on my hearing aids
just so that I can hear the birds.
Without them, I do not hear them at all.

This morning, I accidentally went out without them.
The birds were there, as they are every morning.
I knew they were there
but I could neither see them nor hear them.
I could only hear the crows.

Now, we have lots of crows in our society, don't we?
They all want to be heard, and we do hear them.
And it is usually not a very gentle voice.
But God's voice is gentler, a beautiful sound,
and we need to hear at that higher frequency.
I need hearing aids.
I literally cannot hear without them.

The Church lends us some hearing aids for this season.
They are called prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
But we have to take them and put them on.
When we do that, we begin to hear and see
those we normally would not see.
Here is the challenge I have for you:
let us really listen to one of their stories.
Whoever they are that we have pushed to the side.

Whether it be the immigrants, the LGBTQ community,
the married and divorced, the homeless.
Whatever category we have pushed furthest away
and genuinely see them.
Look for one of their stories, from their own voice,
not what someone else says about them.
Not one of the crows, but their own voice.
Read it. Listen to it.

I promise you, once you hear somebody's story,
you will realize there is not much difference between them and us.
We are all human beings trying to just get along,
trying to survive, trying to be good people.
That is what the vast majority of people are.

But that is what God wants us to do,
He wants us to see.
And so today, perhaps our prayer can simply be that:
Lord, open the eyes of my heart,
because I want to see.

One thing I know is I was blind, but now I see.