Revering the Word
Psalm 59. Trusting God amidst the enemy of confirmation bias.
Good morning everyone. This morning we are in Psalm 59. It's very interesting as I preach through the Scriptures. Many times it seems as though God puts something in front of me that I'm dealing with in my own life, and then, you know, it's something that I'm teaching on addresses that issue. I also think that this psalm that we're going to deal with today speaks very relevantly about what's going on in America right now, as far as a political election. Right now, in America, we are about to have an election of President, and, you know, our television sets are just filled with ads, primarily negative ads, about either the presidential candidates, and each ad's, you know, attacks in the worst way possible, you know, what the other one looks like. And this is on, you know, social media, this is on news, this is on commercials. I mean, every time you turn around, all you're hearing about is how one person is attacking another. Well, I want to take in this psalm in David's situation. I'm going to take in the whole thing with you. We're going to go rather quickly through it just to take in and see the situation, and then I'll address how some of this is relevant for indeed the world today and even some situations that I'm dealing with today. But David, many times in his life, had enemies, he had people that were opposed to him, and even to the extreme signs that some people even wanted to kill him. And, you know, he turned to God to give him peace, and he trusted that God knew him, that God knew the truth, even though he had people against him, and he also trusted that ultimately God would protect him. Now, God did protect him, you know, and God had a plan for David to be king and for his son Solomon to take over his king. So there was a special hand, a provision upon David's life to protect him from the many enemies he had. One of them was King Saul, the king who came before him who wanted to kill him. So that's what's happening in David's life. Let's take it in. Deliver me from my enemies, oh my God. Set me securely on high away from those who rise up against me. Deliver me from those who do iniquity, and save me from men of bloodshed. For behold, they have set an ambush for my life. Fierce men launch an attack against me, not for my transgression nor for my sin, O Lord. For no guilt of mine, they have run and set themselves up against me. Arouse yourself to help me and see you, O Lord, God of hosts, the God of Israel. Awake to punish all the nations. Do not be gracious to any who are treacherous in iniquity. They return at evening, they howl like a dog, and go around the city. Behold, they belch forth with their mouth. Swords are in their lips. For they say, who hears? But you, O Lord, laugh at them. You scoff at all the nations. And I mean, David's trusting in God that despite everything that's being set about him, despite how enemies feel about him, who won't be objective, but only are simply going to, you know, they're on the attack. They're on the attack. They want to, they want to put someone down. And as a result, David's like, you know what, Lord, I'm just going to trust in you. I'm going to trust in what you have to say. Because one thing that you can surely trust is that you can't trust an enemy. When people are opposed to you, you can't trust what's coming out of their mouth because they're biased. And that's what we have in, you know, David's life. That's what we have in the election right now. I mean, you can make a judgment if you like, right, about who you think is a better president and as to why you might want to vote for someone. But one thing I wouldn't do is I wouldn't trust what an enemy has to say about the other side. You have to try to be objective and you have to try to look through an objective lens to make a decision. But, you know, if you're listening to someone's enemy talk about somebody else, you're not going to get an accurate statement or an accurate account because someone's trying to destroy someone else. So, therefore, that's the objective. Verse 9. Because of his strength, I will watch for you. For God is my stronghold. My God, in his loving kindness, will meet me there. God will let me look triumphantly upon my foes. Do not slay them or my people will forget. Scatter them by your power and bring them down. And it's interesting because David says that here that he doesn't want their lives taken. In fact, you know, David actually protects all his lives several times, but later on he is going to ask for them to be destroyed in this situation. O Lord our shield, on account of the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips, let them even be caught in their pride, on account of curses and lies which they utter. You know, it's interesting. I am totally a free speech proponent and I believe that that is something that is, you know, incredibly important for America. There is an effort upon government to censor people. It's happening around the world. Now, I don't know how to account for this, but how do you account for lies? How do you account for deceit? And this could even be, you know, political ads as an example. You know, what, although we have free speech and I think we should have it, what if someone like, for instance, let's just say this. And this isn't happening, you know, in my life or anyone's life, I know. But what if someone were to just come on right now and say, you know, you committed it, let's say it's a attack against you. And they're like, oh, you know what, I saw you commit adultery. Yeah, you're with another woman and you're having an affair. Let's say this is totally untrue, but this person is saying what they want, right? They're freely speaking. It is challenging in the area of free speech when people are just out to harm you or to state lies that they can say whatever they want. You know, and so I'm not really sure how to manage that problem, how you account for free speech and also how you account for truth. Because, you know, in our day and age today, there's different truths, isn't there? I mean, basically you have different parties that have their different truths, who's the arbitrate truth, right? Who's truth is it? And it seems as though, you know, everyone thinks what they're saying is true. So although I do think there should be an accountability on all of our behalfs to speak what's true, how do you govern that? You know, so it's very interesting, isn't it? And promoting free speech, which I endorse, how do you manage, you know, free speech in truth? And what David is saying here, God, you catch them in their pride. You will catch them in their curses and lies. And I think that's good. I think we want people to be caught in their lives. Destroy them in wrath. Destroy them that they may be no more. That's what I was saying, David. It's going to kind of change tunes from what he said earlier. That men may know that God rules and Jacob to the ends of the earth, Sela. They return at evening. They howl like a dog and go around the city. They wander about for food and growl if they are not satisfied. But as for me, I shall sing of your strength. Yes, I shall joyfully sing of your loving kindness in the morning. For you have been my stronghold and a refuge in the day of my distress. O my strength, I will sing praises to you. For God is my stronghold. The God who shows me loving kindness. Ultimately, David learned to just trust in God, trust in God for his reputation, trust in God for his life, trust in God, even though he had enemies that were against him. His life was built on a sure foundation. And that's where we need to be too. We need to just trust in God. In life there will be troubles, but take heart. Jesus has overcome the world. Blessed are you when people are against you and falsely say all kinds of things against you for great as your reward in heaven. You have to learn to just trust God even when the world is coming against you. That's why from a political standpoint, I wish that was the case that we were choosing between men and women of God to run our country who were trusting in the Lord in that way. That's not the case right now in my opinion. But nonetheless, I think it's a sad state of affairs in America. It's just so hard to get at the truth today. No matter what you're dealing with, we've had some flooding and hurricanes. There's all kinds of reports about what the government is not doing and doing and whether there's looting or not looting. Nowadays, anything is said all over social media and it's really hard to discern what's true and what's not true. Part of it is what your bias is. You're going to believe what you want to believe based on your bias. And that's one of the things I want to talk to you about today. I think it happened here in David's life. It's happened in our world politically. It also is even something that I am having experienced as well. And I want to take you to an article. Now, there's a lot of different places that you could go to discuss the very thing that I'm discussing today. I'm actually on a site WebMD. So it's a medical site. However, it's talking about a concept that it's not speaking of it from a medical sense in this regard. And it seemed like it's a good article and it's read to the point to talk about something that's called confirmation bias. So I'm going to read to you because I believe it'll do a good job just stating it the way it is. So confirmation bias is a psychological term for the human tendency to only seek out information that supports one position or idea. This causes you to have a bias towards your original position because if you only seek out information that supports one idea, you will only find information that supports that idea. Listen to that again. This causes you to have bias towards your original position because if you only seek out information that supports one idea, you will only find information that supports that idea. This is an opposition to doing more comprehensive research that would expose you to opposing ideas. All right, differing kinds of confirmation bias. There are a few different types of confirmation bias, biased research. This type of bias occurs when you do research and only look for information that supports your theory or hypothesis. In our modern area, search engines help us with this biased tendency. For example, if you search for a question with two variables such as is renting better than buying, you will be served search results that support renting a home over buying one. If you search the opposite question is buying better than renting, you will get results that support buying. Okay, that's one type, biased research. Another type is biased interpretation. This type of bias explains why you may tend to interpret data and information in a way that supports your opinion or hypothesis regardless of the position supported by the data. Studies show that people tend to stick to their beliefs even when presented with new data because they interpret this new data in a way that supports their original opinion. So basically, when people have an opinion, they will seek to always find that opinion instead of backing up to say, well, let me take an objective look at this. Let me look at it from a different perspective. Let me look at it as though maybe I could even be wrong, but that's not what happens. Instead, what people do is they have a bias and they're going to choose and sometimes even unknowingly to interpret everything according to their bias. This is a phenomenon called confirmation bias and it's very prevalent all the time in our world today. All right, biased memories. This is another type of confirmation bias. This refers to the biased recall of memories. Studies show that you remember events that support an idea you have more than ones that disprove it. Some experts believe your brain may even store information that agrees with your views more frequently than information that disproves them. This type of bias is part of why what maintains stereotypes. Even if an individual person doesn't fit every stereotype of their culture group, you might be more likely to remember things about them that support existing stereotypes. Experts have different theories about why people tend to have confirmation bias. Some people believe that confirmation bias helps you sort efficiently through a large amount of information you see every day because it's so hard to take everything in. So if you just simply come to your own bias, you can stop searching for other views and it's easier. So maybe that's why. It's just easier to process more information. Another reason it builds confidence. Other experts think that people seek out information to support their opinions to preserve or build their self-esteem. Finding information that supports their ideas makes them feel more confident. So let's say you did something wrong, but you don't want to believe you did something wrong. You want to believe that everyone else is doing something wrong. Then you will seek out information to preserve what you believe because it makes you feel more confident and you don't have to deal with your own problems. So that's another reason why people have confirmation bias. It reduces mental conflict. Another theory about why people use confirmation bias is that it reduces the risk of mental conflict, also called cognitive dissonance. When someone holds or has information about two opposite ideas, they may experience psychological stress. Confirmation bias may lower the risk of feeling the negative emotions from the stress. So like for instance, if you want to see your candidate from a rose colored glass, you just, I don't want to hear what I don't like about my candidate. I don't even really want to know because then it produces conflict in me about maybe who I'm going to support. Or maybe you're having a conflict with someone and you don't want to deal with your own situation. You don't want to deal with how you contributed. So therefore you just choose to keep seeing the bias that you have because if you chose to look at it from a more neutral standpoint and an objective standpoint, you'd have to deal with the fact that you're part of the problem and because you don't want to deal with that, then you just see everything from one lens. This is what happens and this is, I'm telling you, this is really prevalent in David's life. It's prevalent in the election. It's prevalent in our world and it's prevalent in many, many circumstances today. It's important to recognize confirmation bias, especially in this modern internet area where people are constantly faced with more information than ever before. Confirmation bias has the potential to shape your view of the world. It can affect everything from political views to hiring practices in workplaces. How to reduce the impact of confirmation bias. Read entire articles. Don't make a judgment about an article based on only one handle line. Analyze articles for reliable evidence to support the argument being made. If necessary, do further research. Consider researching opposing ideas. One thing I would look at is, and this is why sometimes I just want to shut off the news because if you're going to whatever news source you're going to, there's such significant confirmation bias that likely all you're going to hear from certain news sources, whether it's a conservative or a liberal, is you're just going to hear their bias. You can't really go to someone who's an enemy of someone else to hear the truth because they're biased and they don't want the truth. They want to destroy their enemy. You almost have to be willing to find, and this is what's really hard about our world today. It's hard to find an independent source. It's hard to find someone who doesn't have a confirmation bias. It's hard to get a neutral opinion. It's very, very challenging in our world today. That's what David was saying back to the Psalm. He's like, "These people just say lies about me. Their mouths are against me, but he just had a trust in God that God knew the truth, and sometimes that's going to be the where we need to be. We just need to trust God with our lives, trust God no matter what comes against you. Take a look at your own life, admit where you're wrong, and repent of where you're wrong, ask for forgiveness for where you're wrong, and then trust God with the rest because we live in a world, especially in this day and age. I think today, you know, we watch on television, people trying to destroy one another. Think about that. I'm not trying to exaggerate. I'm trying to tell you the truth right now. What are people trying to do all over the political climate today? They're trying to destroy one another. That's the objective. Every day, let me wake up and find out how I can stir up the negative pot about somebody else. Well, guess what? Because that's what we see all the time. All the time. That's what we just wake up. We watch that all the time. So what's becoming more true of us in our world today? We see that as appropriate. We see is it appropriate is to just simply try to destroy an enemy and say whatever we can to make someone else look bad. I'm just saying that's becoming a natural phenomenon of what's going on in our world today. And it's been on display by our presidential candidates and by our government and by people in politics. And as a result, you know, we're becoming more like that. I was somewhat encouraged, you know, we'll say somewhat. We had a vice president political debate and I'm trying to think of what the term is. But there actually was some civility. Now, they pointed out where they're different. They pointed out, you know, what each other are doing wrong. But there was at least some effort to be civil and, you know, I appreciate that. I think we need more civility. We need more objectivity. We need more fairness and we need to be less quick to accuse one another. One another from our own confirmation biases. So is that going to get better though? We're dealing with the mankind who is filled with flesh. And, you know, David isn't really in his Psalm here in 59 as I close thinking that the world is going to change and that people are going to change. Instead, what he says is, you know what, he says this. And this is this, you know, even though we'd love to see the world change, I think this is what we need to do. But as for me, I shall sing of your strength. Yes, I shall joyfully sing of your loving kindness in the morning for you have been my stronghold and a refuge in the day of my distress. All my strength I will sing praises to you for my God is my stronghold, the God who shows me loving kindness. Ultimately, our peace and our trust is in the Lord. Hallelujah and God bless you all. you all.