Stirring biases in students

VIEWPOINT

Being biased implies prejudice or having a predetermined mind or a strong tilt in one direction. Biases surface, sometimes painfully, in attitudes towards race, skin colour, sexual orientation, beauty or ugliness, homelessness, wealth and much more. So it's ironic that chapels have sought to stir biases in us-to have us think on an angle, a slant, with an orientation or in a particular direction. They have done so because the world we live in is not neutral or objective. Here are three biases to which chapels have spoken at Rockway this year.

Bias 1: If our first and highest priority is "me," our needs will be met, our goals achieved and we will be happy.

In response, chapels have asked, "Will you live with gratitude, a word rooted in the word grace?" Grace is about being given a gift that we haven't earned, about delighting in the undeserved. "Will you live with gratitude?" cuts to the heart of the "self" bias in our culture, because we can't be both grateful and self-centred.

Gratitude celebrates what we've been given, but have neither earned nor have a right to: our lives, healthy minds, being born in this part of our world, having a future, knowing God's love for us. These are gifts we didn't earn. That's grace.

Our chapel bias has said if we live gratefully we will also live generously for others. Will you live with gratitude?

Bias 2: Since 9/11 a bias has emerged about people who look or dress differently, believe differently than we do, or live in certain parts of our world.

This bias says we should fear such people and guard against them with a high wall or simplistic slogans. This year, the United States is going to spend $5 billion in support of HIV/AIDS relief in Africa. That's a lot of money! But this year the U.S. will also spend $530 billion dollars on guns, tanks and planes-in the name of building a wall to protect their way of life and to fight "bad guys" who might threaten them. The $5 billion for relief is important-but to spend 100 times that amount on the military! Many other nations are not so different-just on a much smaller scale. Something is deeply wrong with this bias. Fear of the "other" hurts us. And in response our chapels have asked, "Will you welcome your neighbour?"

Bias 3: We are embedded in a world claiming that technology and science will solve the issues we face.

Don't get me wrong, their power is incredible and necessary. But this bias leaves little room to see ourselves through windows of faith and mystery, through the love and presence of God, or with language that opens alternative assumptions about who we are and why we're here. That's sad because many of our challenges are deeper than those with which science can deal.

After the Virginia Tech massacre, an e-mail began circulating that read in part: "The paradox of our time is that we have wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; ... more conveniences but less time; more technology and knowledge than ever before but less wisdom and judgment; more medicine but less wellness; ... we've conquered outer space but not inner space; we've split the atom but not our prejudice.... We live in a time... when technology can bring this e-mail to you and a time when you can choose either to make a difference or just hit 'delete."'

In response to the science and technology bias, chapels have asked, "Will you open yourself to a journey of faith-to God-so that the deepest parts of who you are can be touched and changed?" That question goes against a bias that faith is for people who don't think, who are narrow in their viewpoints, who are not open to life. In truth, if there's anything our world needs, it's young people of faith opening themselves to God's way of love.

Chapels have claimed that the biases of our culture-self, fear, the sufficiency of science and technology-are inadequate. Instead, we have spoken of the importance of living with gratitude, welcoming our neighbour and journeying in faith. These are biased convictions which open us to life and to not hitting "delete."

[Sidebar]

Will you open yourself to o journey of faith-to God-so that the deepest ports of who you are can be touched and changed?

[Author Affiliation]

Terry Schellenberg is principal of Rockway Mennonite Collegiate, Kitchener, Ont. This article is adapted from Rockway's closing chapel on June 14, 2007, and was originally printed in a longer format in Rockway Reflection Summer 2007 issue.