End the Pep Rally, Gain Perspective

An article by Matt    No Comments

This week I have been thinking a good bit about how important different perspectives have been to the journey that God has brought me on.  Much of this has to do with a segment of On The Media that spoke about echo chambers, and how we tend to surround ourselves with voices and viewpoints that are similar to our own.  I often wonder how much harm we unintentionally do to ourselves by limiting the sphere of those who influence our lives to being made of people who hold to beliefs, habits, and lifestyles that are similar to our own.

One of the trends that has concerned me the most over the past twenty years or so has been the rise of political talk radio and cable “news” networks.  These programs and networks tend to be nothing more than pep rally’s for the political party of choice, promoting the agenda and ideals of whichever movement, and reinforcing the audience’s beliefs that their views are THE only way to save America from the evils of the other side.  This constant encouragement causes the political conversation in this country to be ever more strident, and undermines the ability to have true, meaningful conversations about the direction of the country.

I wish that I could say that the church was immune to such insular thinking, but I think that we all know better.  We often allow ourselves to get caught up in battles over non-essentials and power struggles… encouraged to raise the stakes by the cheerleaders in our own camp.  Everywhere we look, we seem to see more and more people agreeing with us.  When we search for something on Google, the top result is from a point of view that agrees with us… so we must be right!  Or are we?

Recently, Google and Bing have started to use your social network to influence your search results.  Christopher Penn explains some of the marketing ramifications of this change on his blog, but what concerns me the most is how limiting this will be to those of us who are genuinely interested in researching a topic from all sides, instead of just one perspective.  As our social network continues to grow fuller of people who think and act as we do, what perspectives are we missing out on, and what voices are we not hearing from in our attempt to truly understand a topic with the depth that only comes from wrestling through all sides of an issue?

Jesus calls us to be salt and light to this world in which we live.  If our understanding of this world is informed only by those who agree with us… how will we ever be able to truly influence the world around us for Christ?

How are YOU working to ensure that you are exposed to a diversity of of perspective?