Putin can’t see the writing on the wall
Events in Ukraine are astonishing. That one sovereign nation would attack another, that Russia appears so inept, that Ukraine is gaining the upper hand, and that Putin sticks with the invasion, despite the huge losses and set-backs – you would never have guessed it.
Trump and his supporters were no different. Rather than believe the clear outcomes of the election, Trump and Co would rather hold to their original beliefs, ignore the evidence, and invent a conspiracy theory to explain away what happened.
It’s easy for us to brand Trump and Putin as narcissists, who cannot help but see things from their own selfish perspective. Are we ordinary people all that different?
Once our minds have decided that a certain way of thinking is true, we develop a neural pathway. In our mind, we join the dots in a particular way, which creates a certain picture. We then selectively recall the past, notice things in the present, and interpret events in ways that reinforce the picture we already have. All of this strengthens the neural pathway. It becomes assumed. It is the default, almost unquestionable.
I see ordinary people do this regularly. He is just like this…. She does this because…. With the help of others, occasionally I become aware I do this. And the more intelligent we are, we can stop it – No! The more we use our intelligence we construct interpretations that match our existing opinions.
What makes this worse at the moment, is that social media facilitates us finding networks of people who think like us, so we all reinforce each other’s views. At times I fear the modern church is like this. We join churches that match our belief systems, not challenge them.
The proverb “iron sharpens iron” (Prov 27:17) highlights that the process of sharpening is interpersonal, involving friction and sparks. At times we need to be challenged, or disrupted, in order to give up our mistaken beliefs. Avoiding difficult conversations is not always the godly thing to do.
By Rev. David Rietveld
