Negative Bias and Advent 1


 “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.  At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Luke 21: 25-28

“Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My”.  The Wizard of Oz.

It’s been a rough week for all of us Canadians, eh!  (Please note the use of ‘eh’.  Entirely appropriate, and I could totally hear it in my head).  We’ve seen both of our Coasts be deluged by rain and then slide away in mudslides.  Lives have been lost, including people we know and love.  Whole communities are cut off and there is no relief in sight.  At the same time there has been another huge protest on Wet’suwet’en territory that has resulted in alarming police action against peaceful protestors defending their own territory, and the media (what happened to the Free Press?).  Then, yesterday, the first news of a new, incredibly virulent variant of Covid-19 started appearing; resulting in the UK declaring a travel ban against some South African countries, and Ford calling for the same ban here in Canada.  Our Covid infection rates today in Ontario have soared above 900, the stock market is already showing a rocky response to the new Covid variant, and store shelves in BC are heralding supply-chain difficulties.  Russia is building up a military presence on the border with Ukraine, Daycare workers in Quebec are staring down the barrel of a strike, and there has been a huge spike in cyberattacks; causing a great deal of anxiety about the security of our private information.

And in the middle of all of this we are preparing for Advent 1.  The Sunday where we talk about Hope.

Hope in the middle of climate, economic, and infection disaster?  How can we even begin to consider those things?  We need to shore up our defenses, batten down our hatches, ready our fall-out shelters and at least make sure that we have enough toilet paper to get us to 2023 – Don’t we?

Where is hope, in the middle of all of this?

There’s a concept in psychology that is called ‘negative bias’.  It’s the unfortunate quality of human behaviour where we have this tendency to remember traumatic experiences better than positive ones, recall insults better than praise, react more strongly to negative stimuli, think about negative things more frequently than positive ones, AND respond more strongly to negative events than to equally positive ones. It explains things like why its so hard to get over past traumatic events, and why in almost every interaction, we’ll remember the negative things about it over the positive.  Even if the interaction has been mostly positive, and even if we’ve been in therapy for decades to deal with traumas.

And you see, the thing is, that trauma and negative things are pretty much universal.  One of the qualities about being human is that life just happens to us; both the bad and the good.  Covid and climate change really show the universality of trauma.  I know that there are some of us who have been handed a LOT more than their fair share of life’s difficulties; and I have huge respect for those of have shown resilience in the face of that – but truthfully, all of us, even the most faithful of us, have to deal with trauma.

Our faith, our understanding of God, the strength of our community and even the coping skills that we have been blessed with does not exempt us from the experience of trauma.  In fact, one of my Old Testament professors at Queen’s told us that much of the writings that we consider sacred, were the Israelites trying to make sense of the trauma of the Exile.  Trauma since the beginning.  Trauma since the time we were evicted from Eden.

And so what do we do, as people of Faith, as we see our world crumbling around us in disaster?  What do we do when all we can see in front of us is more difficulty – more oppression – more loss?

Well – here’s where we go to our faith stories, right?  If the Old Testament is trauma literature, then the New Testament is the continuation or fulfillment of this literature.  Heaven knows that our faith ancestors knew trauma!  And so what does Jesus tell us to do when we are staring in the face of disaster?

He says:

“Stand up”. “Lift up your heads”.  “Your redemption is near”.

Take a moment and read that again.  “Stand up”. “Lift up your heads”. “Your redemption is near”.

So – to give you the Lynne Gardiner version of this scripture:  “Get off of Twitter and CBC news.  Look up from your computers and look for hope”.

I’m thinking that we need to consciously shift our focus from the news, to the places where we see redemption.  The places where we see our world working together to heal, to love and to grow.  To places where we see God in action and Good News given to a world that is being worn down by the bad.

Its gonna be a tough discipline, right?  Because we know that our natural tendency is to only see the negative; but we are called as Christians to instead to look up from that, and look towards redemption.  So I hope you’ll join me in looking for hope; looking for redemption; and looking for God.

Blessings today and remember you are Loved.

~Rev. Lynne

(P.S. Some of my info on ‘negative bias’ came from this website: https://www.verywellmind.com/negative-bias-4589618 – just in case you want to read more.  It was something I taught when I was teaching intro Psych at St. Lawrence)

(P.P.S.  The pics today are of our incredible Nativity scene.  They are last years pictures because it was dark when I went out this year to take the pics for this blog and Jim hadn’t found a long enough extension cord to plug the lights in, but they look pretty much the  same.  Aren’t they lovely?  My thanks to Jim Hamon for making them for us!  I also think that Jack Johnson may have taken these pics.  They aren’t mine, anyway).


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