I'm back blogging on Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational. This chapter is called "The Effect of Expectations." Again, he did alot of experiments trying to determine how a person's expectation of a product or idea affected how they actually felt about it. From coffee to beer to colas (c.f., the Pepsi taste challenges), the results were the same. . . "When we believe beforehand that something will be good, therefore, it generally will be good-- and when we think it will be bad it will be (sic) bad" (Areily, 160). Seems simple enough. A Bears fan and a Cowboys fan can watch the same game and come to two completely different views on a single play. Was the reciever in-bounds or out? Did his knee touch the ground before the ball came out or not? One fan saw one thing, the other expects and sees a different result. It's amazing how team-loyalties affect our eyesight.
The point is, prior assumptions and expectations affect the way we make decisions, and they affect the way we actually experience those decisions. So, consider Biblical interpretation and the broad range of theological traditions that have created by the power of expectations: two people looking at the same Biblical text but coming to two different conclusions about the nature of God. Why does that happen? Because in many cases, the Biblical Interpreter has already made the decision about the text and his/her theology based on experience, personal history, or ecclesiological history before even reading the text. It still happens today.
This seemsto be the point of the "emerging church movement". . . to open dialogue about different theological ideas and not be so quick to form conclusions. But let's be real! Emergent authors are just as guilty of preexisting asssumptions in their writings as anyone! Emergent Village treats the Reformed Theological tradition like a John McArthur caricature on crack, as if what's wrong with churches in America today is Calvinism. I just don't get it. It's fine to disagree with and criticize Reformed Theology, but for a movement that boasts open dialogue, there seems to be very little interest to have that conversation with Christians trying to maintain a high view of God's sovereignty. The point is, we all have to recognize our unobjective, irrational, and convoluted biases, the power of our predetermined expectations in theology, and consider, on some issues, that we may simply be reading and interpreting it wrong. Does that mean we simply acquiesce and refuse to make theological decisions (as some emergent writers suggest)? NO! It just means that we should be humble enough to admit that there are several ways of looking at a single Biblical text or theological issue.
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