John 8:12

December 22, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts at 15:45 in the audio file.

Or, Seeing the World in The Light of the World

My intention this morning is to encourage you that Christ is always the answer, and that when you see the world in His light, you see the world the right way. This includes Christmas.

I surprised myself a few days ago when I was looking at a list of sermons I’ve preached on, or right before, Christmas day since TEC began. This makes the ninth time that I’ve preached a Christmas sermon, though twice my message combined the coming of Christ with the next passage in a book study (1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 13). I’ve been told by a member that if I did not preach a Christmas sermon near Christmas that he would walk out, and I’ve also been told by a member that if I did preach a Christmas sermon that he would walk out. That doesn’t leave a lot of room to work.

As one of the shepherds, and for that matter also as one of the sheep in the flock, I have grown to think that the typical Christian Christmas celebrations, ones that I grew up seeing around me, are often superficial and sentimental, and also that the typical Christian Christmas humbugging as a response to typical Christmas celebrations are also, ironically, superficial and sour. That not more helpful.

What to do? What do we need? As a shepherd of this flock, with the responsibility to feed and protect and lead, how can I help get you ready for not messing it up, either way? How can I help you be ready to make it so that your kids grow up wanting Christmas to be like you want Christmas to be?

I stated my answer at the start. I want to encourage you that Christ is always the answer. What we celebrate at this time of year is crucial not just for thinking about Christian holidays or family traditions but for thinking about our view of the world and mankind as part of it.

In making this case I will admit that I am biased. To be biased is to be bent in a certain direction, inclined to have a certain outlook. A biased person tends to expect certain answers to questions, to have favorites. Bias and prejudice are bad words in our current culture, and they have come to carry a kind of baggage with them. But it is biased to say that having a bias is always wrong. That is blind.

We need to ask more questions: Biased about what? Biased in what way? I am commanded by God to be biased in my loves, for example, with an impulse to love my wife by default more than any other woman. That’s biased about the right thing. If my bias causes me to punch other men’s wives, then I’d be holding by bias wrongly. When we think about what we want for a person in the womb or a person in the emergency room, our bias should be toward wanting life.

A wise person is biased towards wisdom, which is part of what makes him wise. A thankful person is biased toward gratitude, which is part of what makes him fun to give gifts to. More on this in a bit.

One of the dangers is that we are often biased for the wrong things, and we go searching for, or only admit to, the evidence that backs up what we already thought. There is a fancy name for it called “confirmation bias.” If I only read commentaries on the book of Revelation that I knew I would agree with, or read commentaries with different views but took a black Sharpie to their arguments while calling their conclusions stupid, that would make me stupid. We shouldn’t want to be stupid.

But, I’ve labored in this introduction to ask, what if your bias is right? What if you’re good at finding confirmation for your bias because there’s going to be a lot of confirmation for truth? How will you know if your bias needs to be corrected or if your bias should be confirmed? Christ is always the answer.

Correction Bias at Christmas

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