We’re all formed into unique individuals by our own personal experiences. Those experiences taint, or rather color, the way we perceive the world around us,. In doing so they remove the ability to correctly perceive reality. That’s one of the reasons eye-witness testimony is so terrible. Your brain will fill in missing details with what it expects they should be rather than what they are.

This translates into relationships and beliefs as well. We think a certain person likes or dislikes us and so we translate their actions and words through that perception filter. We think a certain relationship is good or bad and it goes through the same process.

Maybe something in the Bible doesn’t make sense or align with a tradition you’ve been taught. When it collides with your perceptions of how things ought to be, it gets filtered.

This all occurs because there is entirely too much information available to us. Our minds can’t process the information so we tend to, unknowingly, seize the information that is comfortable and easily fits our views while we reject (filter out) those ideas that do not align with our idea of what reality is. Entertaining those particular bits of information would be too difficult. Especially as we get older and more set in our ways. While age does indeed bring wisdom, it should not bring the inability to introspectively consider the fact that maybe you got it wrong. For a long time.

So many things to choose from. There are so many opportunities that come to us during the day which give us the chance to grow. They give us the chance to experience a new understanding. They might come as something someone says. They might come in something you read online. Maybe you’re driving down the road and see a sign or a bumper sticker that could challenge your views.

These are chances to grow. Hopefully we are rarely wrong. Sometimes we grow by solidifying our position based on more information. Sometimes we grow by learning new ways to counter the worlds culture. Sometimes, once in a while, we might grow by coming to the realization that in our pride we’ve been rejecting God’s actual truth for so many years based on an errant teaching or tradition.