Ignoring our perceptions long enough to face some facts

​A couple of days ago, I shared the sermon Andy Stanley delivered to North Point Community Church Sunday. I said it was the most powerful sermon I'd ever heard. I'll include a link to it in the comment section. I'm spending this week processing some of the things Andy said.

One of the things his sermon drove home to me is just how much our lives are shaped by perception. And further, how much we purposefully choose to hang out with people groups and media sources and churches and neighbors that align with our preconceived notions of reality.

We are not creatures who willfully seek out truth, we are creatures who comfortably get drawn into places of comfort.

When I was running last night I got to thinking about that a lot. I thought about it first through the context of the actual running journey I am on.

Six years ago, I wasn't a runner. I was actually dead against running. Most of it, I think, was because I was against runners themselves. I'd seen enough of their bumper stickers and fancy running outfits and pictures of their awards and medals to know they were all arrogant; I didn't want anything to do with them.

Runners were a bunch of elitists. They weren't inviting me into their little club, and I sure wasn't asking to join.

Through some tragic circumstances, though, I got invited to join a run one day. And I got to know a bunch of runners. For the last six years since then, I've come to know runners as one of the most supportive, accepting, community building and loving groups of people I've ever met. My perceptions about a group of people couldn't have been more wrong.

Because I hung out with and exercised with people who had similar perceptions of runners as me, I was dismissing a lot of facts about them I was never going to discover as I clung to places of comfort.

Perceptions are shallow. They lead to shallow choices in life. But they can also lead to significant consequences in our lives and in the lives of the people around us.

Was my life or anyone else's life destroyed because I wasn't a runner? No. I was sure missing out on an opportunity, though. More than that, the same perception-based decision making I was making about runners is the same type of decision making I - and maybe we - use with people who are a different color than us.

One of the challenging things Andy Stanley said in his sermon is that white people fear the black man. Wow - that's sort of throwing something out there isn't it, Andy? He went on to say most people fear them without ever having had a fearful experience with a black man. In other words, he was suggesting our fear is based on perception and not fact.

When I heard that I did what I do when I first hear a suggestion like that. I denied it. You, Andy Stanley, have NO way of knowing what I do and do not fear!

Then, as I was running - alone - without anyone to support my perceptions of myself - I had to meet myself in the messy middle. Because we do, we have to meet ourselves in the messy middle before we can go meet anyone else there. It does us no good to pursue the facts of anyone else's life until we fully know the facts of our own.

So here are some messy facts in my life. I am not personally close to a single black man. I know a few black men - call them friends - but I don't know the story of their lives - their longings and fears and experiences. I know a couple of black men well enough to deeply respect them and admire them. How many black men, though, are on my speed dial? How many black men are at the top of the call list for anything in my life?

For helping me out. For hanging out together. For serving the community together. For doing anything at all arm in arm.

The answer to those questions are the facts in my life, not my perceptions. When Andy Stanley says I don't have black people in my life because I fear them, my perception is he is wrong. My fact, however, is I don't have any black men in my life. How do you explain that Keith - Andy says it's fear, what is your explanation?

I don't know, I just know it means whenever I deny the struggles black men are saying they have faced for decades and centuries, I'm doing so based on my perceptions, not on any facts. The facts in my messy middle say I'm not equipped to deny the black man's stories and experiences; I've spent my life comfortably floating toward people who haven't had any of their experiences. I've hung out with people who also don't have black men on their speed dials.

I've spent my life floating towards conversations on the comfortable fringes of life: news channels that give me comfortable news, friends who comfortably agree with the things I say, a church that fits neatly into my views of God and what that God asks of me, a neighborhood that fits comfortably into my ideas of safety and protection.

I've spent my life floating toward people and places and things that assure me my perceptions of the world are right. Because let's face it, that's much easier than intentionally going toward the messy facts that might just suggest I've had it all wrong.

I'm grateful I was sort of forced into discovering some facts about runners that weren't in line with my perceptions of them. Running has changed my life.

It's probably time I start pursuing some even deeper facts in my life. For my sake and for the sake of the greater human race.