Are you racist? Of course not, right? (And why am I talking about racism? Isn’t this a post about picking good leaders? It is a post about picking good leaders, but stay with me. We’ll get there.)
That’s how I would have answered about myself, “No way! I am NOT racist.”
Then I took the Implicit Racial Bias test. I encourage you to take it too. Visit Project Implicit here. Once on the Project Implicit website, on the left-center side of the page look for the box titled “Project Implicit Social Attitudes.” In that box, you can participate as a guest by clicking the “Go” button at the bottom of the box. That will take you to a Preliminary Information page. At the conclusion of that page, you’ll click on “I wish to proceed,” and it will take you to a page with a variety of Implicit Bias tests. All of them have the acronym IAT, which stands for “Implicit Association Test”. Each of the IAT tests give you an opportunity to learn if you might have at least a bit of bias about all sorts of people, based on gender, race, religion, sexuality and more.
To learn if the test thinks you have some racial bias, click on “Race IAT”.
Though I would never have said that I am racist, the test suggested that I have at least a limited amount of implicit bias. It means I still have room to grow in overcoming how I view people. How about you? Take the test, or maybe take a bunch of the IATs to learn about yourself.
When you take an IAT you will likely hear that you are at least partially implicitly biased toward a group of people, meaning that you prefer, perhaps in some small way, people like you. What this reveals is that we humans tend to look at and value outward appearance.
As we continue our study through 1st Samuel, the prophet Samuel will discover that he majorly failed an Implicit Bias test, though it wasn’t one of the IATs on the Project Implicit website. If we had to give a title to the IAT that Samuel failed, we might call it the “King IAT.” Who would make a good king? Samuel thinks he knows exactly who would make a good king. But God tells Samuel, “You’re wrong, Samuel.”
Why is Samuel wrong? How did Samuel fail the King IAT? If you have a moment this week, read 1st Samuel 16, the chapter I’ll be blogging about this coming week. What we fill find is an important principle that God gives Samuel, a principle that applies significantly to our culture today.
Photo by Sable Flow on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 