Being Wrong is The Right Way to Grow…
September 2022, I was not only excited about starting school, but I was pretty sure and excited about my NPO. Even though I knew I would be working on my NPO I was thankful it was pretty much set and had to be tweaked a little. After two months of school, I was getting some doubts about my set-in stone NPO. Six months later, I’m even more doubtful than ever. A huge reason for my doubt is all the required reading that is challenging my way of thinking, believing and responding. At this time my NPO has developed into, “Men who have sexual brokenness challenges desperately need help from the church to heal.” After reading “Why We’re Wrong about Nearly Everything,” by Bobby Duffy, I am questioning if my NPO should be something entirely different. As I read the book, I actually questioned myself,
1. How do I REALLY know men are having sexual brokenness challenges?
2. Who are these men (young, middle aged, elderly, teenagers)?
3. What is a sexual brokenness challenge?
4. Are men really desperate about needing help or is that just my belief?
5. What is the Church ACTUALLY doing to help men?
6. How can I find out what the Church is doing? Should I narrow down my research to just my church or community or denomination?
7. What does it mean to heal and how do I know if the Church is helping in this area?
8. How in the world did I go from certainty to frazzled about my NPO in 6 months?
In his book Duffy describes the way people misperceive social realities, from teen pregnancy to crime, obesity, and immigration. His studies involved more than 100,000 interviews on many issues in 40 nations. He demonstrates, through solid data, that we only hear what we want to hear. In England, asked what percentage of British teens gave birth every year, people guessed 19% (correct answer: 1.4%). In France, people thought Muslims were 31% of the population (reality: 8%). In the U.S., people guessed immigrants make up 33% of the population (reality: 14%). And so on.[1] “Our misperceptions are wide, deep, and long-standing,” [2], writes the author. Complex forces shape beliefs, most notably our emotional responses, which are key to our perception of reality. Driven by “preexisting beliefs and wishful thinking,” our delusions are formed by “hardwired” biases and a tendency to seek information that reinforces our views. The latter includes news media whose penchant for negative stories leads many to think “everything is getting worse.” “We not only have a built-in bias towards focusing on the vivid and threatening, but we also tend to think things were better in the past, and therefore are worse now,” [3], writes Duffy. As a result, we are often “very wrong” about global trends. The author depressingly notes that it is “difficult to change people’s delusions simply by giving them more information.” [4]. There is no magic formula for encouraging more accurate perceptions, he writes, increased skepticism and awareness of our emotional thinking can help.
Now, I’m looking inward to check my preexisting beliefs, wishful thinking, hardwired biases, and my emotional thinking. Without a doubt I strongly believe my NPO has biases. In September, I would not have agreed to any bias. Now I’m asking, “How do I know the Church is not helping men to heal? Just because Christian men struggle to get help does not mean the Church is at fault. “Is there something else that correlates with both? This something else is called a confounding variable.” [5]. So, what am I missing in my NPO? Am I just assuming the Church is failing in this area, which is a bias. Chivers and Chivers said, “samples can be biased, the most obvious is leading questions.” [6]. All my leading questions and NPO were biased, and I never saw it. But who knows, maybe my NPO will end of similar to the one I have now but if it does, it will be after much scrutiny. I remember when Poole wrote, “You will never be ‘finished’, so future proofing your leadership means taking charge of your learning as an on-going activity.” [7]. I will continue to remind myself of this, even when I think I’m done with my NPO or have the ‘right’ wording or concept.
Finally, I saw through Duffy’s book that my NPO has lots of emotion even though there are no emotionally charged words in it. “If our emotional reactions are part of the reason we exaggerate or downplay reality, it makes sense that our delusions may relate to how emotionally expressive we are.” [8]. I always read my NPO with such emotion because the Church should care for those who are broken. That’s a no-brainer but not all will look at my NPO with the same emotion and now I realized that.
[1] Bobby Duffy, Why We’re Wrong about Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding, First US edition (New York: Basic Books, 2019). P.25,27,29.
[2] Ibid, Duffy P. 7.
[3] Ibid, Duffy, P. 29.
[4] Ibid, Duffy, P. 43.
[5] Tom Chivers and David Chivers, How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Stats in the News (and Knowing when to Trust Them). (Great Britain: Orion Books, 2021). P. 47.
[6] Ibid, Chivers and Chivers, P. 32.
[7] Eve Poole, Leadersmithing: Revealing the Trade Secrets of Leadership. (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), P. 13.
[8] Bobby Duffy, Why We’re Wrong about Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding, First US edition (New York: Basic Books, 2019). P. 225.
About the Author
Todd E Henley
Todd is an avid cyclist who loves watching NASCAR, photography, and playing Madden football. He is addicted to reading, eating fruits and vegetables, and drinking H2O. His passion is talking about trauma, epigenetics, chromosomes, and the brain. He has been blessed with a sensationally sweet wife and four fun creative children (one of which resides in heaven). In his free time he teaches at Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary and is the Founder/Executive Director of Restore Counseling Center.2 responses to “Being Wrong is The Right Way to Grow…”
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Hi Todd,
Loved your post. Yes, men are sexually broken. So are women.
It is like War and Refugees (harkening back to my NPO), I think it is one of those things identified in the bible because God knows we are going to have to deal with until He comes again.
For my NPO I reformatted the problem, while there is a bunch of words devoted to describing the US and world problem of refugees, the root cause is WAR and I have no solution for that.
My solution was to give the church a different TOOL that might help ease the integration of immigration. Perhaps your NPO might fall along those lines.
Nice post..shalom…Russ
Hi Todd,
I appreciate your post and how you are managing your new questions and biases which are helping you form your project. I wish you could meet my husband! What you are describing is the bulk of his work as a counseling psychologist and similar to his dissertation. You might find his dissertation interesting. God, the church, and sexual healing touch his heart as well. I look forward to hearing more as your NPO progresses. The work you are doing and the questions you are asking are greatly needed!