By Evbestie - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56883490
by Pastor Paul Dugan
An “echo chamber” is a situation in which my beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a closed system insulated from rebuttal (oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com). By participating in an echo chamber, I am able to seek out information that reinforces and confirms my existing biases. Echo chambers are partially a product of the digital revolution. Major online media outlets have established personalized algorithms intended to cater specific information to my online feed. Thus, if I do not intentionally seek out a wider perspective, all my digital content is curated by impersonal marketing tools designed to curate my attention and keep me clicking away in my epistemological tunnel. Echo chambers have had a significant part both in the growing polarization of American culture, and in the growing tribalization of the contemporary Christian church in America.
Echo chambers are insidious. Like a fish in water, I swim in my own chamber of cultural bias, and I can’t see it. I don’t know how insulated I am until something dramatically forces me to see the world through another perspective. For me, this dramatic (and delightful) disruption takes place in two primary ways:
1) as I deliberately try to listen to the whole Story of Scripture (not just the parts that confirm what I already believe). A wise reading of the whole of the Bible (OT/NT, Gospel/Prophets, Narratives/Letters, Apocalyptic/Wisdom, etc.) will constantly challenge my own personal, cultural, and political biases. Jesus cannot fit in my echo chamber. Neither can the Bible. Click here for a Bible reading plan that gets you into the whole Story.
2) as I deliberately listen to followers of Jesus from other cultures, ethnicities, political parties, or economic classes. For example, for the past year I have been re-reading American history for the first time through the lens of my black brothers and sisters in Christ. My long-held biases are being constantly challenged by this exercise.
There is another tool I have found to be very helpful in breaking out of my own echo chamber (“male, baby boomer, white, west coast American, upper middle class, educated, conservative evangelical”): podcasts. With its diversity of topics, genres, and perspectives, the medium of the podcast can be a gift for such a time as this… if we use it wisely. My suggestion: create a listening feed that includes voices outside your own cultural tribe. My current listening mix is quite eclectic, including podcasts on history, culture, science, politics, the arts, crime, psychology, biblical studies, theology, spiritual formation, and of course, great human interest story-telling.
Click here for a sampler of ten episodes from my podcast mix from the past two weeks. Whether or not you and I agree with every viewpoint, we can treat these voices as ‘conversation partners,’ welcoming the opportunity to be challenged and inspired to re-think through the issues for ourselves.
Step One: Humility
Everyone has a cultural set of lenses that shape how we view the world. And every set of lenses has its own blinders. The first step in breaking out of your echo chamber is having humility- admitting you don’t see the whole picture.
The Lord Jesus of Scripture cannot fit in your echo chamber. He cannot fit in mine, either. As followers of Jesus, part of our personal discipleship is learning to let him blow out the walls of those chambers. Jesus expands our vision. We get to see the world more and more clearly through his eyes, through the lens of the Story of Scripture and the reality of kingdom of God. What a privilege!
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.” (CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory)