Whose Voices Are You Listening To?

Technology brings the world to the palm of your hand. This means we are bombarded with voices. Worldly voices of opinion, anger, politics, perspective, ego, trends and personal interpretations of morality. If you have technology in your life, it is virtually impossible to completely shut these voices out. On the other hand, we have the voice of God through His Word and through His people. This voice is powerful but quiet. It is relevant but subtle; nourishing but it seems outdated. It is transformative in a very positive way, but it is also laughed at as out of touch. So, how do we identify the voices around us and then intentionally choose whose will influence us to listen? The voice loop Our morality as humans is directly related to the voices we choose to listen to. It is woefully easy to get stuck in a “voice loop” where we allow certain voices, certain perspectives, to circulate nonstop in our minds. This results in two tragic consequences: *  We probably don’t even know it’s happening. We have become accustomed to and comfortable with the voices we have chosen. They are now part of the furniture of our minds. Our conscious thoughts accept them as unequivocally belonging. * These voices affect our behavior, leading us to something called “moral disengagement.” Moral disengagement is a cognitive mechanism that detaches our internal moral standards from our actions, allowing us to engage in unethical behavior without feeling distress. Historically, one of the most dramatic examples of this was Nazi Germany. The Nazi propaganda of that time labeled Jews, Gypsies and others as less than human. The victims were seen as rats. This voice loop became so pervasive that it led to a systematic attempt to exterminate these "vermin." It’s called genocide and became acceptable. What does this atrocity have to do with us? Unfortunately, more than we might be comfortable admitting. Our “voice loops” likely include a lot more dehumanizing language than we might be aware of. Now, we can say that we’d never resort to genocide, and I hope that is true. The more piercing question is, are we on the same highway as those who became so morally disengaged that they consciously and efficiently destroyed millions of lives? Check out our December 27, 2021 podcast, “Whose Voices Are You Listening To?” for more. We look at seven mechanisms of moral disengagement, beginning with dehumanization. We apply these mechanisms to how our tech-driven world shapes us and find some disturbing trends. Next, we apply these mechanisms to several people in the Bible who had power and influence. We find striking similarities! With all of this unsettling material to pour through, we also present sound scriptural principles to help us manage these difficult challenges. If the idea of being involuntarily fed destructive voices on a regular daily basis is disturbing, then join us. We face the issues of influence with faith, courage and godly solutions!