One of the most important things I’ve done in my life has been to allow my paradigm to be shifted from time to time. And yet, our patterns can be one of the things we hold on to more than anything else. So opening ourselves up to the possibility of change can be difficult.
There was a time when I didn’t believe debt was a bad thing. I didn’t much care for it, but I didn’t view it the way I do now. But then I had major paradigm shift when we were introduced to biblical money principles through Dave Ramsey’s teachings. We had a major paradigm shift in the way we viewed debt and have since had the opportunity to help others make similar changes.
Parenting has been another eye-opener.
For us, we tend to question things. We try to not do things just because “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” And that has led us down some interesting paths, conversations and decisions in our life.
As parents, we all want the best for our children. But the view of “best” is a relative term. For some that means accepting everything a doctor says without question. For others, it means researching everything from food to vaccines to biblical teaching and so forth. I would venture to say that most of us do a touch of research and application on a few things we deem to be the “most important.” Again, a relative term.
So you can quickly see how allowing our paradigm to be questioned, and potentially changed, can be difficult. We h0ld to patterns tightly because they represent security for us.
But I have come to believe it is a false sense of security at best. That sense of security in our belief system can cause us to not question things and fall into traps set by those knowing or unknowingly. It can cause us to make poor decisions that don’t necessarily correlate with our larger belief system.
Here’s where I’m going with this.
I believe in the Bible as God’s written word, flawless and complete in all ways. I believe in the Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection and that he’s coming back. And I believe in the free will God bestowed on us in the beginning so we would not be puppets of His Will. So my belief system should point back to that in all things from parenting to work to relationships and so forth.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been caught by my wife doing something and she puts me on the spot to ask me why I’m doing it that way. And I rarely have a good answer.
Things are the way they are partly because we never change them. We never question, we never go out of our comfort zone and certainly never question anyone else. But I think we are living in a time where we don’t have an option. We need to be aware of the decisions going on around us and the potential for falling into the same traps our parents and grandparents fell into. The generation of the 30 something year olds (whatever we are calling ourselves) have a great opportunity to change things and see big things happen.
But…
We need to question more.
We need to think for ourselves. We need to recognize that non-fiction books are still not the Bible and they aren’t flawless. They are still the author’s opinion. We need to realize doctors, lawyers, politicians, teachers, pastors, and so forth are not flawless. Anyone in an authoritative role is only there because we, (or God) has given them that authority.
But they are not flawless, they are not God.
I ask that you be willing to let your paradigm be shifted from time to time. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll discover that we need to make some changes, look elsewhere for advice, research more or do things a different way. Maybe listening to that inner voice isn’t a bad idea and we should stop ignoring it so much. And maybe, hopefully, we can be more of the person God created us to be.