Brother, Can You Paradigm?

I have been blogging a lot lately about the templates we use to see the world. Whether you call them templates, or world views, or paradigms, the problem of potentially false templates remains. 

Thomas Kuhn wrote about this in the 60's in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn's point is that scientific theories come into and out of fashion. The old guard holds to the accepted theory, but the young turks hold to a different viewpoint. Humorously, the young turks of today become the old guard of tomorrow.

Most of us in our lives have had a moment where everything becomes crystal clear, and we realize that that the way we have been looking at things is wrong. When someone changes their view on an issue like this it is called a paradigm shift. I have had several paradigm shifts over my life. The first one I remember was at age 7. I discovered the Easter basket in our house--days before Easter. Suddenly, everything became clear. There was no Easter bunny, therefore there was no Santa Claus. My mother was not happy as she had hoped I would believe a little longer.

Maybe the paradigm shift is the stereotypical discovery of lipstick on your husband's collar. Maybe it is noticing that your Pastor's car is parked at a hotel during the day. No matter what it is, your whole world view can change in a moment.

It is not possible to look at the world except though our templates. But if we understand that we do this, it can be helpful. Can we learn to step aside from these paradigms? This is difficult, but necessary. Babylon the Great wants us deceived.  Revelation 18 talks about Babylon:

11 “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore— 12 cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; 13 cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.

Have you been sold as a slave? Babylon cannot own a self-aware person. Being a part of the system tends to make us blind to the evils of the system. We focus on the fine clothes, but forget the slavery. Do we have eyes that see? Or as Jesus told the seven churches, ears to hear? Jesus told the Church at Philadelphia in Revelation 3:

11 I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. 12 The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will also write on them my new name. 13 Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. 

Jesus wants us to choose our paradigm. Ultimately we are a part of the old evil earthly city of Babylon, or we are a part of the new heavenly city of Jerusalem. Can we make the paradigm shift? Brother, can you paradigm?

Random Thoughts: Nose Ring Sunday

I am in my favorite coffee shop in Idyllwild that I have mentioned before, and we are discussing the rapture. While we are sympathetic to the people deceived, it is a source of amusement.

We are listening to Internet radio. Should I tell the owners that they are violating international copyright law? The penalty used to be $500 per song, but I think they have raised it. Of course they make it expensive to buy a license. When I was a video game vendor I had to buy a license for each of my jukeboxes. The structure was that the first license is expensive, but each additional license is cheap, forcing the owner to hire someone like me to provide the jukebox. This is Typical Babylon, favoring the large company over the small owner.

There is one group of ladies who have nose rings. Why people have to flaunt tradition is beyond me! Why can't the normal biblical standards apply? What does the Bible say?

        Ezekiel 16:11-13 11

I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, 12and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. 13So you were adorned with gold and silver; your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was honey, olive oil and the finest flour. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen.

Here the prophet is comparing how God treated Israel with a man who treated his wife very well but the result was adultery. But the point here is that nose rings were acceptable and expected forms of adornment. Abraham’s family used them as well. (Gen 24:22) There was nothing wrong with nose rings in 600 BC, and there is nothing wrong with them today, from the Biblical point of view.

Oh, there are some things that are culturally assumed in the Bible that are not necessarily mandated today. So there is nothing wrong from the Bible's viewpoint with nose rings. The same is true in modern Indian culture. Of course if you choose to wear counter-cultural adornment, you have to live with the consequences that breaking with your culture brings. Whether or not it is worth it is an individual decision.

Do Angels Have Wings?

Next week I will continue in my series of blog posts on the templates we have that we use to look at the world. Until then I recommend that you look at Pam Dewey's blog on Hell where she discusses the popular nonBiblical mythology about angels. 

Do You Have a Wooden Leg?

Ron DartMy friend Doug Young has posted a number of sermons over the years for people to download. One that I remember well is from 1984. It is called Wooden Leg by Ron Dart. Here is his summary.

What's your excuse? God expects us to be productive. Humans share a need to be creative. What if we produce nothing? Do we make excuses? Dart explores two kinds of fear – paralyzing and action-motivating. The action of love casts out fear.

For those that wish to download here is a link. 

How Do You Evaluate What You See On The Internet?

A good example of the dangers of the internet is Ted Gunderson. On first examination he seems an important source in the various conspiracies that seem to plague our great nation. Gunderson has impressive credentials. He is a former FBI agent. But more than that, he was bureau chief at Los Angeles. He was also special agent in charge of the Memphis and Dallas divisions of the FBI. I will let him speak with his own words at the end of this blog post, but basically he thinks that most terrorist acts are done by the US government. Gunderson periodically makes the rounds on various websites and public access TV shows.

Gustavo Arellano comments on Gunderson:

A couple of years later, Gunderson announced to the world he had found the much-mythologized tunnels that played a key role in the McMartin preschool trial scandal. Unsurprisingly, no one believed him. Over the years, he has also stated that the United States government intentionally bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City federal building in April 1995, in order to remove our rights through anti-terrorism bills, that tens of thousands of children are kidnapped yearly for purposes ranging from organ harvesting to prostitution to literal sacrificial lambs for Satanists, and that the Illuminati rules the United States government.

While Arellano has an agenda, the Wiki article on Gunderson has much of the same information. 

Gunderson reminds me of a man who used to attend church with me. The first time I met him he wore long robes. He interrupted an evangelism meeting, but he was ignored. He too had great credentials, in his case scientific ones. He had some great stories. I bet you do not know the details of the secret air base, famous in UFO folklore, “Area 51.” He did. He talked about the time he met Mikael Gorbachev and had a long private conversation with him. Or how he had just returned from a trip to the moon—we have a secret moon base there. He was convinced that the Book of Mormon had some truth in it. Eventually he quit attending as he felt that the members were making fun of him. I regard him as a friend, but, do I have to say it, he “has issues.”

Ted Gunderson has issues.

I think we need to evaluate our templates, the assumptions we have about the world. We need to step aside from these assumptions and evaluate the information we have without these filters.

This is quite different than the post I originally had in mind. Why don't people do their research?????