I’ve had a draft stuck in my WordPress for quite some time. I finally went back to reread the post, and I realized it was just about ready to go. So… with only a few edits because a blog I referenced is now defunct, here’s a little on “paradigm thinking”:
To add a little humor to my day some months ago, I let my fingers stroll back over to the now defunct Emergent No blog. Reading some of the posts and comments over there, besides giving me more than a hearty chuckle a few times, reminded me of some of my college philosophy classes. We discussed paradigm thinking quite a bit.
What’s good to remind myself is that I too am in a paradigm. While mine has dramatically shifted over the past five years, I’m still working out my ideas and thoughts within a paradigm. Things that seem self-evident to me are not necessarily so. Obvious truths may actually be grossly misinterpreted due to my paradigm. I have no problem recognizing that possibility. It does not shake my faith, and admitting I might be wrong about things I hold dear does not tempt me in any way to abandon my faith.
Faith is where the rubber hits the road. If your faith comes strictly from your paradigm, you must hold to words which describe your beliefs at all costs. For if they are wrong, your entire foundation has been demolished beneath you. However, if your faith does not rest on your understanding perfectly, you can relax and trust in what you cannot see perfectly or know entirely.
More and more I am concerned that many abandoning the established church adopt a paradigm where their views are determined more by the world than their life of faith with others. I am concerned that this has happened with myself to some extent, and God has been correcting me lately.
The current paradigm in the culture I find myself in exalts a plurality of ideas and the opinions of others. There is valuable insight to be gained by listening to other’s ideas, but a paradigm in which you can say nothing definitively does not bode well for me.
The problem comes in communicating ideas to those who are not in your paradigm. The definition I like the best for communication is “creating shared meaning.” In order to create shared meaning, the parties communicating must have a sufficient understanding of the other person’s perspective. They do not have to have the same perspective, nor could they, but they do need to have at least a basic understanding of what the words used mean to the person using them. Without this, shared meaning is impossible to attain.
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