You don’t think your thoughts.
Neither do I.
Both of us do our thinking inside a paradigm. Some call it a “mental map”, “worldview”, or “belief-system”. The idea is that a collection of beliefs, expectations, judgments, and preferences powerfully influence our thinking…all the time, every time. These conspire to focus our thinking, shape the pathways of our thought processes, even determine what we notice.
What’s amazing is that for almost all of us, our belief-system goes largely unexamined.
As a ministry coach, I get to draw my client’s attention to these beliefs, expectations, judgments, and preferences when they emerge. Then, the client can examine their belief-system in light of scripture and reality.
The trouble is, unexamined belief-systems get in our way.
Today, at the gym, Fox News and CNN were on TV’s side-by-side. You’d have thought they were reporting on two different nations. What’s striking is not just what they have to say, but what they choose to report. I contend that each network has a culture that’s determined by powerful paradigms influencing what they see, what they think is important, and, what they think about it.
You do too.
One of my disciplines is to listen to political talk radio in the car. Not all the time, but a few times a week. I listen to the station that has a vision for our country very different than mine. Frankly, I consider the worldview to be dangerous, possibly terminally so, to our nation’s viability. And yet, I listen.
I listen for what I can agree with.
It takes no discipline to listen for what I oppose. My belief-system does that for me. No, I actually listen for what they say that I can, honestly, get behind. I do this to practice “generous listening”. To train my hearing. I know that my paradigms keep me from seeing what I don’t believe. They urge me to throw the baby out with the bathwater. They, actually, close down learning in my life.
As a coach, I can’t afford to have my judgments, preferences, expectations, and beliefs rob me from being fully available to my clients. I get to choose to suspend my judgments and take a learning posture with my clients.
I don’t always do this well. When I don’t, I get in my own way! And, when I do, my clients suffer.
As a Christian influencer, your belief-systems transcend orthodoxy and the uniquenesses of your particular faith tradition.
They include what you believe about people, about trust, about control, about who’s “in” and who’s “out” of your comfort zone, and about how God behaves on a practical level in the here-and-now.
Your paradigms determine how you are with people. How you respond under stress. What you do when you don’t know what to do. How quickly or slowly you respond when life throws you a surprise.
Peter found his paradigms under assault by God in Acts 10. We’ll investigate Peter’s paradigm shift next time.
‘Till then… stay open.