Rethinking Thinking

So we were talking about epistemology today in a class I’m taking on emerging cultures.

Epistemology is about how you know what you know. How do you know what you know? Does it come from inside and is acknowledged outside or does it come from outside and then is affirmed inside? Is there really anything that you “know” that is true, objective knowledge or is it all filtered through the subjective filter of our life?

Wow, that was a mouthful. I’m not even sure it said anything? The next point that struck me today was about understanding. It was tied to epistemology. Why don’t we understand? Communication is about understanding and sometimes when we are communicating with people of different filters and cultures we just can’t understand eachother. That is because we bring to ever circumstance, thought or conversation an internal construct or paradigm that helps us make sense of what we are hearing in light of what we already “know” (see, its getting a confused again, isn’t it?).

Maybe because we think completely differently than we ever have before. Maybe we will need to think completely differently than we are thinking today. For instance, there are some things my brain just hasn’t mastered yet that my nineteen year old son understands instinctually, like HALO. HALO is this complicated battle game that requires you to navigate your persona through obstacles while defending yourself against attack. The controller requires that you move at least four fingers independently of the other to perform separate functions. I can’t hardly walk and chew gum, so this manner of thought and action seems way beyond my ability…it drives me crazy. My son, on the other hand, finds it hilarioius just to walk up to me and blow me away. I guess I have to relearn how to think.

David Bosch said it this way:

“Worldviews are integrative and interpretive frameworks by which order and disorder are judged, they are standards by which reality is managed pursued, sets of hinges on which all our everyday thinking and doing turns.” Believing in the Future, p. 49

Our relationship with Jesus does that to our soul. It re-arranges how we think, believe and live. It calls us to a whole new life…transformation is scary business. Thankfully I remain:

Lost in Grace,

Marty