Recently I reflected on what has informed my worldview.
In my childhood I asked a lot of questions and usually those questions began with the word ‘why’. For whatever reason those I asked the questions to were somewhat uncomfortable and unsettled by those questions and looked to shuffle me off with a standard line suggesting that because they knew the truth there was no point questioning it. As a result of that, for a season, I dived into reading books and engaging with voices outside my immediate context. That only drove me on to question the life I was living with the beliefs and behaviours.
For all that, certain things were engrained in me in terms of behaviour, so my reaction was quite something when I left home and lived at a university halls of residence. The shock of the new highlighted what a sheltered life I had lived up to that point and this strange and new was something I was not equipped for at all, so my way of dealing with it was to hide. Sure I was physically present, but I didn’t want to learn from this strange and new and I certainly wouldn’t allow any of this to contaminate me just in case I didn’t come out holy like I was told. In this, however, God was doing a massive for me by drawing me out of myself and get me to question further who I really was and who He really was.
It’s proved to be the case often that unless I get an outside perspective on things my worldview will ever be narrow and ignorant. That approach to life would also stunt any development that could have taken place if I allowed the streams of life to help me grow. Experiences like this helped to appreciate how I didn’t have a handle on the truth. No one individual does. No one denomination can make that claim either. The invitation to grow in knowing Jesus is a journey into something that appears simple on the surface but is incredibly deep and rich beyond that surface. To truly enjoy and be enriched by that means not limiting the streams through which that growth can take place.
In as much as I can understand the need to be safe and protect the community is about discernment and not letting anything and anyone influence and lead other astray, sometimes that caution can actually stifle and hinder growth. Indeed that desire to protect left unchecked can create blocks to the streams flowing from the heart of God for His children’s growth.
So on reflecting on what has shaped my worldview, I definitely desire more than anything for Jesus to be at the centre and chief goal of that view. Yet that pursuit, I appreciate, isn’t something to be exclusively found in one culture or one style of gathering. That heart for Him should open up the opportunity for streams that bring about growth.
I am grateful to God for the streams that stimulate growth.
(Photo by Barb Canale on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 