Romans 12:2
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
I've been trying to be more aware of my unconscious assumptions that form my worldview. It's a long haul to confront everything you believe, because sometimes you're just not aware of underlying beliefs that impact your subjective experience.
I ran into something quite unexpectedly recently, which was a criticism of Michel Foucault by Roger Scruton: "Foucault’s approach reduces culture to a power-game, and scholarship to a kind of refereeing in the endless “struggle” between oppressed and oppressing groups. The shift of emphasis from the content of an utterance to the power that speaks through it leads to a new kind of scholarship, which bypasses entirely questions of truth and rationality, and can even reject those questions as themselves ideological."
What Scruton is talking about is the Neo-Marxist tendency to insist on grouping individuals into broad categories (i.e., based on skin colour, gender, religion, wealth, etc) and assuming all members of those groups share experiences and interests because of the correlation that sets them into that particular group. What he is pointing out is that this kind of thinking doesn't account for all the nuances of human experience, it just assumes that every group is trying to gain leverage over every other group to advance their own interests, and also assumes the correlation they've observed is a meaningful and accurate way of cataloguing society.
When I was in university, I first ran into Foucault as a tool for literary analysis, and at the time I wasn't aware of his influence on societal discourse. Nevertheless, his writings influenced me in ways I hadn't realised. Considering Scruton's objection to Foucault, though, I understood that my worldview does largely depend on similar assumptions. Over the last week or so, it's been surprising to me how deeply these underlying, unconscious beliefs have influenced my behaviour and discourse -- even the way I interpreted scripture, to some degree.
Has anyone else had a similar "moment of realisation," where something made you realise you had to confront and rethink your worldview?
I suppose a follow up question might be... how do you "renew your mind," first of all, to confront and test your thinking in the first place (i.e., the ways you have unconsciously "conformed to the world") , but secondly, how do you know you're "renewing your mind" to the way God wants you to be thinking about things? Perhaps the obvious answer is, read the Bible. And certainly, that's advisable. But I also think this is one of those moments where it's clear that God intends for us to live as church -- none of us is gifted with everything we need to live a rich and complete life. We all have different gifts in order to support one another. For me, it's a little disturbing, though, how many people from the church have challenged me in this mindset over the years, and it just never occurred to me to consider that they might have been right.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
I've been trying to be more aware of my unconscious assumptions that form my worldview. It's a long haul to confront everything you believe, because sometimes you're just not aware of underlying beliefs that impact your subjective experience.
I ran into something quite unexpectedly recently, which was a criticism of Michel Foucault by Roger Scruton: "Foucault’s approach reduces culture to a power-game, and scholarship to a kind of refereeing in the endless “struggle” between oppressed and oppressing groups. The shift of emphasis from the content of an utterance to the power that speaks through it leads to a new kind of scholarship, which bypasses entirely questions of truth and rationality, and can even reject those questions as themselves ideological."
What Scruton is talking about is the Neo-Marxist tendency to insist on grouping individuals into broad categories (i.e., based on skin colour, gender, religion, wealth, etc) and assuming all members of those groups share experiences and interests because of the correlation that sets them into that particular group. What he is pointing out is that this kind of thinking doesn't account for all the nuances of human experience, it just assumes that every group is trying to gain leverage over every other group to advance their own interests, and also assumes the correlation they've observed is a meaningful and accurate way of cataloguing society.
When I was in university, I first ran into Foucault as a tool for literary analysis, and at the time I wasn't aware of his influence on societal discourse. Nevertheless, his writings influenced me in ways I hadn't realised. Considering Scruton's objection to Foucault, though, I understood that my worldview does largely depend on similar assumptions. Over the last week or so, it's been surprising to me how deeply these underlying, unconscious beliefs have influenced my behaviour and discourse -- even the way I interpreted scripture, to some degree.
Has anyone else had a similar "moment of realisation," where something made you realise you had to confront and rethink your worldview?
I suppose a follow up question might be... how do you "renew your mind," first of all, to confront and test your thinking in the first place (i.e., the ways you have unconsciously "conformed to the world") , but secondly, how do you know you're "renewing your mind" to the way God wants you to be thinking about things? Perhaps the obvious answer is, read the Bible. And certainly, that's advisable. But I also think this is one of those moments where it's clear that God intends for us to live as church -- none of us is gifted with everything we need to live a rich and complete life. We all have different gifts in order to support one another. For me, it's a little disturbing, though, how many people from the church have challenged me in this mindset over the years, and it just never occurred to me to consider that they might have been right.
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