Coming to terms with our natural anxiety has helped the members of my congregation develop a sense of humility about what they know to be true, and to exercise a greater degree of tolerance toward those with whom they disagreed than they had previously. Conservatives learned to ask: “Are we truly acting to protect God’s will (as if God needs our protection) or merely protecting the status quo?” Liberals learned to ask: “How do we know we are prophetically promoting God’s will (as if God needs our promotion) or merely our own innovations?” Understanding our own propensity for reactivity has tended to give us pause about attributing evil intent to those who oppose our point of view. Recognizing that the dominant paradigm has created blind spots in our vision helps us realize how much we need the insights of those who disagree with us.
We began to realize that our paradigms are really our finite, human attempts to domesticate God…
From “Paradoxy” by Ken Howard