Re-Framing

Re-Framing

For the past year and a half, I’ve been reading and listening to an Australian pastor, Mark Sayers. He has traveled and studied widely, and seems to have good understanding of our current cultural situation and also of the Bible. He has spent considerable time in the United States, and yet views it from the perspective of an outsider. He presented a series of talks of what we ought to “re-frame” in the wake of “ (or, midst of) the interruption of life and activity that we have experienced since March of 2020.

He suggested that we re-frame four things: our thinking; our creativity; our resilience; and our ministry models.Yes, he is addressing this to church leaders, but I think it has application for all of us, even as it applies to how we live our lives.

There have been things that have happened over the last months that were previously “un-thinkable.” The cessation of international travel and business trips. Schools being emptied. Prohibitions on seeing grandma at the retirement home. Or, a guy with horns on his head sitting in the speaker’s chair in the Capitol building. “Unthinkable” things happen all the time in individual lives, but we must know that God was and is not surprised by any of these things, and just because we find them hard to ponder does not mean that God is not involved, perhaps not causing these things, but using these things to shape our lives. So, we need to re-frame our thinking.

How do we do this? Well, we think the way we think because of what we listen to. That guy I mentioned (in our gathered worship) who told me I needed a drink (alcoholic), (he himself having had too much already) then went on to talk about people who had “sincerely held beliefs.” Well, where did he get his “sincerely held beliefs.” He got them from those to whom he listened. It can be family background, church, media, associates, etc. We are all that way. Don’t think you are different. But your “sincerely held beliefs” need to be fed by “sincerely sought-out sources” or information.

Leaked research from Facebook shows how they place information in front of your eyes based on what they think you want. It backs up what you already think. There’s nothing sincere about it. And Facebook is not alone. The whole marketing industry does this, and I believe that our news sources are no longer news sources but actually aggregators of attention, telling you what you already are disposed to agree with. So how does one re-frame one’s thinking in this kind of environment of information predators? 

If you don’t know what I’m going say next, then I haven’t been doing my job. 

Read your Bible. It’s not fast. It’s not easy. But over time, as you read and pause and think, your thinking will be re-framed by Someone who isn’t merely trying to glean data and increase market share. God isn’t like Facebook or major news outlets. He doesn’t need to be. He is our Maker, and as we have seen in Psalm 139, he already knows us inside and out, and He desires our growth into the image of His Son, able to resist being “children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;”(Ephesians 4:14 NAS95).