Ep 50: Trapped In The System

If our desires and our largely unconscious ideas solidify in the bedrock of our hearts, how do these become formed to be more like the desires and ideas of Jesus? Is it simply a matter of knowing what our desires and ideas should be?

Drawing from themes explored throughout the podcast series so far, Brian digs into the differences between our belief system and our genuine ideas – and how they’re often far more different than we’d like to admit. If we’re courageous enough to uncover our core ideas, how then can they be transformed in our discipleship journey?

In what may be the deepest and most provocative episode so far, we explore just how vital healthy relational intimacy is to the shaping of our roots (hearts) and soil (ideas).

TRANSCRIPTION

Idea Systems

Listen to this episode here!

We’re exploring the fourth key element of discipleship, intimacy.

Cheat Codes

As a reminder, Soil and Roots is designed to be listened to in order, starting with, you guessed it, Episode 1. Some of you like to jump around or just listen to specific episodes, and that’s great.  Just note that current episodes and seasons build on earlier ones.

I occasionally throw in bonus episodes to review previous material and add more context to our journey.  These episodes are also helpful if you want to go back and get your bearings on previous topics.

Anyhow, if you are just tuning in and wondering what in the world the Forgotten Kingdom, Heartview, or the Six Core Ideas are, you might want to go back and start the journey at the beginning.

The episodes are evergreen, so you won’t miss anything if you start at the beginning and take your time working through the first 50 episodes.

What’s the Big Idea?

Let’s continue our exploration of intimacy and why it’s so essential to discipleship.

In Season 1, we talked about Ideas of Anthropology – what it means to be human.  Or, more to our point, the unconscious assumptions we make about what it means to be human. The theologian James K.A. Smith proposed that modern Christianity has made some very wrong assumptions about humanity.

Humans are not primarily thinkers.  We’re not even primarily believers.  We’re primarily desirers.  We’re lovers.

Yet according to Smith, modern Christianity functions as if we are primarily thinkers, or perhaps believers. That most of our Christian experiences are based on presenting us with facts and information, and that we’re formed more like Jesus based on our mental agreement with pieces of data.

Smith suggests that modern storytellers, artists, marketers, and advertising execs are far more in tune with what it means to be human than many Christian institutions.  That the shopping mall is more formative than the church building.

What are what we desire. Or, as one of Smith’s book titles plainly states, We Are What We Love.

At the same time, we’ve latched onto this somewhat novel concept that we, as humans, are governed not by facts and perhaps not even by beliefs as we tend to define them, but by ideas.  Unconscious, hidden assumptions and principles that power who we are.

Philosopher Dallas Willard proposed that a true disciple is someone whose base ideas are progressively transformed from darkness to light, from bad ideas to God’s really good ideas.

So, if Smith and Willard are right, in the very depths of who we are, in our guts, burrowed into the bedrock of our hearts, sit our desires and our ideas.  And somehow our ideas and desires are co-mingled, they’re deeply connected, they influence and impact each other.

Willard went on to make some rather staggering claims about ideas.  He believed that evil spends most of its time and energy influencing idea systems, groups of interconnected and dependent ideas.

The most efficient and dangerous way to steal, kill, and destroy is to promote idea systems that warp, corrupt, and confuse the original idea system instituted before time began, thereby impacting entire communities and cultures. In one sense, the forces of evil are crop-dusters.  They spread harmful assumptions through the air in the form of idea systems that harm large groups of people.

So, ideas are a really, really big deal…that we hear almost nothing about in pop-Christianity.

If God’s original idea system is designed for human goodness and flourishing, and any system that corrupts His is designed to destroy us, and evil primarily works in the realm of these idea systems, we should spend more time understanding and exploring these systems and how they work in our hearts.  And how ideas change.

Ideas in the Air

If you check out the visual aid called “Creation Picture 2” on the Resources tab at www.soilandroots.org, you’ll remember that ideas exist in two places: in the air and in the soil.

Ideas in the Air are just that – they’re the atmosphere into which we’re born.

If you were born in America, you were born into an atmosphere of ideas such as freedom, rugged individualism, the American dream, bravery, equal rights for women, retirement as a life objective, and the almost ubiquitous availability of goods and services.  We don’t usually think about these things – they just are.  They’re the air we breathe.

And we tend to transpose our Ideas in the Air onto everyone else and onto human history. We assume our atmosphere is just like everyone else’s.

It’s a very human thing to do.  But the reality is, most of the ideas I just mentioned are very new in human history and are still foreign in many parts of the world today.

Our Ideas about the Bible

We’re also born in Ideas of the Air in relation to Christianity and our Christian experience.  We assume these ideas to be good, true, and accurate because…well…just because.

Let’s take the Bible, for instance.  Everyone reads the Bible through a lens of ideas and unconscious assumptions.  Some of our ideas are biblical, some traditional, some cultural.

We all read the Bible with a set of presuppositions, a set of unconscious ideas about the point and purpose of the Bible. We all engage the Bible through a set of idea filters.

Here’s one simple example of a Bible-related idea.

Who’s in the Majority?

Have you ever been told that the Apostle Paul wrote the majority of the New Testament?  I have. Paul wrote around 75% of the New Testament.

But that’s not entirely accurate.

In terms of the number of books, Paul did write the majority of them.

But what about the number of words? What about the actual percentage of content in the New Testament?

In that case, Paul is not the author of the majority of the New Testament.  The person responsible for writing the most words is actually Luke.

No more Bible exploration?

Here’s another example of an idea that influences our engagement with the Bible.

Years ago, I was chatting with a very biblically literate friend, and he expressed frustration that people are still writing all sorts of books about the Bible.  His view is that we now know all we need to know about it, and that we simply need to spend more time in the Word and stop writing other books about it.

Well, we should spend more time in the Word, but are we assuming the Bible has been fully explored? I find that idea rather disconcerting, maybe even arrogant.

If we’ve mined even five or ten percent of the Bible for its depth, wisdom, and mystery, I’d be surprised.

Should we stop exploring and probing the depths of God’s second book?  Have we learned all we need to know about the created order?  Have we learned all there is to know about biology or sociology, the human brain, or the depths of the ocean?

When we approach the Bible, do we approach it with the idea that everything that should be known about it is already known?

Observation, Interpretation, Application

Here’s another one.

If you’ve ever been trained to write or preach a sermon or lead a Bible study, chances are you were instructed to present three things to your audience: Observation, Interpretation, Application.

What does the text say?

What does the text mean?

What is the text telling me to do?

This is, by far, the predominant and accepted approach to teaching the Bible today.  Observe, interpret, apply.

Chances are, the overwhelming number of sermons and teachings you, your parents, and your grandparents heard were based on this simple formula.

In fact, if we aren’t taught some sort of application at the end of a sermon, we kind of feel like we’ve been cheated.  Someone needs to tell us what to do.

Ok, fair enough.  But if the overwhelming majority of sermons are based on this formula, and that formula must include a charge to go and do something as a result of what we’ve just heard or read, what do our hearts assume about the purpose of the Bible? What is our unconscious idea about the Bible?

The answer is – it’s an instruction manual.  The Bible becomes a book of commands.  Every verse, every passage, every chapter must contain something that I must apply in my life. The Bible says “x”, so I need to go and do “y.”

Then why is 40-some percent of the Bible written as narrative, as story?  Why is 30-some percent of the Bible poetry?

When was the last time we read Dickinson or Whitman or Keats and walked away thinking, “Here are the three things I learned from this poem that I need to do this week.”

I don’t think most people think the purpose of poetry is to instruct us on how to live our lives.

Does the Bible contain instructions for living?  Of course.  But is that its sole purpose?

Because if the only purpose of the Bible is to give us instructions, that sounds a lot like assuming human beings are primarily thinkers.

That idea presents some problems.

We love to read and quote Proverbs.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart

And do not lean on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge Him,

And He will make your paths straight.”[1]

Proverbs is filled with “do this and good things will happen” language and “do that and bad things will happen” language.

So, we might presume that if we just do the right things, we’ll enjoy straight paths, peace, and prosperity.

But then Ecclesiastes comes along and takes a look at Proverbs and says, “Yeah. It doesn’t always work that way.”

And then Job comes along and calls the whole mess into question.

Ok, so maybe the Bible isn’t just a book of commands.

But it’s certainly a book of beliefs.  The Bible surely outlines what we should believe.

True enough, it does that.  But if we are primarily lovers, if we are creatures of desire, if we’re born into the world looking for someone looking for us, someone who will always be there for us, someone who deeply desires to have an intimate, trusted relationship with us, what if THAT is the core purpose of the Bible?

What if the Bible is one of the ways the Creator intimately reveals Himself to us and invites us to intimately reveal ourselves to Him?  What if the Bible is intended to capture our imagination, to enthrall us with its story, to mesmerize us with its artistry, its themes, its imagery, to provoke us to feel the joy, the heartbreak, the confusion, the jealousy, the passion of its characters?

What if the primary purpose of the Bible is to form our desires, our loves, our ideas?  To draw us into experiencing God?  What if it isn’t so much about us working on the Bible as the Bible working on us?

So, when we sit down to read the Bible or listen to a sermon, are we engaging simply to learn what to do?  Or what to believe?  Or are we experiencing God as He reveals His heart to us, and we to Him?

Ideas in the Soil

Which brings us to Ideas in the Soil.  If Ideas in the Air are systems of ideas we’re born into, and they’re present in culture, in our churches, and most importantly in our families of origin, there’s a subset of those ideas that seep down, deep down, into the bedrock of our hearts.

These are the ideas that mold and shape us.

Back in Episode 8, we talked about the three ways ideas are formed in our hearts: Initially, abruptly, and progressively.

We’re born with certain ideas baked in, and ideas can abruptly form or modify, usually through trauma or divine intervention. But most of the time, these unconscious assumptions and principles change progressively, slowly.

The Six Core Ideas

Let’s review the Six Core Ideas. We haven’t talked about these in a while.

There are dozens and dozens of categories of ideas, presuppositions, and assumptions that sit in the depths of our hearts.   But there are six categories that powerfully govern who we are and how we relate in the world.

Here they are again:

·      Identity: Who are we?

·      Anthropology: What are we?

·      Value: What are we worth?

·      Power: What authority do we have?

·      Purpose: What is our purpose?

·      Love: What do we love?

These six core ideas form the structure, the basis, the foundation of every idea system. They form the basis of Critical Theory, Woke Ideology, Marxism, Buddhism, and Islam.

Every political ideology, every cultural ideology, every social structure, every religion, and every institution is built on and manifests these six core ideas.

Now there is only one original idea system: God’s.  And there’s no confusion or ambiguity about what the Six Core Ideas are in His system.  He clearly outlines His idea system in the Bible, and He gives us some pretty deep insight into it in creation as well.

The confusion arises when our hearts embrace downstream, derivative idea systems.  Because every other system is derived from God’s, but is a corruption, a malicious adaptation, a purposeful, harmful twist on His original ideas.

Systems Down!

You and I are presented with alternative idea systems every day, all day, all the time.

We can practice identifying idea systems whenever we want.  The next time you watch a 15-second ad on social media, ask yourself the core questions:

1. What is this ad telling me about who I am?

2. What is it telling me about what I am?

3. What is it telling me about what I’m worth?

4. What is it telling me about the power I have?

5. What does it tell me about my purpose?

6. What is it telling me I should love?

Every piece of music, literature, movie, TV show, sermon, political speech, book, video game or app is promoting an idea system.

Every single interaction we have with another person promotes an idea system.

Your personal story, your history, is filled with many people and a myriad of cultural media and messages influencing your heart’s worldview.

If you’re curious, just start a spreadsheet and map the answers to the Six Core Ideas in various systems.

Think through the idea system behind Critical Theory.  Or New Age. If you really want to pick a fight with your family members, pick the idea system of a political party.

Write out the answers to the Six Core Ideas according to what God has already revealed in His books, and then write out the answers from any other system.

We’ll quickly discover just how radically different the Kingdom of God’s ideas are from every other system we find ourselves in. It’s actually quite shocking.

So, for example, a few of the questions like “Who are we?”, “What are we?” “What authority do we have?” might be answered this way in the Kingdom:

“We are God’s crowning creation made in His image, and we’re made to love and reign with Him.”

Now, answer the same questions in the idea system of Critical Theory.  The answer might be:

“We are random products of evolution who are victims of oppression, and we must take the power we deserve.”

Obviously, these are two radically different sets of answers. And the answers have enormous impact on how we relate to God, ourselves, others, and the world around us.

The Deep

Now, at this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with discipleship and cultivating appropriate intimacy in Five-Element Communities.

What do idea systems have to do with becoming more like Jesus? Hear me out. We’re going way deep into the soil now.

Let’s say you sat down and wrote out the answers to all Six Core Ideas from your Christian perspective.

In the Christian idea system, Who am I?  What am I?  What am I worth?  What power do I have? What is my purpose? What do I love?

Chances are, what you write down would look very much like the lessons and things you’ve learned in church, Bible study, and small groups throughout your life.  Very good. Chances are your answers are correct.  They align with the Christian idea system.

Now, what if I asked you to go back through the same six questions, but this time to quiet yourself, lay aside the stock Christian answers, and write down your answers intimately and honestly?

What if I asked you to answer these questions by looking at your Eight Indicators?

What you think, what you feel, how you behave.  How do you relate to people, your health, your words, and how you manage time and money?

Let’s say on your first round, you answered the idea “Who Am I?” with the theologically correct statement, “I am a child of God.”

But when you talk to yourself, when you think about yourself, do you relate to yourself as if you are a child of God?  Meaning, do you talk to yourself the way Jesus talks to you?  Do you care for yourself as a loving father cares for His child?

What are your thoughts about other people?  Do those thoughts match what God thinks about them?  If every person is made in the Image of God, is a work of a divine artist, and is utterly unique in all of human history, do you think about other people in that context, whether they’re in Christ or not?

There is an excellent chance that some of your honest, quiet, reflective answers are going to differ from your theologically correct answers.

That’s because the unconscious ideas that actually power our hearts don’t always align with our beliefs.  This is true for every person on the planet.

If you want a visual reminder of how this works, there’s a picture on the Resources page called Heartview. You can download it for free.  You’ll see that at the very center of who we are are our ideas and desires.  And our beliefs sit atop our ideas.

So, in my case, if I were to honestly assess my thought life, I admit I don’t always think of myself as a child of God.  I don’t address myself in those terms.  I have difficulty seeing myself as God sees me.

My thoughts about other people are often kinder than my thoughts about myself, but I have absolutely derided, devalued, and even murdered the character of other people in my thoughts.  I have been woefully unkind to my own wife and sons in my thoughts at times.

I know how to put on a good face and say all the right “Christian” things. I know how to play the part.  But does my heart, in its base ideas and desires, truly seek the goodness of my neighbor?  Or even myself? Once in a while, but not always.

Should we talk about power?  Should we compare the accurate, Christian ideas of power with our own behavior?  Does our behavior reflect someone who submits to the authority of the King of the Cosmos, or, if we’re honest, does our behavior reflect a heart that is generally trying to control the world around us?  To gain the approval of other people.  To protect ourselves and our all-too-important image and reputation.  To consolidate and wield our power.  To secure our financial power.

Now we’re getting real.  When we finally get to the bedrock of our hearts, we discover that we all too often have ideas and desires down there that look very little like our stock Christian answers to the Six Core Ideas.

How do we know?  Just look at our Eight Indicators.

“Fish, are you saying that my debit card statement will tell me more about the true condition of my heart than my Bible study?”

Generally, the answer is yes, our bank statements do tell us more about the true ideas in our hearts than our church activities.

If the point of our discipleship is to become more like the person of Jesus, that journey is far more than agreeing to accurate doctrinal statements.  It’s a journey of determining whether the actual ideas and desires in our soil align with those doctrinal statements.

How Ideas are Changed

And now we come full circle to intimacy in community. Because if we go through the exercise of discovering that the base ideas and desires in our hearts don’t always match up to what we think we believe, we’re now ready for God to work in our hearts.

How can I become a person who thinks of myself as a genuine child of God? How can I come to love my enemies and not murder them in my heart?  What might it look like for my debit card statement to show a heart aligned with the ideas of my King?

By now, it’s obvious that transforming our ideas is not simply a matter of instruction.  After all, we may well have a theologically accurate belief system, learned through instruction.

But for various reasons, those beliefs don’t always settle down into ideas and desires.

So, here’s the rub: our base ideas and desires are often formed not through instruction, but through experience. Through relationship.

My struggle to think of myself as a child of God is not a doctrinal challenge.

My heart is formed by being in relationship with others who relate to me as a child of God. Who experiences me as a child of God.

This is why our earliest years are the most formative in our lives.  A baby’s heart is formed through experiencing other people. By being with them.

This is the mystery of marriage.  Two becoming one, through experiencing each other over time.

This is how a debit card statement begins to reflect the heart of a person becoming more like Jesus.  Budgeting classes are great and helpful.  Being in relationship with people who treat you like Jesus treats you is even better.

Ideas in the heart are not generally formed through information.  They’re generally formed through relationship and experience.  With God, with ourselves, with others, and even with creation.

And they’re formed for the better when our own hearts are open-handed and vulnerable with people who genuinely seek our goodness.

Where do we go from here?

As you might imagine, studying and understanding idea systems has tremendous implications on everything from evangelism to counseling, from political theory to governmental structures, from media to the arts, from parenting to conflict management, and healthy marriages and friendships.

Oftentimes, understanding someone else’s true Six Core Ideas can provide enormous insight into their perspectives and views of the world. If you have an atheist or agnostic friend or family member, or maybe someone who drives you crazy because they’re on the other end of the political spectrum, trying to argue their theological or political position may not be productive.  Perhaps just listening to their story may provide some common ground.

You might discover that your friend’s theological or political position has far more to do with the unconscious ideas in their hearts formed by damaging or abandoned relationships than by the position itself.

If Dallas Willard and James Smith are right, and we are generally governed by the unconscious ideas and desires in our hearts, then the journey of a disciple is far more than belief statements and apologetics.  Those are marvelous things, but as we’ve discovered, the deeper journey begins when we listen carefully to our hearts to determine if our ideas are even in sync with our beliefs.

And if we’re courageously curious, we invite our trusted communities into our hearts and stories.

And just experiencing our community may be enough for some of our ideas to move towards the ideas of Jesus.

It’s a lifelong journey.  It requires kindness, patience, and a careful listening ear.  Time with God, with others, with ourselves.  Habits that encourage our efforts at being transparent.

But it’s a journey worth taking. And as we experience our hearts being formed, we become all the more patient, loving, and kind towards others on the same journey.

In other words, we make disciples.

[1] New American Standard Bible: 1995 update (Pr 3:5–6). (1995). The Lockman Foundation.