God can transform your conformist ideas

IDEAS: FROM DARK TO LIGHT - Two of the most powerful facets in the realm of thought are ideas and images. Ideas are ways of thinking about and interpreting things. They are so essential to how we approach life that we often do not understand when and how ideas are at work. 

Our idea system grows up with us from childhood out of the teachings, expectations, and behaviors of family and community. People are often so far in the grip of ideas that they can’t be bothered to think. They don’t know what moves them, but ideas govern them and have their consequences anyway. 

Examples of ideas are freedom, education, happiness, “the American Dream,” the feminine or masculine, and so on. To see ideas in action, look closely at artistic endeavors, especially movies and music, which encapsulate most of pop culture, and at efforts to persuade, especially politics and commercials. 

Look, for example, at the place freedom, a major idea now, plays in automobile ads and rock lyrics. One task of spiritual formation is to have our ideas transformed. By the Spirit, we replace in ourselves those idea systems of evil with the idea system that Jesus Christ embodied and taught. 

The apostle Paul warned that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). These powers and forces are spiritual agencies that work with the idea systems of evil. These systems are the powers’ main tool for dominating humanity. 

Changing those governing ideas is one of the most difficult and painful things in life. Such change rarely happens to the individual or group except in the form of divine intervention, revolution, or something like a mental breakdown. Jesus confronted and undermined an idea system and its culture, which in turn killed him. He proved himself greater than any idea system or culture, and he lives on. He is continuing the process of a worldwide idea shift that is crucial to his perpetual revolution, in which we each are assigned a part.


 

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