#preconceived ideas

1. The Myth of Progress

“The prevailing view of human history as a linear progression from primitive societies to complex civilizations is a myth that obscures the diversity and complexity of human societies throughout time.”

2. Egalitarian Roots

“Early human societies were often more egalitarian and cooperative than previously believed, challenging the notion that hierarchy and inequality are natural or inevitable aspects of human societies.”

3. Debt as Social Control

“Debt is the most effective way to take a relation of violent subordination and make the victims feel that it’s their fault.”

4. The Illusion of Work

“We have become a civilization based on work—not even 'productive work' but work as an end and meaning in itself.”

5. Bullshit Jobs

“Shit jobs tend to be blue collar and pay by the hour, whereas bullshit jobs tend to be white collar and salaried.”

6. Consensus and Democracy

“Consensus isn’t just about agreement. It’s about changing things around: You get a proposal, you work something out, people foresee problems, you do creative synthesis. At the end of it, you come up with something that everyone thinks is okay. Most people like it, and nobody hates it.”

7. Reimagining Society

“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

8. Anarchism and Anthropology

“Anarchism and anthropology go well together because anthropologists know that a society without a state is possible because so many exist.”

9. Direct Action

“Direct action is, ultimately, the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free.”

10. Bureaucracy's Grip

“As Max Weber long ago pointed out, once one sets up a genuinely effective bureaucracy, it’s almost impossible to get rid of it.”

11. The Nature of Money

“Money has no essence. It's not really anything; therefore, its nature has always been and presumably always will be a matter of political contention.”

12. Market Origins

“A great embarrassing fact… haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of human freedom: that historically, impersonal, commercial markets originate in theft.”

13. Neoliberalism's Purpose

“Neoliberalism isn't an economic program - it's a political program designed to produce hopelessness and kill any future alternatives.”

14. Student Debt Crisis

“Student loans are destroying the imagination of youth. If there’s a way of a society committing mass suicide, what better way than to take all the youngest, most energetic, creative, joyous people in your society and saddle them with, like $50,000 of debt so they have to be slaves?”

15. Revolutionary Action

“Revolutionary action is any collective action which rejects, and therefore confronts, some form of power or domination and in doing so, reconstitutes social relations—even within the collectivity—in that light.”

16. Engaged Withdrawal

“The theory of exodus proposes that the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state is not through direct confrontation but by means of what Paolo Virno has called 'engaged withdrawal,' mass defection by those wishing to create new forms of community.”

17. Bureaucracy's Nature

“We no longer like to think about bureaucracy, yet it informs every aspect of our existence. It's as if as a planetary civilization, we have decided to clap our hands over our ears and start humming whenever the topic comes up.”

18. Police as Bureaucrats

“Police are bureaucrats with weapons.”

19. Human Flaws

“The critical human flaw is not that as a species we're particularly aggressive. It's that we tend to respond to aggression very poorly.”

20. Another World is Possible

My old house still has its original cast iron radiators. Which are wonderfully efficient when it comes to heating the house – when you take care of them.

Last September, I was getting the radiators ready for winter. It’s a once-a-year job that takes less than a minute. But it requires a special tool, called a radiator key. And I couldn’t find mine anywhere.

After a few days of fruitless looking, I gave up, went online, and bought one. Only it was backordered. They said it wouldn’t be available until sometime in late October.

So, I was really surprised when it was delivered 3 days later.

That didn’t match up with what I was expecting. But it was exactly what I needed. And I was happy to have it.

Today’s Gospel is all about expectations. And how easy it is for you and me to become lost in our expectations. To become fixed in our expectations.

This is what Jesus is hearing from his critics. They have become set in their preconceived notions about how things have to work. They know how it has to happen. That’s the only way that it can happen. End of discussion.

And doing that is having the same effect on them that it has on you and me 2,000 years later when we do it.

When you and I become fixed in our expectations, we close ourselves off to other possibilities. Making us miss what God is doing in our lives.

Keeping us from the joy that comes from receiving God’s grace.

Because it doesn’t match up to what we were expecting.

Even though it’s exactly what we need.

Angie asked my on my wordpress blog where the ‘’we’ll never be mates’’ came from... Here it is, Series 2 Episode 25: The Second... where all the main characters remember a key moment with Sammy, their first encounter, really, and how he, in his kindness and genuine persona, marked them. This one must be eating Christian up pretty bad, seeing Sammy became the best mate he could ever have.

I used to work with Jon, a man on the autism spectrum. He could be hard to communicate with.

Some of what he said seemed random. Unrelated to…much of anything. But there were also flashes of brilliance. Insights and ideas that were amazingly helpful for our work together.

Because what I did understand of what he was saying was so good, I wanted more of it. So, I made it my business to learn to speak Jon.

At first, it was a slog. There’s no app for learning to speak Jon. It took a lot of listening. It was maybe a year or more before I started to get it.

The random stories? They were his way of thinking through ideas he didn’t have words for. By making analogies, by drawing comparisons. They were Jon’s parables.

As I learned to speak Jon, it became clear that so much of what seemed scattershot and unrelated was actually dead on.

To connect with Jon, I had to learn to speak Jon. Because the only way to really communicate with him was on his terms.

Truth be told, it’s the only way we can truly communicate with anyone. On their terms.

No matter who it is, until we learn to speak them, most of what they say won’t mean much. There may be flashes of brilliance. But most of it will be pretty random.

And if we try to impose our expectations on them for how we want them to think and communicate?

We won’t get much of anything out of it. We’ll be confused and frustrated. Maybe even angry at them. For not following our preconceived ideas.

It’s especially true for how we understand God.

The burden of our expectations is why so many people are confused and frustrated by God. We get angry at God for not following our preconceived ideas.

In His love, God is drawing each one of us to Himself. God is calling out to you, heart to heart.

If you’re not feeling that. If you’re not hearing God’s call to you.

Then it’s time to drop the preconceived ideas. And just listen.

It’s time to learn to speak God.

I have a friend who is very particular. He wants things just so. If something doesn’t meet his standards, he will complain about it. Endlessly.

He has yet to have a decent cup of coffee.

I learned this going to all of the big-name coffee places with him. Then, when none of those measured up, going to all of the most micro-batch, one-off, exclusive coffee roasters you could think of.

It was an amazing tour of the coffee of Chicago. And it was that tour, accompanied by his endless soundtrack of complaints, that showed me what was wrong with the coffee.

Him. He was what was wrong with the coffee.

It wasn’t that he had exquisite taste. It was that he was exquisitely skilled at finding fault.

Because he was busy finding fault, he missed out on some of the best coffee I’ve ever had.

I know this, because I went back to some of those places without him. When I didn’t have someone telling me how awful they were, it turns out they were great.

It easy to laugh at someone who does this to themselves. Piling up preconceived notions and finding fault, until they keep themselves from enjoying…pretty much anything.

But it’s a trap that all too many of us fall into with our relationship with God.

We miss out on God’s best for our lives, because it doesn’t meet our preconceived notions. We keep ourselves from being able to enjoy all that God has given us, because we’re too busy finding fault.

It’s not that God isn’t pouring out His grace upon us. It’s that we are so wrapped up in our ideas about God, about how things have to be, that we aren’t able to receive what God is giving.

When we get stuck like that, it’s easy to blame God. Even though we’re what’s wrong with the coffee.

When we get stuck like that, the only cure is God’s grace. To ask God to take away our love of fault-finding. To ask God to give us a desire for Him, not our ideas about Him.

I used to work with Jon, a man on the autism spectrum. He could be hard to communicate with.

Some of what he said seemed random. Unrelated to…much of anything. But there were also flashes of brilliance. Insights and ideas that were amazingly helpful for our work together.

Because what I did understand of what he was saying was so good, I wanted more of it. So I made it my business to learn to speak Jon.

At first, it was a slog. There’s no app for learning to speak Jon. It took a lot of listening. It was maybe a year or more before I started to get it.

The random stories? They were his way of thinking through ideas he didn’t have words for. By making analogies, by drawing comparisons. They were Jon’s parables.

As I learned to speak Jon, it became clear that so much of what seemed scattershot and unrelated was actually dead on.

To connect with Jon, I had to learn to speak Jon. Because the only way to really communicate with him was on his terms.

Truth be told, it’s the only way we can truly communicate with anyone. On their terms.

No matter who it is, until we learn to speak them, most of what they say won’t mean much. There may be flashes of brilliance. But most of it will be pretty random.

And if we try to impose our expectations on them, for how we want them to think and communicate?

We won’t get much of anything out of it. We’ll be confused and frustrated. Maybe even angry at them. For not following our preconceived ideas.

It’s especially true for how we understand God.

The burden of our expectations is why so many people are confused and frustrated by God. We get angry at God for not following our preconceived ideas.

In His love, God is drawing each one of us to Himself. God is calling out to you, heart to heart.

If you’re not feeling that. If you’re not hearing God’s call to you.

Then it’s time to drop your preconceived ideas. And listen.

It’s time to learn to speak God.

The Black Dot, What Do You See?

For seven years, I was privileged to be an associate professor at two Christian universities.  What you are about to review is an example of a lesson I would present to my students.  Privileged to instruct and influence minds, I was even fortunate to have two Deans who specifically asked me to introduce the discipline of “critical thinking” to the students.  The Deans well understood the…