SHIFTING CONTAINERS – Perceptual Capacity

“When we can see the image of God where we don’t want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own.”  This quote by Richard Rohr is the essence, and the challenge, of expanding our  PERCEPTUAL CAPACITY.  We need to change our ‘glasses’.

Once we have started the process of being spiritually transformed (see previous week), we need to change the way we visually perceive and interpret our communities, our surroundings, our circumstances, and ultimately our enemies.  There must be an expansion of our PERCEPTUAL CAPACITY if we want to grow and mature as believers.  We simply cannot observe the world, the CURRENT pandemic and the challenges through the eyes and the patterns of the world (Romans 12:2)

There are two main challenges that limit the growth of our perceptual capacity:

1. Inattentional blindness
2. Dualistic vision

INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS

Inattentional blindness is the inability to perceive something that is within your direct perceptual field because you are attending to something else.   This form of blindness depends not on the limits of the eye, but on the limits of the mind.   This is very much an act of spiritual blindness as well.  When we view the pandemic as a threat, a conspiracy or something to fear, we will be blind to the opportunities that God presents to His Church.  We will not be able to see what we do not give attention to.

When watching the news or reading the newspaper, our eyes will most probably only see what our hearts are focussed on and unless we discipline ourselves to look through God’s lenses, we will never acquire the ability to grow in our perceptual capacity. For instance, if we occupy our attention only on the corruption in our governments, then we will fail to see how the Lord is using the failure of man to point people to Him.  When we only focus on the inconveniences of the lockdown, we fail to recognise how thousands of disillusioned people are turning to Christ.  This is spiritual inattentional blindness

Building a bigger perceptual capacity will require an intentional removal of cultural and political glasses and a refocusing on Kingdom principles.  There needs to be an awareness of Kingdom principles like salvation, forgiveness, love, and inclusivity when observing global trends and a disregard for self-preservation and personal and cultural preferences.

However, expanding our perceptual capacity will not only require a mental shift, but especially an attitude shift

DUALISTIC VISION

Rohr asks this question:  “Can you see the image of Christ in the least of your brothers and sisters? This is Jesus’ only description of the final judgment (Matthew 25). But some say, “They smell. They’re a threat, They’re a nuisance. They’re on welfare. They are a drain on our tax money (we can add – they are carriers of a virus).” Can we see Christ in all people, even the so-called “nobodies” who can’t or won’t play our game (of religion)? When we can see the image of God where we don’t want to see the image of God, then we see with eyes not our own.”

The breeding ground for all conspiracy theories happens through the lenses of dualism.  For many the inconvenience of lockdown became a matter of ‘them’ against ‘us’.  In order to expand our perceptual capacity, we therefore need to obtain a NON-DUALISTIC VISION

This is a challenging concept but critical in building a bigger perceptual capacity.  Many Christians spend most of their lives organizing their theologies around what they believe, personal morality, and neat demarcations of who is “in” and who is “out” of God’s favour and Kingdom. Most of our theologies are often based on “us and them”.  Think about the Protestant mindset rejecting Catholic teaching simply because it is Catholic, and vice versa. Or the reformed reasoning rejecting the charismatic experience, and vice versa.  There are the conservatives and the liberals, the creationists and the evolutionists, the Orthodox and the Evangelical, the revolutionary and the pacifist, the pre-millennium and post-millennium, the persecuted and the prosperous – all reluctant to acknowledge that the other group might possess any wisdom that could be useful for spiritual growth.  The doctrinal walls that block exposed wisdom are endless.  This creates a kind of “tribal” approach to religion, which refers to in-group/out-group thinking.

I am always amazed at how diverse Christians respond to similar issues.  This has been particularly evident over the past few months since COVID-19 became a global household name.  There are those who respond with anguish and sympathy that reflects a willingness to pray and a readiness to reach out.  But there are always those that are attracted to evil and animosity, looking through the lenses of dualism and pointing fingers to the guilty.

Christians who profess the same faith, read the same Scriptures and worship the same Saviour differ comprehensively in their emotional interpretation of the global pandemic.  Dominant convictions are either an attitude of anger or one of anguish.

I was reminded of a visit to Egypt where I questioned one of my dear brothers in Christ, Magdy Saber, about the passage in Exodus 7:3-4 where the Lord proclaims to Moses that He will “harden the heart of Pharaoh and then lay His hand on Egypt with mighty acts of judgment”.

“Why would the Lord harden someone’s heart and then punish that person for his hardened heart?” I asked Magdy. “This does not sound like a just God to me. Maybe, as an Egyptian, you have a cultural explanation for this Scripture.”

Magdy smiled.  “You want to understand everything academically, Mike. In Egypt, we understand the natural implications of how a substance is hardened or softened by the heat of the Egyptian desert sun. If I put a bowl with clay and a bowl of wax in the sun, it will be the same ray of sun that hardens the clay and melts the wax. It is ultimately not the ray of sun that hardens the substance but the content of the substance.  It was not the Lord that hardened the heart of Pharaoh, but the content of his heart that hardened when God spoke to him.

 This truth was a liberating revelation. It explains why some people are deeply touched by an issue and others angered; why some are filled with anguish when confronted with injustice and others moved to fear and anger. It all depends on the content of the heart. COVID-19 will reveal the content of our hearts more than anything else, and when God speaks to us, it will either melt our hearts like wax or harden our hearts like clay.”

More than ever before the world now needs a generation that will have the perceptual ability to view people, events, and circumstances with hearts of wax.  More than ever the world needs to see a generation that reflects a God with a heart of wax.

But it is equally true in any perceptual observation that we cannot see what we do not give attention to.  Perceptual Capacity will not only grow by “looking at the right things” but also by looking through the “right lenses”.

If we suffer from inattentional blindness and do not give attention to finding GOD in global events, daily news, seasonal disasters, and times of suffering we will never be able to expand our perceptual capacity to see a sovereign God at work.

Amazingly, once we start building our perceptual capacity we will soon discover the need to build our SOCIAL CAPACITY. (next week)

You are most welcome to order the book CAPACITY from Mike at thirdwayinfo@gmail.com