The Lord has been breaking me out of some significant theological "boxes" that I was raised in and have functioned in most of my life. While on one hand, this has caused me to "tremble" at times, on the other hand, the fruit of it is of God: I am loving God and others more than ever and have been experiencing a liberty in Jesus that I have not experienced before. And this is increasing the desire in me to know Him as He truly is and to help others know how unbelievably good He is!! This has been coming for a number of years, but I've been aware of a significant "growth spurt" in the past 2-3 years in mindset changes, and it keeps getting better and better. I'm discovering as never before that the gospel really is "good news", as the Lord strips away from my thinking the many "additives" that we as evangelicals have attached to the gospel. (These additives result in making it to not always be such good news after all).
One of the more recent paradigm shifts in me has been in relation to the Scriptures, and this book by Smith has been most helpful in this. Three things convinced me to get the book: first, I trusted the source that recommended it; second, when I read about Smith himself, he made clear that he is not a liberal theologian who is wanting to undermine Scripture; and third, when I saw that his main contention in the book is that God gave us Scriptures for the primary purpose of revealing His Son Jesus, I was hooked!! As I read this book, I experienced a wonderful liberty and inner release from some ways of thinking that set me up to be overly concerned about things that tended towards separating me from others who thought differently and that influenced my mindset about how God views people.
While the shifts that I am experiencing are causing me to see through different eyeglasses now than those of my parents/mentors/teachers and friends who are now present with the Lord, I have a hunch that they would agree with the changes because these changes are leading me to greater love and increasing desire to make known the Person of Jesus Who is, after all, what it's all about!
There is never a time when we stop changing and growing; more than we realize, we are all products of our generation and culture, and I believe we are given this lifetime to be continually renewed in our mind in Christ Jesus, which means letting go of former mindsets handed down to us and taking fuller and stronger hold of the Truth (Jesus). It must be in His light that we see light (Psalm 36:9); in other words, changing our ways of thinking needs to happen with and in Him or else it turns out to be simply change from one form of darkness to another, rather than moving from darkness into increasing Light.
The changing of mindsets is no easy thing; mindsets are strongholds that are not easily dismantled. This book challenges some modern western evangelical mindsets and it may prove difficult for some, but I encourage you to go through it with heart open to the Spirit of God and with the prayer that we could see light in His light. I have found that breaking out of a "box" in which I have felt secure can be scary and can feel so wrong, but when with one hand I hold the hand of Jesus and with the other hand I hold the hand of solid believers in the process, I come through into a new place of freedom and joy.
In no way does this diminish my gratitude for all that I have received from others throughout my life; the Lord knows what I have needed all along the way to get me where I am now, and there will be still more changes in my thinking in the years to come for as long as I live in this age.
I'll close with words from George MacDonald (the author who most influenced C.S. Lewis). He wrote the following to his father in the latter part of the 19th century. The context of the statement was his own journey of breaking out of the theological "boxes" of his time and the pain that accompanies doing so:
"Increase of Truth will always in greater or less degree look like error at first..."
