Yeah, I knew it all. I had been taught all the rules for living. And I had learned what worked and didn't. I knew how all families worked because I had been part of one. I knew what moms did because I had one. I knew what Dads did too! I understood all of society in fact!
I know. We all go through it. Sometimes people grow out of it and sometimes they don't completely ever grow out of it. But I think most people carry a bit of it with us for most of our lives. It shows up in insidious places and ideas. We learn early some rules for living and cement them firmly into our brains as if ideas and thinking is static and must be captured like a photograph, not flow like a river.
But when do we start to really question what we think we already know? When do we take the information and really examine it and find out what is absolute fact, what is opinion, what is a style or preference, and what is just wrong?
I read a story about a woman who was cooking a pot roast and before she put it in the pan she cut the end off of it. Her daughter who was watching to learn asked why she did that, and her answer was "Well my mom always did" and it got her thinking about why, so she called her mom, who said "well I don't know, MY mom always did" so they got Grandma on the phone and asked the question of why she cut the end off the pot roast. Grandma's reply was "Well, my pan was too short, so I cut the end off of it."
So very many things in our lives are like that. We are creatures of habit, and we don't much like change, so rather than change, we continue to do the things the way they have always been done, never questioning why or whether they should be done that way. It is *safer* to not question things. You know the old adage, if it isn't broken, don't fix it. We are conditioned to not look too very closely at what we know, but to follow the rules as they are laid out for us. After all they work, and who wants to take a risk after all. But, what if?
What if what we are so sure we know, like the pot roast just doesn't make sense? It was a good plan for Grandma to cut the end of the roast but it just didn't apply to everyone. What if there are many good ways to do things and come up with different but good results?
Every day we are bombarded with advertisement disguised as news stories, or articles we read that teach us what truth is. We are constantly informed about how we should live, eat, what to wear, how to think, spend our money, time, resources, how to parent, believe, drive, what to watch, how to smell, you know...the CORRECT way to live our lives. I know people who can't fathom never shopping at the mall, or adhering to the most recent trends in child rearing or who feel left out if they have a 3 year old car or not the latest iPhone. This goes deeper than consumerism. This is about never questioning what is right, and what we absolutely know to be true.
In the old Testament there is frequent mention of tearing down the high places. Sure it was a literal thing but there is a figurative meaning here too. Tearing down high places in our lives and thoughts, and allowing ourselves to examine what we think and believe is so important. The civil rights movement and women's movement are such good examples of this. People just knew that this is how things should be, and never questioned it and when someone came along who did, and then several someone's it was met with an outcry of rage. NO! THIS is how things are SUPPOSED to be!
Some even claimed that the Bible taught-even mandated- the discrimination. It was an attitudinal barrier to change and I think we have our minds riddled with them.
Do we allow ourselves to question the high places? Or do we just get defensive when someone suggests something that causes us to re examine what we believe? Maybe we examine it and find out we were holding an incorrect belief, and maybe, just maybe we were wrong. A lifetime of wrong, pride, even embarrassment, shouldn't cause us to be unwilling to change. Maybe we were right, but how can you ever be sure unless you check?
I find them in myself all the time. I find myself thinking certain ways, and when I question them, sometimes I find that it was me just cutting the end off of a roast.
