Be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds; then you will know the good, acceptable and perfect will of God. - Romans 12:2

The term ‘paradigm shift’ is popular in this century. It signifies the changing from one way of thinking and doing to another. We breeze along in life thinking a certain way and Boom!, there is a totally different way of seeing the same issue.

This shifting happened to me during my sophomore year in college. I was striving intently to succeed in academics, financially, and in relationships. But I was hitting a wall. The harder I tried the more I fell short. Yet my persistence only caused me to hit the wall harder. I was not a quitter. I would win.

Part of my ‘winning’ was to understand God the way I wanted him understood. To me he was a beneficent clock-winder, who started the universe and waited for each of us to make a mistake. I knew this to be true because of the pangs of guilt and frustration I would feel whenever I fell short. Publicly it didn’t happen often because I controlled my public image, but internally I was dying from not reaching my self-made standards.

Grace was a concept that changed my paradigm. Grace said God loved me for who I was; I thought that it was up to me to make things right. This paradigm meant God was presently alive and active in human history and my life. I resisted this thinking. But I could not make things right, any more than a dirty man can make himself clean by washing in the mud. Eventually I succumbed…giving credence that this might be true and asking God to validate if it was true…if He was truly there. He did, He was and Is.

I’m not sure what paradigms you hold true that may not be true. If one of them concerns a distant God, you may want to think again.