Let's Think Big Picture!

What do you believe is the most common human response to change?

I believe it is fear. 

Simply put we humans are fearful of change—period!

Change makes us uncomfortable. It destabilizes our center of gravity. It moves us outside our personal comfort zone. It pushes us away from the familiar.

The unknown that change often creates exasperates our fear.

There have been two monumental changes that have occurred in our lifetimes that may have gone unnoticed by the multitudes but nonetheless have created incredible undeniable consequences.

First, the America we now live in is not your grandparent’s America! 

For some of us it isn’t even our parent’s America.

I am an early born Baby Boomer (1947) and quite frankly I no longer recognize the America of my youth.

In many respects the America I grew up in no longer exists. I am not sure when it all began to morph into the America of today but I suspect it was shortly after the boring and placid 1950s gave way to the turbulent 1960s.

There are so many things that are different now from when I was a youngster, too many things in fact to cite in this brief post. I am sure you can recall many things that are now different about our country from when you were young.

But from where I sit now one major paradigm shift has taken place that has created so much angst and fear among people like myself. A paradigm shift is “a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions.”

So what is that first major paradigm shift that is creating so much fear: Well privileged white people are no longer writing the great American story, or at least we are not the sole authors of the great American narrative.

We once were. We no longer are.

No doubt this is what lies behind much of the fear and angst of so many white people today. We are losing our grip on the power hold we have had or believed we had over our nation for the past 240 years.

We may no longer be the dominant voice in America today.

But this is just my sense of what lies behind the divisiveness and turmoil that seems to characterize the American scene today. America is changing demographically in ways that are upsetting the power structures that have been in place for over two hundred years.

Could it be that this is what is behind much of the anger so many white people are feeling?

Secondly there is a huge religious paradigm shift taking place in the way we Americans understand God. 

In the Christian world of our parents and grandparents God was viewed as being “up there in heaven.” He was what Diana Butler Bass calls the “Sky God.” He was in control from afar. He interfered every now and again but for the most part remained distant. He lived in heaven.

Christianity was an “elevator religion” in which people were hoping to ascend into heaven when they die, leaving the earth to its own devices.

Simply put, God was in heaven up there and we  earth creatures lived down here hoping to get to where God is: In heaven!

About fifty or so years ago this conventional view of God began to give way to a view in which God was here among us, that heaven was coming to earth in the final renewal of all things.

The earth and its care has now begun to matter to people of faith because they no longer accept the narrative that God is going to destroy the earth and transport some to heaven and consign many to eternal damnation.

Yet many postmodern pilgrims are discovering a spirituality that is not tied to an institutional church or its understanding of a theistic God who lives far away. It is a form of spirituality that has been cut loose from its conventional understanding of a God that no longer works for so many—including myself.

Two major paradigm shifts have occurred that have created untold amounts of angst and fear among us. One is secular and the other is religious. They are not the same but somehow they are related.

These two major paradigm shifts taken together are affecting us all.

I believe there is hope beyond all this change and fear we are experiencing today. It doesn’t seem like it for sure but I believe that this time will pass once we adjust ourselves to these new changing realities. We can fight all this change but to no avail. We can’t reinvent the good old days. The 1950s are gone forever.

There will of course be continued kicking and screaming, scapegoating, fear mongering and posturing to bring back the good old days. This is a natural response though not the preferred one I am afraid!

Yet America will continue to evolve. What we become is still unknown. But one things is certain:

Change will always be a big part of our lives.

Am I off target here?

Am I missing something?

What do you think?