Quantum and Integral my Words for 2012

In 2012 I have two words I feel need my personal exploration and deeper engagement; the words quantum and integral. The whole world of experience behind these two words sit at the forefront of a new frontier many of us are just starting to engage as readily as we have the world of cause and effect we have grown up with since we were kids.

I grew up in the Newtonian world and was trained to see the world it that way. Now saying something like that might make you think I was some ridiculous and outlandish thing like a physics nut (sorry physics teachers). Well you would be wrong. I was not, though my Dad made sure we all took advanced science and math because “though you may never use it, it helps you learn to think in new ways!” What I mean is the way the world was presented to me, and therefore the way I experienced it, was very predictable because the world was built on cause and effect. It is the old billiard ball illustration. The cue ball hits the 4 ball and at that angle of contact it will hit the 6 ball go into that bumper on the table and will go in the right corner pocket. There is no mystery to that, if you calculate the angle rightly the outcome is totally waxed. It is predictable, assumed, and certain.

I am not sure about you but that illustration typifies the world I grew up in and the view of the world I had. It wasn’t just the world though it was deeper than that. Newton’s cause and effect and “laws of gravity” even extended to the spirituality and Christianity that I experienced and the way the Bible was “used.” There were laws and principles in the Bible and when rightly applied the outcomes were certain. And since I was in a charismatic context the outcomes were VERY VERY certain. You still find much of this thinking in large segments of Christianity. Faith leads to… real faith will certify these outcomes, and even if you don’t see those outcomes right now, they will come.

Newton’s way of viewing the world is a particular lens. Lens, or as we call them more accurately, paradigms. Paradigms are appropriate to the historical contexts in which they arise. But when a paradigm instead of being a lens through which we view the world becomes in our thinking the “way the world actually is” you leave no room for another para- word….paradox. In fact the history and way that para- is used might be an instructive jump point for this series of posts as we head into the new year.

Para- is a prefix appearing in loanwords from Greek, most often attached to verbs and verbal derivatives, it means “at or to one side of, beside, side by side” (parabola; paragraph; parallel; paralysis, thinking of Jesus – parable ), “beyond, past, by” ( paradox; paragogue ); by extension from these senses, this prefix came to designate objects or activities auxiliary to or derivative of that denoted by the base word ( parody; paronomasia ), and hence abnormal or defective ( paranoia ), a sense now common in modern scientific coinages ( parageusia; paralexia ). As an English prefix, para- may have any of these senses; it is also productive in the naming of occupational roles considered ancillary or subsidiary to roles requiring more training, or of a higher status, on such models as paramedical and paraprofessional: paralegal; paralibrarian; parapolice . (adopted from Online Dictionary.com entry)

In other words para- is either “comparing” by standing to the side or a model done for that comparing or is a prefix for a subsidiary designation, paralegal, one very common in our culture.

The word para-dox is then a subsidiary idea or idea/opinion “off to the side” of “the accepted” or what would be called the “ortho-dox” view. The word paradox as it is often used is a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

What’s my point with the little lexical lesson?

A paradigm (a model to compare things) that leaves no room for a paradox (opinions and new emerging paradigms – to set side by side for comparison) is a paradigm destined to lead it’s adherents to the intellectual junkyard of rusted out, tired out, burned out, used up ideas and ways of viewing the world.

I am still quite influenced by the Newtonian paradigm I was brought up under. But I am under no impression that it IS how the world is. It is simply a lens. But there is a problem. I have worked in the church world my whole life, and I realize that the Newtonian para-digm for many in the world I work in isn’t just a paradigm — a way of viewing the world — it IS the way the world is in their mind.

I want to invite those that are interested into a conversation that can only be hosted at the ecotonic edge of two ecosystems coming together. As the Newtonian world gives way to the Quantum world we will take what we have learned and incorporate it into the new world. And this we will find is one of the earmarks of real human development, when you transcend a previous state you also include it in the new. You don’t always remain an adolescent but when you become a young adult you are transcending but also including the changed voice, body growth and learnings from that stage into the next.

The Quantum world is the next iteration, the next evolutionary click in understanding how our world is. How we do the work of integration and synthesis is critically important to whether the church has a voice, a changed maturing voice, in the future and whether that voice can converse or remains shrill and adolescent.

For at this stage, the church has been moved from the center of the cultural conversation to the edge of the conversation and in some — well many places in the world — isn’t anywhere to be found in the conversation. We can’t hold on to the Newtonian lens all the while telling the world “but this really is how it is.” They have taken off their glasses fashioned by Newton. They see the Emperor is naked, they are just waiting for us in the church to join them.

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Tagged as: 2012, church, conversation, integral, margin, netwon, paradigm, paradox, quantum, theology