Acts 11:18 (ESV)

When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

In an instant the members of the circumcision party change their mind about their fundamental organizing principle – the preeminence of circumcision. What are they going to call themselves now?

This has to be a miracle because people don’t change their mind that quickly. The human mind processes everything in terms of patterns. This is essential because otherwise the information coming in from our eyes and ears would overload our brains. These patterns are formed based on experience.

For example, when you don’t understand some words someone said, you can’t go back to the original sounds to try and figure it out. Those sounds were converted to syllables before you even “heard” them. All you can do is guess similar sounding syllables that might fit. Likewise, we have to learn to see. Until familiar patterns are formed, the visual information is indecipherable. This explains Mark 8:22-25.

And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. (ESV)

What happened to the circumcision party is similar but in a more general sense. Instead of just about how they process images or syllables, this is about their worldview – how they process everything.

The dictionary defines worldview as, “How someone looks at the world.” That’s weak; it’s how we perceive the world. What we already know forms the framework into which everything else must fit.

This means that everyone is biased. When people see something that contradicts their worldview, they can’t take it in. They don’t have a way to interpret what they’re seeing, plus it threatens the structure of their framework. Pull out one piece, and the whole thing collapses like a house of cards. Revising your worldview requires careful planning; you need to end up with a new framework that holds together.

This is important because when someone converts to Christianity, all this has to change. They have to come around to a Christian worldview, which is totally different from a non-believer’s worldview. That’s an enormous task.

Of course it takes a miracle.

For more see https://www.ailbe.org/columns/crosfigell/item/11644-without-beginning-without-foundation

Lift up your children’s Sunday School program today. It’s a lot easier to construct a Christian worldview from scratch than to change an already formed non-Christian one. Pray for more teachers too.

The weekly study guides, which include discussion questions, are available for download here:

https://www.ailbe.org/resources/itemlist/category/91-deep-studies