Q&A: Has your views and understanding changed?

Q: Has your views and understanding changed since you started this journey?

A:  Absolutely!  Without question!

I’ve been asked this question many times… there seems to be some that think that having our views or understanding change is not to be done or is wrong.. but how is that possible?  How is it that I would ever expect to be taught of God, to learn from God and to be hearing from God and having each day of my life God share with me more wisdom, understanding and knowledge and not have that change my views, and increase my understanding, or in many cases have me toss what I’ve thought I knew aside?

See what I’ve come to understand is that it is what one experiences that one lives that brings to us understanding and wisdom and knowledge.  Most of what I said I knew about God, Jesus and the bible was not based on what I had actually lived and experienced first hand …. but more of a “vain repetition” of what I’ve heard taught, other people had said or claimed to have heard from God… and yet upon careful examination of what is in the pages of the bible… that wasn’t the case at all.

Each writer in the bible shares with us what it is that they heard from God, what God made known to them, revealed to them, etc…. and most all of them were not reading other writings before their time… had no scriptures and no other person available in their lives telling them any of those things.

I knew for myself, from an early age as well, that I had within me a “knowing” that I couldn’t explain but that taught me things, showed me things, and even directed me on doing things or not doing them…. without me having ever read the bible, or knowing what it contained within its pages.

However what I also come to understand, as has many I’ve met along this journey, that “knowing” that is within each of us as children, is what we are in most cases taught not to trust in, not to listen to and not to follow…..and wind up “hearkening to the voice of another” who is not GOD or that which is WITHIN US…. which is why we end up finding ourselves in the need of “reconciliation unto God”… as is outlined in the pages of our bibles, which also was the result of Adam having done the same thing.. “hearkened to the voice of another”.

So yes, a great deal has changed in my life… as it does in each of our lives as even we move from childhood to adulthood.  It should.  We should realize that each of us have a very “limited understanding” of all things…. and should be open and willing to learn something new … to consider new understanding as it comes to us.. as well as change how we do things, and our views as we do increase in wisdom and knowledge and understanding.

As the bible directs.. “in all they getting get understanding”… and I don’t see any way possible for that to continue on, if I cling to what I knew yesterday as if that is the sum total of all that there is ever to possibly know in even one regard, much less in light of “all things”!

A passage from the bible speaks volumes on this point to me….

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what [is] that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

If as Paul states to those that were in Rome… a directive to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, then how is it that one is able to renew one’s mind if one is not willing to renew one’s thinking and views??