WHAT'S YOUR PARADIGM?

Every Dad has to experience building a playhouse for their children once in a lifetime, right?   As I embarked upon this great project, I realized that in order to build the rafters for the roof I would need the correct pattern.  So, I built one that would be my paradigm or pattern for the rest.  I had made four of them when I realized that my measurements were incorrect!  I had built four rafters and try as hard as I may, they were not going to fit properly on the playhouse! I had to take them all apart and start all over again.   My paradigm was wrong.  A paradigm is an example, a pattern, a model, or a point of reference. If the paradigm is wrong, then everything else will be wrong!

I recently read an article about a visit that Bill Nye, (the science guy) had made to the Creation Museum at Answers in Genesis Ministries. He said that it’s not crazy to believe that we are descendants of Martians.  At the same time, he argued that believing we may have come from Adam and Eve is a “betrayal” of our intellect.  He was also asked how he can determine what is right and wrong since he believes we are all merely a chance accident of the random meeting of matter evolving over billions of years.  He said,  "I determine right and wrong based on what I feel as a member of the human tribe”.  If this is true, then how can anyone tell anyone else that what they are doing is right or wrong?  If morality is based only on “feelings”, then each person’s version of morality will be quite different!   

This is why, as a culture, we have come to the place where nobody wants to be told what is right or wrong. This is why we have millions of successful adult business men around the world that believe it is “right and good” to have sexual relations with young children and spend huge amounts of money to fly to nations where the child sex trade is flourishing.  This is why we have “ministers” that live in adulterous affairs.  If our version of right and wrong is based on our “feelings,” then anything goes for anyone!

The Bible, however gives us a very different picture!  The Bible clearly gives us the paradigm of morality for life.  Jesus said in Matthew 22:40, that all the law and prophets can be summed up in these two “paradigm commandments” … Love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself!  The moral compass of our life begins with the vertical relationship with God and our love for Him!  Because He loved us first, we can now love Him (1 John 4:19).  If we walk in love, we won’t harm others or talk and gossip behind their back.  If we walk in love, we won’t live in sexual perversion because we understand our bodies are the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:18-20).  If we walk in love, we won’t lie about others or cheat others or steal from others.  If we walk in love, murder is not even a thought because Jesus said those that hate another is as if they have murdered in their heart!

Many people’s lives, even Christian's lives, are so messed up and off track because they have chosen to pattern their lives after their own feelings, or the opinions of popular culture or what is fashionable and politically correct today!  Just as I did with the roof of that playhouse, we must have the correct paradigm or pattern for life or else everything else will be off!  God's Word alone is the correct paradigm for our lives!  Look to God’s Word and Him alone!  He is the Creator of the universe and His ways are righteous (always right!).  "The LORD is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works, "  Psalm 145:17.
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