Always Taught

A US Senator just changed his mind about gay marriage.  He found out, to his dismay, that he has a gay son.  The Senator had a belief based upon what he was always taught.  "This is what my church, culture, religion always taught," is how we hear it.  The teaching then comes up against a new personal experience.  The Senator finds out that he has a son who is gay.  The Senator loves his son.  He knows his son.  The Senator now has an experience of a gay person in his life, a flesh and blood experience that challenges the intellectual knowledge about gay people and gay marriage that he had held so rigidly.  Result?  Senator changes his mind, in this case, about gay marriage laws.

As Jesus grew up, he was taught about the long standing beliefs of his religion.  Then he had an experience of God as "Abba."  This intimate and personal experience of God moved Jesus into another direction as regards the Kingdom, the Messiah, the Sinner, the Gentile.  Others had only the teaching, not the experience.  Jesus' experience did not try to change the teaching.  That would have been more rules and laws not much different from the ones in the Book.  Until the person is changed, by an experience, usually interpersonal, they will be stuck in "as we always taught" mentality.  The past can be a place of safety, but rarely a place of transformation.