Rich Dixon is thinking about new ways to think:

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I’m thinking about this short parable.

“Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”

It’s culturally unfamiliar to us because we don’t typically put wine in wineskins. But to Jesus’ audience, it would have made perfect sense.

And anyway, it really wasn’t about wine or wineskins.

Jesus wants us to open our minds to something brand new, this idea of a kingdom here and not yet. A kingdom in which we are fully members. A kingdom with radical values like sacrificial service and forgiveness.

A kingdom based on love for and acceptance of our neighbors.

Like Jesus’ audience, we tend to cling to cherished ways of thinking. We attempt to stuff his teaching into that box.

In the wineskins parable, he tells us it won’t work. Jesus’ radical proclamations simply won’t fit into old patterns of thought.

I’ve told you before how people occasionally bristle at the discussion of human trafficking.

Prostitution is a choice.

Why don’t the women just leave?

What kind of parents would sell a child into slavery?

Teenagers who decide to run away from home could just as easily choose to return. It’s their fault if they’re vulnerable.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

I’ve learned not to argue. These folks are, for now, unable to absorb a radical new idea into a safe, comfortable mindset. Convincing them isn’t my job.

How do I know? Because I was one of them, until Jesus touched my heart and opened my mind to a new way of thinking.

I suspect we’re all “Pharisees” on some subject or other, convinced we’re right no matter what.

Where are you and I trying to fit Jesus’ radical teaching into our comfortable ways of thinking?