The category entitled ‘Core Beliefs’ is my attempt to identify and explore some of the key words and concepts – the lyrics, to continue my ‘song’ analogy – which our culture has embraced as ‘goods’.
We have been dazzled by their glow and dazzle, but the joy, freedom and flourishing they promise cannot be found in them. They are mere mirages, leaving thirsty souls dry and gasping, while luring them ever further from the well of living water.
We need to identify them and to understand the promise they offer to the culture, in order to recognise the specific needs people are seeking to have met, that we might meet them exactly at the place of that need.
These lyrics include: autonomy, control, liberty, rights, individualism.
Some of them – love, dignity, justice – are good things, but our culture’s understanding of them has been severely warped. We need to understand what people hear when we say ‘love’, and learn how to deconstruct that understanding and build a new framework in its place.