[Tension & Renewal - V]
In Thomas Kuhn's The Structures of Scientific Revolution he makes a case for why science evolves through dramatic paradigm shifts rather than slow evolution. Paradigm shifts are “forced" upon a field of study when the field is confronting with an inability to incorporate and explain some phenomenon.
The same is true in religion. Religion seeks to explain the depth of human experience until it can’t. Then it must shift. The old paradigm must be replaced with a new one, and this either happens naturally when the gatekeepers of the old finally die off or there’s an undeniable breakthrough in insight.
Either way, the new paradigm, which is merely a new way to explain something old, appears destructive; the old appears the victim.
Spiritual renewal often looks like a paradigm shift.Both promising and destructive. Both refreshing and cataclysmic. Both hopeful and full of tension.
Something always dies before it’s reborn. Sometimes rebirth looks like a paradigm shift.
