core belief's and evidenced based belief

OK so that sounds quite a heavy title for a post but hopefully it won’t be as heavy as all that!

Over the past couple of weeks in counselling we have chatted around issues of ‘core beliefs’ some of my core beliefs being that I am useless, stupid, ugly, no one likes me, unable to do anything, the list could go on! Pretty much all my core belief’s are negative. As if you needed to know that!

She said that core beliefs are really set during childhood, we develop our core beliefs through what our parents & other influential adults tell us and then they are set and it becomes difficult to change them.

So what about the evidence based belief part of this? Well my counsellor was saying that when we have core beliefs we always look for evidence that supports those core beliefs and dismiss evidence that doesn’t support them, so for example, I see myself as stupid, I build this belief up by looking for all the evidence to support it, when I don’t know the answers to the things people ask or I cant solve a problem etc and dismiss all the clever things I manage to do, when I manage to solve problems or sort things out for myself or for others. Yep that about sums me up!

How else can someone who as a Transport Manager was head hunted on more than one occasion because they thought I was good at the job manage to decide that he is stupid? Quite simply, I dismiss others belief that I am pretty good at it by saying they don’t really know me, etc.

Anyhow, you can see how this whole issue swims round and round in circles, for me I am working very hard on trying to correct some of my core beliefs because I know that others do not share the same view of me that I share of myself, as has been evidenced by some of the things they say and the way that they have spoken about me, I must dig out that list of positive things people spoke about/over me a few months back.

Having gone through my childhood believing that I was useless, ugly, stupid etc I have carried those beliefs into adult life and perfected the belief in my own mind so it takes a lot to over come those beliefs and I need to constantly look for and validate the evidence that supports the opposite views to those that I have thus far believed. After all, as my wife regularly says, do I want to believe the things that my parents said about me when I was a child (and my mother continues to say to this day) or will I believe the things that those who are nearest to me and who love me most say about me? Well there is no contention really when you put it like that BUT life is never quite as easy, its not a matter of flicking a switch and hey presto your mind set has changed.

OK now for the other part of this post, hadn’t intended to write most of the above! What I really wanted to say was, it occurred to me earlier today that the vast majority of people, even those who are highly educated and respected leaders in the field of science, can and do fall into the trap of developing core beliefs then looking for evidence to support their belief rather than looking at all the evidence before forming a belief, indeed it would be pretty impossible to do the latter as the evidence sometimes changes over time.

So, for example, many years ago people believed that the world was flat and the whole of their world view was based in the belief that the world was flat, they never challenged this because all the evidence (that the found) pointed to the world being flat, it took a lateral thinker to challenge this assumption and re-define the whole way we saw the world when he discovered that the world was actually a globe, can you imagine what it would be like if we still thought the world was flat?

There are still those who don’t believe that smoking causes any health problems, these people will point to the evidence of great uncle bob or granddad who at the age of 90+ is still going strong and has smoked 40 a day fro most of their life, indeed if you look only at this evidence you can see why people come to the conclusion that smoking cant be that bad for you, but that is to dismiss the huge number of deaths each week from the effects of smoke, lung cancer etc.

Another example might be the pro & anti Europe camps in this country, those who are anti Europe will look for all the beurocratic decisions all the stupid rules, the costs to us as a nation of being a part of the community whereas those who believe we should be in Europe will look at all the benefits, the grants we receive the good laws that come out of Europe (at which point the euro sceptics say what good laws?) the investment and security the EU offers us, oh and before you ask, I am pretty neutral on the issue of Europe!

When is comes to faith, religious beliefs, we all have a faith, whether we acknowledge it or not, and our faith usually provides the basis of our world view, for some their faith is a belief on God, in some form or another, for others it is a belief that there is no God, whichever camp you fall into I can guarantee that you look for the evidence to support that belief rather than looking at the evidence that exists to see what it tells you, your thought patterns are affected by your belief system.

As a Christian I freely admit that I look for, and see, evidence of God’s creative work in every day life, I can see the way that he has created and written DNA into every living thing, the way that he made the planet to be such a beautiful place, the way that he made everything good.

Of course those who are evolutionists will point to the glaciers and carbon dating and various other aspects of the world to show how clear it is that the world was formed out of a big bang and we are all evolved from microscopic beings, or whatever is their particular conviction of how we came to be.

The evidence on any side can and will be overwhelming to the people who hold to that particular belief.

So, who can claim to have THE answers and know the truth? Well I believe that the truth can only be known separate from the ‘evidence’ and comes out of an inner evidence, as a Christian I have had a personal encounter with God and know from my inner evidence that he exists and that there is truth to be discovered, however I can not provide you the reader with evidence that will sway you because you will filter all the evidence based on your pre-conceived views and beliefs.

Many people who have grown up with an abusive father have struggled with the concept of God as Father, until recently, well the past couple of years, I would have denied this was me, I could relate to the concept of God as father, but the truth is that I still had a wrong perception, I have always believed that I pretty much sneaked into the kingdom, I wasn’t actually chosen, at the meeting where I went forward to give my life to God I was just one of a number of people and I have always felt that when I stood there God looked at me and just said ‘oh you came forward too did you? OK I will let you in’ this view was really due to the relationship I had with my parents in growing up, always feeling as if I was just tolerated rather than loved, not wanted but there, not being kicked out but still not really being welcomed as a valued part of the family. This mind set has been really clear in the way I have felt about going through the depths of depression over the past couple of years.

Are there issues where you filter evidence through your own belief system rather than filter your belief system through all the evidence open to you? I know that there are still definitely areas that I need to work on, areas where I still believe things and stack the evidence in support of that belief. Mainly for me in relation to my perception of myself, but bit by bit I am dismantling my belief system in an effort to rebuild it on the security of all the evidence available.

==================================================

The following is the text of an e-mail I have received in response to this blog post, Mike (the author) is a photographer who's blog I have been following with some interest over the past few months, He lives in the same area as me and I am hoping to get out with him so that he can teach me camera techniques and help me improve my photography skills. As he says, his response is too long a comment to have left directly on my blog so he chose to e-mail it to me, I am copying it into the end of the original post because it adds soem very thought provoking ideas to my original post, if you wish to find out more about Mike he can be found on his own website here.

=======================================================

Hi David

Well, as you'll have now discovered, I've stumbled across your blog.

That's what you get for posting a link to it on Twitter! Heh heh.

Anyway, I wrote this *huge* comment to one of your posts only to find that blogspot wouldn't accept it cos it had "too many characters". A bit reluctant to then just consign it to the recycle bin, thought I'd email it to you. Do with it what you will.

Here 't is...

=============

Well, I've now returned the favour and bookmarked your blog ;)

Discovered through one of your tweets, and rather pleased about it I am too for this is a fascinating post. Most thought-provoking. And one with which I can only too easily identify. That's to say, the opening paragraphs.

I don't think I've ever phrased it to myself in quite such terms but for as long as I can remember I've always had an awareness that my perception of myself is very frequently at odds with the perception of me that others appear to hold. And generally the latter tends to be rather more positive than the former.

Which in effect, if I've understood you correctly, is pretty much the same as you're saying.

Perhaps I should qualify that for I'm not entirely happy with the terms "positive" and "negative", in the sense that "positive" could be taken to imply "good" or "nice" or whatever, and that's not quite what I meant.

More accurate perhaps would be to say that others' perceptions of my abilities and competencies frequently appear kindlier than my own.

What I'd not connected this disparity with however was the influence my early years viz parents etc may have had in the forming of my self-perception.

Its a fascinating and persuasive notion, and one to which I can see myself giving considerable thought.

But leaving that aside, you then go on to talk of people falling "into the trap of developing core beliefs then looking for evidence to support their belief rather than looking at all the evidence before forming a belief" and, as you rightly observe, in some circumstances it would be almost impossible to do otherwise.

This too set me to thinking. About the statement itself, and about the assumption implicit in the statement, which becomes much clearer with your closing remark. An assumption, moreover, that I suspect we all tend to make... that "evidence" is in some fashion more valid than "belief".

Particularly if we're equating validity with "closeness to the truth".

("Closeness to the facts"? Hmm. Even a statement as apparently simple as this raises profound questions.)

But I wonder if such an assumption is justified?

Here's a few random thoughts...

Can "evidence" be said to exist "in isolation" as it were? Or does it not, rather, derive its status from the interpretation we put upon it?

Even to the extent of deciding which factors are relevant and therefore constitute "evidence" and which factors should be discarded as irrelevant?

Is it not possible that the whole notion of "evidence" is little other than a product of our own perception of "reality"? And if so, would that not actually render it, paradoxically, a product of belief?

It seems to me that the attraction of restructuring (or attempting to

restructure) one's life upon "the evidence" in preference to core beliefs resides in the assumption that in some way "the evidence" is more accurate, more truthful, or more representative of "reality" (or however you wish to express it) than belief may be.

Yet, as you so rightly observe, "evidence sometimes changes over time".

Thus, how would we know, were we to structure our lives upon the evidence available today, that such evidence wouldn't change (or, more pertinently, even be proven wrong by the discovery of more complete evidence for example) tomorrow?

And if there is an "absolute reality" and the evidence available to us at any given time can only ever be reflective of our circumscribed knowledge and/or understanding of that absolute reality and therefore (and inevitably) incomplete, how wise can it be to structure our lives upon such an incomplete (and possibly completely mistaken) basis?

(Bringing this principle right back down to "our own doorstep", how can others' perceptions of us constitute any form of reliable evidence when their knowledge of us is far less complete than our own?)

Is it even possible to attempt such an undertaking? How would we know, for example, that we have all the available evidence at our disposal?

Could it not be that actions based on partial evidence may be more erroneous than actions based purely on belief?

And in fact would those actions themselves not be based upon belief...

the belief that we have all the available evidence at our disposal?

Dilemmas indeed!

I think the thing I find most worrying about this is the sense that an "evidence-based life" (for want of a better term) hints of a very mechanistic (one might almost say materialistic) approach, and seems to allow little room for "movements of the Spirit".

And that, so it seems to me, goes against the available evidence of what humans actually are, or how they live their lives in reality.

There's another paradox for you!

I doubt if any reasonable person would argue with the notion that certain things are susceptible of being decided upon the basis of the evidence. One example you've used is that of the harmful effects of smoking.

I can't imagine any reasonable person (even smokers) disputing that smoking can be (and generally is) seriously injurious of health. And such a conclusion is based purely upon the available evidence alone.

However, such examples don't (so it seems to me) necessarily or even logically lead to the inference that everything should be (or needs to

be) evidence-based.

Let's return to the matter of perceptions of self... one's own and those of others.

In my own particular case, were I to "buy into" the evidence offered by other peoples' perceptions of my abilities in certain areas then its distinctly conceivable that my efforts to improve in those areas would be significantly less than efforts based upon my own perception of such abilities.

In other words, its entirely conceivable that one's own lesser perceptions of oneself can be the motivation to strive to improve. And surely that is a good thing. Isn't it?

My own "spiritual path" (which, as you may have realised by now, goes by a somewhat different name to yours... though I tend not to place too much significance upon mere labels) demands of me a constant striving, which effort can only ever be based upon my own perception of myself and my shortcomings. Were I to allow it to be otherwise then its entirely conceivable that such striving wouldn't be anywhere near as rigorous.

Or so I believe ;)

And (returning to an earlier point) should validity even be equated to "closeness to the truth"? How can we ever know what such "truth" is (in any absolute sense) when it must forever be filtered through (or coloured by... whichever you prefer) our exclusively human perceptions? Would it not then make more sense to equate validity to relevancy?

And if relevancy be that which has the greatest potential for impacting our lives, or actually does impact and motivate us to the greater extent, then it seems to me that belief is far more valid than evidence.

Hmm. I've just re-read everything I've written and it strikes me as sounding somewhat challenging. Its not intended in that way. Its all just speculation reflective of my own virtually constant uncertainty about... oh... almost everything. Apart from my core beliefs of course

;)

fotdmike

=============

all the best

mike

Prospects

Ok so those who know anything about us will know that myself and Joy are the proud parents of 2 children with learning difficulties, we adopted them so in a sense chose to accept them with their difficulties and disabilities.

One of the things we have felt is a part of our ministry is getting the church to accept those who have disabilities, especially learning difficulties/disabilities, as valued and important members of the church community.

In our fellowship we have had a guy coming along for some time who has learning difficulties and it hasn’t always been easy to know how to handle him, its been interesting to see how he seems to have been accepted by some, alongside our own 2 children who are by and large made to feel right at home, although some are still very nervous and frightened of Steven because his behaviour can seem rather strange, I don’t say this to condemn or criticise these people because I am not sure I would have reacted any different towards him if it wasn’t for the fact that we adopted him, although, given time, they seem to have been accepted on the whole.

Anyhow, when we did our building project a couple of years back one of the main objectives of the project was to remove as many of the physical barriers to worship for those with disabilities, improved A/V facilities, better layout & lighting, disabled toilet, generally much more accessible buildings, it has been my hope that our church, and the church at large, would take on the call to reach out to those with disabilities, especially learning difficulties, as they represent one of the largest un-reached communities in this nation, but it requires more than just improved buildings to allow those with learning difficulties to participate in our services, it takes an attitude of acceptance and welcoming.

It is far easier to accommodate someone with physical disabilities because all you have to do is adapt the building, in order to accept those with learning disabilities you need to adapt the people, which can be so much harder! However it is a challenge that the church has to rise to, the Disability Discrimination Act gives us a legal responsibility to ensure that we adapt to the needs of those with disability but it is so difficult to legislate for attitudes of mind, yes we have complied with the physical requirements of the act, as so many companies and organisation have done so, but we also need to comply with the spirit, indeed, we as the church, as those who seek to Love God and Love others, should be streaks ahead, we should be showing the world how to be accepting and welcoming instead of just complying with the law we should go over and above it, find the Gold standard and aim for that, if our faith means anything to us it means that we love other human beings wholeheartedly, regardless of their background and abilities and we accept people who are not like us as if they are our brothers and sisters, this is easier to do with people of other nations and colours but those with learning difficulties frighten the average person on the street, mainly because of ignorance I am not using that word in a critical way, we are all ignorant of something we know nothing about, we don’t know about or have regular contact with people with disability so we are ignorant of them and their needs/ways and this makes us frightened, being honest, even though I am the father of 2 children with disabilities (one of which has quite profound learning disabilities) I too am afraid of some of the adults I have come across, both in my role as driver for Social Services and in my day to day life, in-fact I recall a few months ago a discussion at one of the leadership meetings about the guy who had been coming to church, it was said that people feel uncomfortable around him, he is a pretty big guy, and I had to confess that I am just as nervous as everyone else BUT it is our responsibility to overcome these fears and prejudices and not allow those fears and prejudices to become barriers to them coming to know the God who loves them just as they are.

So, why say this now? well this morning we had a group from Acorn Fellowship joined us for our morning service, they are Causeway Prospects group working with adults with learning difficulties. We have had some involvement with them, at one time I used to drive one of the minibuses for Acorn and we have come across causeway at Grapevine and they ran a session on Worship Academy so we were pretty much familiar with what they do, it was good to see them here this morning and to have a number of the guys from Acorn share with us this morning, several spoke, including Ruth, who runs the Bedford Monday meeting (meets in our premises) and Julie who had the original vision to run this project, which has been running for 18 years now.

After the service myself and Joy were chatting to Julie, we were saying how it would be good to see some of these folk incorporated into local fellowships as well as being a part of the Acorn group, several already go along to one church or another, when one of the guys (Graham) approached Julie and said he would like to come along to our church every week! Well if that’s not God speaking I don’t know what is!

So, next week we are going to pick up Graham and another guy, and bring them to church with us, the idea is that they will start coming every week, they will hopefully come on the church minibus but for the first couple of weeks we will bring them in so that they get familiar with us and people they can relate to and know they can approach us if they have any problems.

It is going to be interesting to see how they get on and how well the fellowship adapts to incorporate them into the fellowship, they could well mess up our nice neat and organised services and cause a bit of disruption but this is a challenge that we will have to rise to, they are just as valuable in the eyes of God as the rest of us and they deserve the time and space to meet with him just as much as we do.

I think that there is going to be a period of adjustment on the fellowship until we get used to having Graham & Andrew around but the challenges they will bring will be exceeded by the blessings that come from following Jesus commands to minister to ‘the least of these people’ so exciting times are in store for the fellowship.

Time to crank up the profile of disability issues, I have for a while wanted to see if we could organise and run a disability awareness day for churches in the town, in-fact it was only earlier this week that David G forwarded an e-mail (sent to my work address) from Pete Windmill, asking if I had any further thoughts on the issue of having such a seminar, this is one of the things I had mentioned to Julie, apparently it is every much on her heart to have such an event so I think it is likely to be down to her to organise! I will offer our buildings to host the event, and help where and if I can but that help is likely to be limited at the moment because of my own health issues.

MP's Expenses, an alternative view!

I have decided it is time for me to stick my head above the parapet on the issue of MP’s Expenses.
I will open my post with the words of Jesus in John 8:7 ‘When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."
OK so who is without sin on this issue? On the whole the MP’s have actually not broken the law just exploited the system, yes this is taking advantage of loopholes and making personal gain out of it but who doesn’t?
There are expectations and it seems clear that, in a small number of cases there have been very blatant and serious lawbreaking but on the whole it is either exploiting and taking advantage of the rules or minor misdemeanours.
Have you ever brought home a pen from the office? Ever used the office phone to make personal calls or used work time to surf the net fro that bargain holiday?
Have you ever been given gifts by suppliers at Christmas? Is this right? Is there a difference?

I know that in the industry I used to work, Transport within the Building industry, the giving and receiving of gifts was common place, and yes there were times that this influenced who received work/contracts or preferential treatment in one way or another.
Oh yes I hear you say that the difference is that it’s the Taxpayer being fiddled in this case well in many cases the taxpayer will have footed the bill for these fiddles as some of the projects were road building or infrastructure projects and even where it wasn’t the taxpayer footing the bill the additional cost would have been added on to the final price of, say, the house building project so individual members of the public will have been footing the bill.
AND let’s take it a stage further, what about tax declarations? Who, if they knew they could get away with it, would accidentally ‘forget’ to put some small item on their tax form or even inflate a tax deductible item or try claiming tax deduction on an item not used for work? I would hazard a guess that there are a good few tax forms each year that are economical with the truth, the fact is that the majority of the British public are at it, or would be if they thought they could get away with it.
Take another example, buying alcohol/cigarettes from France, now many of us exploit the tax laws to buy cheap booze or cigarettes from abroad? OK yes it’s legal but is it a loophole? And let’s twist the thumb turns a notch, what about buying for a mate? Well that is not legal, the law says that what you buy and import must be for your personal consumption so who doesn’t agree to buy some supplies for a friend whilst they are ‘over there’
And what about the black market economy? This is where people work for cash instead of providing an invoice and putting it through the books. Have you ever asked a tradesman to do a job and he has offered you a discount ‘for cash’? Have you agreed? Well you have been complicit in an act of fraud.
I am not wishing to generalise and accuse everyone in the UK of fiddling, most of us are generally law abiding citizens but even so we are prepared to exploit the rules even if we won’t consciously break the law, personally I try to keep within the law but I know that there have been times that I have strayed the wrong side of the law and got away from it! There are more times where I have taken advantage of the anomalies to reduce the amount of tax I have had to pay.
So what am I saying? Am I condoning the MP’s and their actions? No certainly not!
BUT don’t go too hard on the MP’s because after all they are human, just like you and me, yes they should be there to look after the interests of the people they are elected to serve but at the same time they are entitled to claim expenses and to have money coming in for the hours of work and energy they put into trying to run this country.
I have a feeling this subject just won’t go away but for one am extremely bored of it already and I would love to have the same kind of scrutiny be made of the reporters and media barrons who are making such a big deal of this situation because from what I know the media industry is among the worst for this sort of practice.
Therefore I come back to the words of Jesus ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone’
The passage goes on to say: ‘Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."

Notice he didn’t say she was without sin he just told her to mend her ways; I have a feeling that the MP’s will be much more scrupulous in their expenses from now on, at least for a few years! However, what about other industries? Will they continue in their ways or will they actually clean up their acts as well? My guess is they will only clean up their act if and when they are caught out.