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Author: Matik Nicholls

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The Fire Series: Christianity – The ‘Both And’ Religion

So many squabbles and schisms in the church occur because we think that Christianity is an ‘either or’ religion when, in fact, it’s more of an ‘both and’ religion. If you have read the bible to any significant degree, there are inescapable tensions between seemingly contradictory concepts. I have seen people deal with these paradoxical concepts in two ways:

  1. You ignore the concepts that you don’t like or that doesn’t mesh with your existing inclinations and mentalities and hold on to the ones that do. This is the ‘either or’ way.
  2. You embrace the paradox and strive to practice both realities in your Christian walk. This is the ‘both and’ way.

Richard Rohr talks a lot about this. He calls it duality thinking versus contemplative thinking. Our Western minds, according to Rohr, are wired in binary. Something is either A or B; it can’t be both. This thinking limits our ability to express the fullness of kingdom realities. An example of this is law versus grace.

In some quarters of the church, legalism (an emphasis on keeping the commandments of God) is what is preached. Antagonists of the law camp may point out that that is Old Testament thinking while we are now in the New Covenant of grace. To which they would rightly respond that Jesus said that not one iota will pass from the law until all is fulfilled and whoever relaxes one of the least of the commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom and whoever does and teaches them will be called great (Mat 5:17-19). Not to mention Jesus also said those who love Him, obey His commands (John 14:15).

The grace camp emphasizes the sovereign grace of God that wiped out the requirement of the law through the sacrifice of Christ. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So no longer are we focused on obeying a set of rules but receiving the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness through Jesus Christ (Ro 5:15-21).

So, which is it? Do we focus on obeying the law or receiving the gift? The answer is both! In Ro 6 Paul addresses the issue… He says, “What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” The ‘both and’ Christian knows that his righteousness is not through obedience but through Christ alone, but the fruit of the free gift of abundant grace is a delight in obedience to Christ!

Another example is free will versus determinism, but I’m not even going to try to get into that one within the limited confines of this blog. I will leave you to ponder that one on your own (check Romans 9).

Suffice to say that God is not as clear cut and logical as we might like. He is after all the Lion and the Lamb who saved us, yet we are still working out our salvation, both by faith and by works. (You catch my drift?) Let’s not try to put His ways into neat little boxes but instead transform our mind and by the Spirit search out the mysteries of His glorious kingdom!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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When Children Are Our Idols

 

I think that we can love our children too much. Well, actually that’s not true; we can never love too much but we can have a counterfeit love for our children that is more akin to worship. Our whole life is for them. We say things like, “Mommy will do anything for you baby.” Will we really? I hope not. “You are my sun, my heart, the centre of my world.” I really wonder if we understand the ramifications of statements like that? It sounds great; like something a dedicated, loving parent would say but is it really?

According to a Time article by Jennifer Moses, “The problem with all this, aside from how silly it is, is that children who are the center of their parents’ lives become brats. Children whose parents put their kids’ entertainment, social lives, futures, and schedules ahead of their own well-being soon learn that there is only one important person in the room, and that person is the person whose short life has already been captured on endless video clips. This is not good. This is not good at all. Not for the kid. Not for the grownup. Not for the family dog.”

Children who are worshipped, grow up believing they are gods and believe that everyone will bend to their will as their parents have for their entire short lives. These ‘helicopter parents’ swoop in to clean up every mess and comfort every discomfort, robbing their charges of the necessary coping skills and character development that can only come from unmet expectations, disappointments, failures and the sometimes unfair hard-knocks of life. These poor children often suffer from depression and maladjustment as they encounter the real world outside their little personal kingdom.

Many of these parents may actually have co-dependent relationships with their kids; dependent on them for affirmation and love. According to Psychology Today, here are 5 signs that you are in a co-dependent relationship (To look at this from a parental point of view I substituted ‘partner’ with ‘child’):

  1. Does your sense of purpose involve making extreme sacrifices to satisfy your child’s needs?
  2. Is it difficult to say no when your child makes demands on your time and energy?
  3. Do you cover your child’s problems with drugs, alcohol, or the law?
  4. Do you constantly worry about their opinion of you?
  5. Do you keep quiet to avoid arguments?

I find this list a bit scary because it is so close to our accepted paradigm of good parenting today. The thing about co-dependency is that (i) it prevents you from taking actions in the best interest of the child, and (ii) it is often a behaviour that the child repeats in his/her relationships. It is a very unhealthy behaviour that is not easily changed.

However, there is hope. The first step is awareness. Here are some habits that will keep us from co-dependent tendencies:

  1. Set clear boundaries on our time. For example, Sunday is my rest/fun day. I will not be taking you to any regular activity on a Sunday.
  2. Set clear boundaries on what we will and will not do for our children. I will not do your school project for you. I may guide and assist but you are responsible for it, not me. I will not write an excuse for you for not completing your homework unless there was a serious emergency that prevented you from completing your assignment.
  3. Intentionally give them more and more responsibility and autonomy as they get older. For example, as my daughter graduates to secondary school she will be ironing her own school uniform from now on. She is also allowed to be on social media now.
  4. Intentionally nurture interests and hobbies other than our children. For example, no matter how much my children may believe that I am not entitled to go out or play football or take trips (or do anything really) without them, I go anyway.

Our children deserve every opportunity to grow and mature into strong, balanced and healthy adults. Let’s not fail them by loving them to pieces but instead let’s love them to wholeness.

Joyfully.

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series: Culture and Conviction

Christians don’t dance. Christians don’t drink alcohol. Christians don’t curse. Christians don’t get tattoos. Christians don’t wear short skirts. Christians go to church. Christians read the bible. Christians pray. Christians pay tithes. Christianity has a culture. It has evolved over the years. It’s ok to dance now (but only to Christian music of course lol).

In 1980 an American management professor Edgar Schein developed a model for organizational culture. It looked like this:

Using this model, all the examples of what Christians do and don’t do, that I listed above, fall squarely into the category; Artefacts and Behaviour. These, and other things, are what people on the outside observe about us. Then there are the values that Christians espouse; values such as kindness, love, generosity and patience. Finally, at the deepest level are the basic assumptions of Christianity that I prefer to call our convictions. These are the underlying beliefs that are so fundamental that they are assumed. For example, a basic taken-for-granted belief of Christianity is that God is real.

I imagine that things were not always this way. Before Christ, there was no Christian religion (obviously) or ‘Christian culture’. The early church must have spent a lot of time preaching about basic beliefs and values and new believers were converted when they were convicted of the reality of the truths that the apostles and disciples of Christ were preaching. Their behavior flowed from deeply held convictions. Unfortunately, I see a different dynamic at play in the church today.

Today, I see thousands of people who have adopted some of the behavior, maybe a few values but rarely the convictions of Christianity. To illustrate my point let me give some hypothetical examples. Let’s define three Christians:

  • Person A only knows the most visible part of the Christian culture; the behaviour.
  • Person B knows the behaviour and the values.
  • Person C knows the behavior, values and convictions.

So, suppose all three persons lose their jobs and are struggling to gain employment. Here is a hypothetical reaction of each person:

  • Person A falls into a depression. He cannot understand how come this happened to him when he attends church regularly, says the ‘Our Father’ daily and pays his tithes faithfully. Soon he leaves the faith.
  • Person B struggles with depression as well but maintains a brave facade. When asked about her situation she says, “I’m too blessed to be stressed!” She fasts and sticks up scriptures about God providing for her on her mirror. She asks her pastor to pray for her but struggles to understand why this is happening to her.
  • Person C is not worried. She knows that God is faithful. She prays, and God tells her that she needs to forgive her old boss and open the business she has always been dreaming about.

Rare are the person Cs in this world. The sad reality is that many who have grown up in church have no deep convictions of anything; they have just mirrored the behaviours and adopted the catch phrases that they saw/heard around them. We have become adept at emphasizing what Christians should and shouldn’t do. There have been whole sermons dedicated to how women should dress for church. (Can you see my eyes rolling?) Most of us know what we should believe and are oh so quick to tell others what they should believe too. But too few of us actually believe and live the reality that God exists, loves all men unconditionally and wants to be in intimate relationship with us. We are working at the shallowest levels, failing miserably to reach the depths of conviction that can truly transform the church and the world.

We are wasting our time with whether abortion is legal or illegal, whether gay marriage is legal or illegal, why divorced sister so-and-so is receiving communion or leading worship, forcing our disinterested children to attend church and the list goes on. These are all symptoms of a much deeper problem but 90% of our effort is aimed at the symptoms. We are living the delusion that behavior modification is what Christianity is about. Christianity is about a real relationship with the living Christ!  Nothing less will do!

We need to get back to the core of our faith; the deep convictions of our faith. Let’s talk about those! Let’s live those and turn the hearts of men back to God. Then and only then will we see a cultural shift that will overtake the planet and shake the universe!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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I Have No Empathy

 

I have always had a love-hate relationship with empathy. Empathy is commonly defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. I love the idea of seeing things from someone else’s perspective. Fyodor Dostoyevsky said, “Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.” I agree! In fact, you could say that I’m obsessed with ‘the other point of view’.

I am frequently the advocate for understanding the ‘enemy’. As a manager, I often put myself in the shoes of non-management. As a heterosexual male who does not believe in gender fluidity, I can still understand the LGBT fight for acceptance. As an advocate for the life of the foetus, I also understand the pro-choice viewpoint. You can see why I am frequently in no man’s land; fully accepted in neither camp, which suits me fine because I rather think that’s a major quality of Jesus. He did not sign up with the religious elite or the evildoers. He hung out with sinners and went to the synagogue. He was on everyone’s side and no-one’s side.

But I digress… You see I am fine up to the understanding someone else’s emotions part; it’s the sharing those emotions part that eludes me. To illustrate my point, there’s a video on empathy by Brene Brown (which you can watch here). In the video Brene identifies 4 qualities of empathy:

  1. Taking another’s perspective.
  2. Staying out of judgment.
  3. Recognizing and understanding someone else’s emotions.
  4. Communicating your understanding of that emotion.

I think I’m good until that dastardly #4. I’m like the deer in the video who responds to someone saying, “My marriage is falling apart”, with, “At least you have a marriage.” I’m the silver lining, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, get off your keister, ok enough with this pity party kinda guy.

So, I’ve been going around for most of my life thinking that I have this major character flaw – a severe lack of empathy until…. I came across Paul Bloom; a psychologist who argues that empathy is not a helpful trait. Paul says that when we act based on our emotions we are not contributing positively to the other person or society in general. According to Paul, making decisions based on emotion clouds our judgment. For example, if we were choosing which charities to give some money to and if we gave to the one that pulled most on our heart-strings (like the baby dying from malnutrition) then our philanthropy would not necessarily be aimed where it could make the biggest difference for the most number of people which is a much better decision-making criteria. In summary, to quote Bloom, “…empathy is prone to biases that render moral judgment potentially harmful.”

So, I was feeling a lot better about myself until I did a little more digging (i.e. web-research) and found that there were many other experts that disagreed with Bloom. There were many good arguments but, in the end, I distilled a way of reasoning that made the most sense to me. I went back to the dictionary (and Brown’s) definition. Neither definition actually speaks to taking action. As Brene says, empathy is not about responding, it is about connecting.

Of course, this takes me back to square one…almost. I believe that empathy should be a first step. Our first step should always be just to understand; to connect. However, I also believe that there is a place for a rational response; a step two. Maybe a night out with the boys or a counselling appointment or just a pep talk to prod from pity party to problem solving. Experts say that positive action rightfully comes from cognitive empathy (understanding another viewpoint) whereas emotional empathy (sharing feelings) is useful to build relationships is not useful for decision-making.

I think my shortfall, however, is that I leap over step one straight to problem-solving. What about you? If you were in a deep funk, what would be the words that you’d want to hear from your best friend?

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series: Ineffable God

“God is ineffable!” ~ A. W. Tozer.

Ineffable: too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.

Lately, I have been obsessed with a fresh revelation that God is beyond my human comprehension. I know a little of Him. I see glimpses and shadows, but the entirety of God is utterly beyond me. This revelation has not, in any way, had the effect of dampening my zeal to seek the Living God. No, quite the opposite. It has filled my heart with such a largeness of God; such a beyond-ness, that I hope to spend an eternity in endless discovery of His heavenly riches! I am filled with excitement akin to going on vacation to some new place where every day I wonder what new vistas of Eternity lie around the corner!

God is more breath-taking every day! He is more awe-inspiring the more you know Him!

So, when I hear preachers talk like they have God pinned down, my spidy-senses start to tingle. Phrases like, ‘God is the same yesterday, today and forever’ and ‘God doesn’t change’ or ‘God doesn’t do anything that is not in the bible’ make me very wary depending on the context in which they are used.

The bible chronicles a supremely multi-faceted God. If you picked out one particular era, you would be hard pressed to predict that that God was the same God of another era. In fact, I often say that unless you have read the entire bible, you probably have a very very limited understanding of God’s character. To think that we know all there is to know about God is just a tad arrogant. The same kind of arrogance that caused the religious leaders to dismiss Jesus Christ. This unassuming carpenter could not be the God of the bible (up to that time only the Old Testament). I mean, he didn’t speak like thunder and no angels blew trumpets when he entered the synagogue. Worse yet, he ate with sinners and drank wine!!

I do not know where the notion came that God limited Himself to our puny understanding of a few written texts, but I rather suspect that it did not come from God. That’s why the bible never gets boring (if you are reading it with God); because the Holy Spirit continues to pour out fresh revelations of the unsearchable depths of God as we seek Him in scripture. The fact is that our human language just does not have the bandwidth to describe God! The most we can get to is ‘God is like’. He is something like majestic, something like strong, something like merciful, something like a father, something like a king…. words all fall short. They fall short in English, Greek and Hebrew. They best they can do is act as a conduit for the Holy Spirit to pour understanding straight into our spirit.

Blake Healy says that God is so multi-faceted that His nature can only begin to be expressed through the thousands of years of history of billions of diverse human lives. That is a blow-mind thought! The unfolding of history is really a progressive revelation of who God is! How else could an eternal God be expressed in time? That’s why no one person could be the Body of Christ; His nature could only be represented by the myriad variety of millions of unique disciples!

God will always be part mystery on this side of heaven. It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out (Proverbs 25:2). Never let your study of scripture lead you to a puffed-up overconfidence in your knowledge of God. Instead, let it lead you to humble awe of the unknowable God, a healthy scepticism of what you think you already know, a child-like willingness to see God in things you do not yet understand and an insatiable appetite for more of God!

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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There Is No Dawn Without Midnight

Yesterday I made the mistake of reading the newspaper headlines as I passed by a table in the lunchroom. It read: “Man Kills Himself After Beating Woman To Near Death”. I could not help but read the entire article. I even watched footage of the incident caught on security camera when I got home later that night. The video showed a man trying to shoot a woman but as the gun malfunctioned he took to beating her on the head with the gun butt over 100 times while people on foot and in cars could be seen in the background. It was blood-curdling, depressing and infuriating all at the same time.

Apart from the gruesomeness of the incident what really caused my melancholy outrage was the fact that NOBODY intervened. Even after the man threw the gun away and walked off to his car, NOBODY rushed to the woman’s aid. Not a soul. The video shows cars driving by… normal normal.

I wondered if I would have done the same. I am ashamed of the people that we have become. We are at that juncture that Edmund Burke spoke of; “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Then a friend messaged me. She and her family are migrating. Another blow to my patriotic heart. Another family joining the exodus from my beautiful but troubled land. Who will be left?

I am disappointed, but I can also understand the fear; the primal instinct of self-preservation that causes the bystanders to do nothing and the migrants to leave.

I have a feeling that it will get much worse before it gets better. When the only ones who remain are those who have no other option and those who are willing to risk their lives for their country, then maybe we will get serious. When there is no safe community left and we wake up to the raging war for the soul of our country, then maybe we will deem the sacrifice a necessity.

Yet still, I have hope. Ever the optimist, I believe that many times it takes the black of midnight to bring the dawn. It was the darkness that wrought the civil rights movement, the anti-apartheid movement and the unification of Germany. Just as necessity is the mother of invention, so too desperation is the mother of revolution.

This is true on a personal level as well. I know this only too well from my own experience. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you recognize the urgent need for change. The wake-up call could be a heart attack, a divorce or an eviction. Whatever it is, we would like to think that we would see the writing on the wall and course-correct long before we meet with destruction, but evidence suggests otherwise.

I do hope, though, that we wake up before the entire house burns down. Please my fellow citizens, don’t give up on our country yet. Don’t leave. Be brave. Let’s be our brothers’ keepers. Let’s love each other courageously, especially those whom we are quick to blame for our societal ills. They need our love the most. There is so much beauty and good here still. Trinbago is our home. Let’s fix it.

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series: Identity Wars

A few days ago I started a book called The Veil by Blake Healy and I could not put it down. I finished reading it in two days! MY MIND HAS BEEN BLOWN.

The book shares the highlights of Blake’s life as one who could see clearly in the spirit realm from childhood. He describes in amazing detail the unseen activity that surrounds us at every single moment. You might think that the spectacle of angels and demons and the epic drama that goes on behind the scenes is what got me so excited, but it wasn’t.

What completely shook up my world was two things:

  1. The sheer sovereignty of God. God is not in a battle with satan. There is no contest. When God turns up, everything else moves aside. It is only we who give demonic forces the power to operate in our lives and in the earth.
  2. The copious amount of resources that are constantly being deployed by heaven in demonstration of God’s unceasing love for us! All of heaven is literally rooting for us!

These are not concepts that I have not considered before but hearing (it was an audiobook) the outworking of that described in detail took my faith to the next level! In my humble opinion this book is a must-read for all Christians.

There were so many little details that beautifully communicated the heart of God. Like one time Blake describes a church service where Jesus is personally ministering to each person in the congregation but some are ignoring Him and just looking around bored. Blake says that Jesus doesn’t look angry or disappointed; He’s just standing next to them waiting for an opportunity to be welcomed. That simple detail spoke volumes to me! It spoke of the humility and love of Jesus that is beyond compare!

Another time Blake has a vision of a sea of demons being fought by a man. The man has a sword of blue flames that he wields with stunning effect against a massive tidal wave of demonic forces but he is outnumbered…until…he holds hands with a robed woman with a staff who represents the Holy Spirit. Together, they perform a lethally elegant dance-duel that annihilates the horde with beams of blinding white light. A beautiful and powerful representation of what can happen when we partner with the Holy Spirit.

I love how God captures our imagination. These visions are of course just pictorial representations of a spiritual reality but they communicate a reality nonetheless. And that is the point; this is THE reality. There were some angels that Blake recounts when he looked into their eyes he knew this was a creature that had seen the THE ALMIGHTY CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. He couldn’t look into his eyes for long without feeling completely unworthy.

The implications of a God that is completely unchallenged in authority and power and at the same time absolutely committed to having an intimate relationship with us is this – the battles we face are 99% in our minds and it is a battle for identity. And this is where the demonic realm has a field day. Think about it, He loves us unconditionally and He has all power. So what can really harm us or stop us? Nothing? Except… the lies of the enemy that we believe. Lies like, “Nobody loves me.” “I’ve done too many sinful things for God or anyone else to love me.” “I am a failure.”

These are all lies (and many more) that the enemy uses to get us to have more faith in him than God. Blake says, “Fear is faith in the enemy.” Because when we believe that the enemy has power over us or that we are not loved, we are in effect saying that we do not believe what God says. We are believing something else….

The Father says that He loves us so much that He sent His Son to die so that He could adopt us as sons and daughters! The Son says that He loves us so much that He gladly went to the cross to make us his sisters and brothers! The Spirit comes and dwells in us testifying of the love of the Father for us every moment! Either we are daughters and sons of God or not? Who will you believe?

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Fire Series – Celebrate Life!

So, these days I have been enjoying a season where God has been inviting me to celebrate life; to live each day with thanksgiving and celebrating Him in every thing and every moment. So often we feel it is only holy or godly to refrain from enjoying things. Yes, sometimes there are seasons when we must discipline the flesh but that does not mean that earthly pleasures are bad. It always struck me that Jesus’ disciples did not fast because while Jesus was with them it was a time for celebration (eating and drinking) not fasting. Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus is with us always and yet some of us still feel guilty if we enjoy what this earthly life has to offer.

I think sometimes we forget that God created everything. He created pleasure. All earthly pleasures point to the ultimate pleasure we experience in God. They are a little taste of the divine. All creation reveals the Creator! The secret I have discovered in this season is to enjoy everything with thanksgiving and celebration to The One who gave all life and the fullness of the earth for our enjoyment.

In fact, it is this deep inner worship that should make us Christians enjoy this life more than anybody else! We should savour every meal with awe at a God who made such a myriad of tastes and sensations. Every bite and sip should be with praise! Our shared fellowship should be all the sweeter knowing the sacred temples with whom we dine – carriers of the divine spark! We should be having the best sex. Yes, I said sex. We of all people should be shouting, “Hallelujah!” and “Thank You Jesus!” for a God who created such an orgasmic union of husband and wife!

OK switching gears before I get stoned for heresy… Currently, I’m on a school trip with my daughter and her classmates. To save money, they put boys with male parents and girls with female parents, four to a room. I dreaded having to share a room with strangers, but I sucked it up to give my little girl an experience to remember.

What it meant though was that I had to find somewhere to spend my morning alone time with God. But He had already put things in place. I woke up early this morning and headed down to the beach. Not a soul was there as the first glimmers of sunrise peeked over the ocean horizon. The morning pelicans dived into the surf while the waves seemed to be running races to see who would reach the shore first creating a salty mist that filled the air . The entire setting spoke to me powerfully. “Celebrate life!” it said. This poem bubbled up in my soul:

All creation celebrates You Lord!

We were all created to sing Your praise!

Help me to exult You O God!

I do not want to be left out of this symphony of worship!

Help me to frolic with the waves.

Help me to shine with the sun.

Help me to sing and soar with the birds.

Help me to be still with You in the mist.

Help me to caress You with the breeze.

Help me to celebrate the Giver of Life!

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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Sermons and Dresses

Admittedly, I had but a passing interest in The Royal Wedding.  Until I heard a bit of the sermon of Bishop Michael Curry! I promptly searched for the sermon online and I couldn’t stop listening. The power of love captivated my attention! I was so excited about this message of love echoing around the world and touching lives suffering from severe love-deficit that when some colleagues started talking about the wedding I exclaimed, “Wasn’t that a powerful sermon!”.

I was shocked at the responses. Apparently, it was inappropriate, too long and disjointed. I am not usually one to be surprised by differing views but this one caught me off guard. So, what was the main highlight for these (mainly female) colleagues of mine; the dress. It was what they had stayed up late to see. They loved it!

Now, I don’t want to draw any inferences about my colleagues in particular because I am sure they are not alone. In fact, there are probably more than a few church goers for whom the much too short dress of Sister So-and-so seems more important than the message of Jesus Christ. (Just though I’d throw that out there to shake things up a bit. Ha ha!) I do, however, want us to think about our society as a whole and what we value. Do we value messages of love, kindness, compassion and selflessness? We talk about it but do our actions align?

Last night I fell asleep while reading in bed and my daughter came and took off my glasses, put my phone to charge and turned off the light. She had never done anything like that before. I was so proud of her and full of love for her and grateful for such beautiful children, all at the same time. I did make sure to thank her and express my appreciation for her thoughtfulness, but I couldn’t help but compare that with if she had come first in end-of-term exams, for example. For coming first in her class, she would be showered with rewards and recognition. Something is wrong somewhere.

What about at work? Has anyone ever received a positive appraisal because they were kind to their co-workers? But if we achieve all our targets at the expense of other people, are we rewarded? Many times, we are. Sometimes even publicly applauded.

Our values are skewed. And it’s no better in the church. If I were to judge from what most guys talk about and get excited about, the biggest religion in Trinidad is football. Most guys quicker identify as a Man-U fan than a Jesus fan. Keep it nice and superficial. Big man doh deal up with d touchy feely business.

So, I ask you what kind of world do you want to leave for generations to come? Do you want more love in this world? Is it time to re-look our value system? If you haven’t seen Bishop Curry’s sermon, you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gonlKodrmk and tell me what you think; which was better; the sermon or the dress?

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

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The Ladder of Inference

The biggest determining factor of the quality of our relationships is the quality of our communication. And the quality of our relationships greatly influences the quality of our life. In fact, some say that the quality of our relationships is the quality of our life.

Therefore, I would argue that communication is the most important skill for life. In that vein, I would like to share with you a model for how we process data. The model is called The Ladder of Inference (shown below).

The ladder has seven steps (starting at the bottom rung):

  1. Observable data and experiences. These are the raw facts that we hear and see. Let’s use an example: Last week Friday I told my friend Jim that I found it unfair that when we go out he never pays for anything. I played football with Jim on Monday and we talked briefly on the phone on Tuesday. I see him in the mall on Thursday and he passes me straight without saying hello and he looks angry. That’s the data.
  2. Select data. This is the data that we choose to designate as important while ignoring the rest. In this example I select the fact that I told Jim about his cheap ways and now he passes me straight and he looks angry. I completely ignore the other two times that I interacted with Jim.
  3. Add meaning. At this stage we interpret the data and add some meaning to it based on our personal and cultural values. So now I conclude that Jim must be angry with me because he passed me straight. I add this meaning because that’s what I would do if I was angry at someone (personal) and because in my culture to not acknowledge someone you know is an affront.
  4. Make assumptions. Now I make the assumption that Jim is angry at me because I reproached him about his cheapskate behaviour.
  5. Draw conclusions. At this stage we come to some grand theory. I conclude that Jim has only been using me to get free drinks all along. He was never really my friend.
  6. Adopt beliefs. This high up on the inference ladder, my conclusions based on this situation become firmly held beliefs – People will use you for your money if you let them. All people are interested in is what they can get from you.
  7. Take action. At the top of the ladder I act based on my beliefs. I treat everyone with scepticism and distrust and don’t buy drinks for anyone unless they buy for me first.

What actually happened was that Jim had just heard that a thief had broken into his house, so he was angry and hurrying home to appraise the situation. His mind was so preoccupied that he did not even see me even though I walked right past him.

The steps taken up the inference ladder in this example sound crazy given the reality, right? But this is what we do all the time. The most insidious thing about the ladder of inference is that our beliefs dictate the data we select next time. We are biased to ‘seeing’ only what we already believe. The good news is that we can counteract this cycle with three simple habits:

  1. Be aware of our thought process. Ask yourself, “Is this a fact or an assumption? Am I making a fair conclusion here? Is there something I could be missing? Am I 100% sure that I have all the information?”
  2. Be open and transparent about your thought process. Let people know what you are thinking. Chances are they can fill in some missing context.
  3. Ask people about their thought processes. It’s highly likely everyone else is busy climbing up their inference ladder too. Pause and ask, “How did you come to that conclusion? Why did you say that? What’s your thought process? Why did you choose that course of action?”

Keeping the ladder of inference in mind (pun intended) has the potential to improve the quality of our communication drastically. Try it out and see the positive effects in your relationships!

Click the hyperlink to learn more about the ladder of inference.

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.