Prisoner thinking, as I have mentioned is the way of thinking, the paradigm, or mindset, of all post Genesis 3 citizens. Prisoner thinking is not just bad information, it is bad process. I thought perhaps it would be helpful to break this down into it’s most basic building blocks.
Prisoner Thinking:
Has Self as Source: When you are your own source for thinking, it guarantees that you will always have only one perspective. Whatever personal quirks or biases you carry will always season your receptivity and process. Your unrecognized lenses and filters will remain unrecognized, and yet no less influential. The fundamental impact of Adam and Eve’s choice in the Garden was that it shifted the nature of man, so that he (we) became his own source.
Relies on our Five Senses for Input:
I have often pondered what may have been true about our sensory input prior to the fall. At the very least, we lost our ability to know by the Spirit. When our way of taking in reality relies only on our five senses, then the natural world is our primary vantage point.
Relies on Cognition for Process:
Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. While cognition (reason, logic, deduction) is a very valuable process, left to it’s own we become out of balance. Thinking, separate of intuition, wisdom, and discernment, is like only working out the right side of your body.
Considers only the Material Realm:
Since our five senses are our primary input, we may have no idea how much of reality is outside of our perceptual range. We see what we see, surely that is all that there is. This is prisoner thinking. It is like trying to walk through an unknown room in the dark; we don;t know what the obstacles are, or where the path is clear.
Makes Non-Sequitirs:
Because prisoner thinking only considers the visible portion of reality, the mind will come to conclusions that are not necessarily connected to all of reality. We see circumstances, and sometimes our only conclusion is that God is not good. We observe events and come to the belief that we are alone. Prisoner thinking.
Only knows what it doesn’t want:
Prisoner thinking does not dream of possibilities, it only sees limitations.
As you begin to recognize the building blocks of prisoner thinking, what other thought process limitations do you see that come from the knowledge of good and evil?
