"no Pop, magic's not real"

I have a grandson, Lewis, who has become a proficient card magician.

The first year he performed for the family was at Christmas a few years ago. Our youngest granddaughter Sydney was about 8 at the time. After Lewis did a few tricks and amazed the "hostile" crowd, I asked, "Sydney, do you believe in magic?" She replied without hesitation, "No Pop, magic is not real, he is tricking us somehow, I just don't know how." Simple words from a child's mind. At an early age, Sydney recognized she is being deceived. Many people live their whole life and do not recognize that they have flaws that the world can take advantage of to deceive them. While this occurs even when the deception is announced like with a magician, imagine how effective deception is when it occurs in the normal course of life unannounced

There was a recent blog written by a design ethicist at Google entitled "How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist". The author had also been a magician, so he used the concepts of how a magician deceives the audience to outline how people are easily taken into a false reality by social media. He claims "magicians start by looking for blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people’s perception, so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it. Once you know how to push people’s buttons, you can play them like a piano." The author focused on some key principles that magicians and social media use to manipulate people or take advantage of the human flaws:
1. If you control the menu, you control the choices
2. Create a slot machine with intermittent variety of rewards
3. Raise the fear of missing something important
4. Leverage the need for social approval
5. Provide social reciprocity
6. Keep feeding their appetite - the Hedonic Treadmill  
7. Make your need their easiest choice
8. Misrepresent their cost

Ironically, these same vulnerabilities form the basis of how the world's system (philosophy, psychology, science, media, religion, education, culture, etc.) exploit people away from truth and reality. Built-into the human nature are flaws that can easily be exploited.

Even when a person becomes a Christian and receives a new identity, a Spiritual presence that can transform these flaws, he/she is still subject to the deception of this world unless their mind (core assumptions) are transformed to align with their new identity.

I don't know why being saved does not automatically change the mind. I don't know why the Christian often is more controlled by the carnal mind than the Kingdom mind. I don't know why so many Christians respond no differently than non Christians. I don't know why so many Christians are legalistic. I don;t know why so many Christians are emotionally fragile. However, I do know that Jesus and the Apostles repeatedly tell us to REPENT (change your mind completely) and believe. To walk in the Spirit not in the flesh. To be transformed by the renewing of the mind. Admonished to not rely on the elemental and futile principles of this world now that you know Christ.

b4Worldview is a transformational learning experience to be completed this Fall that is designed to help Christians operate from the mind of Christ, and in doing so, become immune to the magicians and elitist who use the carnal flaws to rob us of the joy set before us.

This is where I have spent my time pondering lately so that others can do so soon ....