Mining for Reality & Truth

By D. Dean Benton

Studies show most people never examine their preferences, paradigms, prejudices. Don't you think we should? Everyone has a worldview. It is the filter that determines how we interpret events and how we insist life is to be lived. The Culture Wars are fought over worldviews--assumptions and non-negotiable beliefs based on what we've experienced and been taught by parents and influencers. I'm committed to believing and acting on what I decide, not rhetoric or handed down presumptions. Being a conservative, I believe some things are worth preserving and cherishing. I do not recall attending a class on how to do that. I want the reader to dig worldviews--his or her own--and whether those presumptions and basic beliefs are true or real, perhaps True. This may be a tool to dig us out of the matrix.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. Dean Benton
• Release date: Mar 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005559106

D. Dean Benton

A native Iowan, husband of one, father of two and grandfather of three. A pastor, seminar leader, author of 27 print books and 15 ebooks, singer, songwriter. After 14 years in the pastorate, Dean and his wife Carole, with family, worked in concerts, seminars and conferences for three decades before returning to the pastorate. The Bentons worked in forty states in about 3000 venues.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Your View of Your Worldview

Chapter Two: Streetlights on the Highway to Truth

Chapter Three: Totalitarian Tools

Chapter Four: Christian Worldview

Chapter Five :Developing & Maintaining a Christian Worldview

Chapter Six Kingdom Spiritual Infrastructure

Chapter Seven: Enquiring of the Lord

Chapter Eight: Red Pills Available OTC?

Chapter Nine: Front-End Alignment

Chapter Ten: Tidying Up the Mine

Notes

Dedication

Appreciation

Other Books by Author

Connect with the Author

INTRODUCTION

It was a day trip into the Twilight Zone. Carole (my wife) and I took my mom to a new doctor. During our time in the waiting room, a black woman and man joined us. I guessed them to be in their 60’s or 70’s, maybe 50’s. I first thought them married by the way she was instructing him. Apparently just close friends. The two looked down in the heels.

She chose a seat on the other side of corner table. She smiled, I nodded. She was missing most of her lower left quadrant of teeth. Her male friend reminded her she had a phone call to make. The phone was next to me on the corner table separating her chair from mine. Clearly in overhearing distance. It was a fascinating one-sided conversation. Colorful as her voice modulated poetically in the three- or four-minute call. I made up the other person’s comments even to the ending,…can’t say anything right now, but will explain when I get home.

Something began to nag at me. I didn’t remember seeing or hearing her dial. Then I thought she did an instant dial. That didn’t make any sense. Why would her friend’s number be on the doctor’s phone? I allowed my left eye to sneak a look at the phone. There was a big black finger holding the lever down. I got whip lash looking up at the woman who gave me a stage wink that could be seen in Dallas County. It had been a phenomenal one-side conversation. Totally fooled, Carole, who was one chair away, didn’t see the finger or the wink.

Upon hanging up, the lady looked at Carole and me and said,Lovin a good man is as good as it gets. If you can find one. You did, honey! I was married 31 years and 26 of those years…, (She paused) …was pure hell. She showed us scars on her face. The odor of wine was sneaking our direction.

As I wondered if the missing teeth were also victims, the nurse called Mom into the exam room. Carole was instructed to follow.

My new friend made a real phone call. She pulled a fist full of business cards and telephone number lists held together by string of beads with a cross. All her fingers were in full view. When she finished, she said,That woman s ‘got a big spot in my heart. Yes sir! A big spot. And she’s white.

I asked her how the woman had won that spot. She stood up and saidYou ask too many questions. Anyway, I’m going to go over here and talk to this lady. She’s prettier than you.

Thepretty lady was a pharmaceutical rep who had been watching and listening and suddenly tried to become invisible. The black lady turned to me and said,I have a NEW friend. I responded with aI need a friend….

If you need a friend, go find a preacher.

She didn’t talk to her new friend long before it was her turn to see the doctor. A woman dressed in a leopard-skin coat with matching gloves and purse came to sit next to me who also wanted to talk. I learned about her ostereoprostitus. She had been to see her Quack-o-practor. It got rather strange after that.

We had been referred to this clinic by Mom’s cardiologist’s head nurse. Perhaps she thought we would fit in with this group?

I was getting ready to read when a blind young man came in with his dog. He sat across from me. He decided to read from his Braille Bible. He moved his lips so I could tell a bit of what he was reading. I somehow discerned that he was reading Isaiah.

Reenter black lady carrying a sack of meds. Carole later told me that the air had gone out of the room when I first started talking with the black lady. She should have been there when she came out of the exam room. Knitted hat, rolled up jeans and work shoes.

Bless Jesus! Praise Jesus! I told the doctor I had a drink to deal with the pain. Bless Jesus. The doctor gave me pills to take the pain away. We had a car wreck this morning. A car wreck can sure f… up your day.

The waiting room erupted in coughing and then into silence.

The black man and I had talked about a ton of stuff from cars to marriage to the crazies. He was a nice man. He got onto his knees to find the cross that had fallen off a gold chain he was wearing. He nudged the blind fellow to ask if he drank beer.

No sir! I don’t drink. I’m a born-again Christian. The room not only quieted again, it seemed to take on a soft-filtered focus. I’m sorry I didn’t ask for names. Still on his knees the guy said,being a Christian can put an end to all kinds of foolishness. Uh hu. All kinds of foolishness.

Carole came to tell me the doctor wanted to talk to us. She looked around and said to me,I bet you were bored waiting for us.

I promise you! Every part of that story is true. Absolutely, no exaggeration. Not boring!

Every person in that room, in that building, has a worldview unique to them. A worldview does not indicate content, or whether it is based on reality or valuable to do its job which is to serve as the primary filter to accurately guide us in our decisions, assessments and commitments.

If you are not a Jesus Follower or don’t know church history over the past fifty years, you may not know that one of Nixon’s hatchet men, Charles Colson, experienced Jesus and became a huge influence for the Lord. He said the need for clear worldview thinking and living has never been more urgent for disciples of Jesus.

Post moderns say that reason fails because there is no absolute truth to be found. There are no principles, only opinions, they say. As postmodernity has taken hold, we have witnessed the inevitable consequences: relativism, pragmatism, social fragmentation, ethical and cultural erosion, along with individual disillusion and despair.

For postmodernity, left unchallenged, would (will) continue our culture slide into chaos. (ix-x)

Charles Colson spoke those words spoken twenty-years ago. They were prophetic. Postmodernity was not adequately challenged and chaos reigns in Western Civilization threatening its very existence.

While I was researching and writing Seizin’ The Season, my friend Bruce McClellan suggested I look again at John Wimber’s book Power Evangelism. He and I had talked about Wimber’s ideas and principles. Something Wimber’s book set me on the examination of worldview in general and my own worldview specifically. The more I read and thought about the subject, the more that it seemed God had sent me on the journey.

I had not been interested in worldviews, in fact, that word set me on edge. It seemed like a faddish, knee-jerk word to lump groups of people together. Like people use Fox News and CNN to separate the deplorables from the progressives. The topic has become very important to me.

Several years ago, I began to question how some of my friends and family could interpret words or events in a way that made me think they had suffered a closed head wound leaving them with a lessened ability to see or think accurately. Why?

When our military entered Iraq a newsperson angrily and aggressively asked Charlton Heston, then head of the NRA, about the tribal chieftains of Iraq and their customs.Have you considered their worldviews? I was embarrassed for Heston. He obviously had not. I realized it is imperative to know your opponents’ worldview to determine how you will defend against them.

We all have been thinking about the Taliban and about their worldviews based on 7th Century culture