Just to have for future refernce. Not thoughts from me.

“…our situation (is) this: we have a jigsaw puzzle in a box, but someone put the wrong lid on the box. We keep trying to use the pictures from the wrong lid as a guide to putting the pieces together. With the wrong picture implanted in our imaginations, some of the colors on the pieces don’t seem to belong, and some shapes don’t fit. We may assume they were include by mistake and push tem to the side, or maybe let them drop off the table edge altogether. And we keep searching for other colors and shapes that we see in the picture on the lid but which for some reason aren’t included in our box of pieces. What do we do? We push more and more unfitting pieces aside. We take out some scissors and colored markers and “adjust” some of the pieces that remain. We do our best to conform the pieces in the box to the picture on the lid. We do the best we can do.

Some people become so disillusioned and frustrated that they throw out the whole thing – pieces, box and all. They give up puzzling altogether. Others decide that it’s the box lid rather than the pieces that determines “orthodoxy” and they zealously defend the lid and bestow on all who dare to question it the labels “heretic” and “apostate.”

Others become uncomfortable with the realization that their loyalty is more to the picture outside the box than to the pieces inside the box. They wonder what would happen if they reversed that loyalty and refused to accept a lid that doesn’t do justice to all the pieces of the box. They refuse to cut corners or alter colors. Eventually they decide the problem isn’t with the pieces – they actually fit together: the problem is with the picture on the lid.”

--Brian McLaren, Everything Must Change