Have you ever looked at a situation at work, school, or government and thought to yourself, "I could do better than that?" Seriously, how hard can it be to do things properly?
Let me give you an example from the world of politics. Imagine that you live in a country in which there are three dominant political parties, and none of them meet your expectations of what a political party should be. You are dissatisfied with status quo. One option (theoretically) would be to try to take over the leadership of the one of the parties and force change from the top down.
This is a world conqueror approach. Another option would be for you and your friends to join a specific political party, mix with the people and leaders, and work on change from the grassroots level up. This is a world transformer approach. The third option, however, would be to start your own political party and build it right from the ground up. A new political alternative. This is an example of the third pattern of relating to the world that we are looking at in this series - world creator.
Now let's transfer this idea to the world of religion and spirituality. As first mentioned two weeks ago, when a religious group looks at the world around them and notices differences in belief and practice, they can respond in one of five ways.
The third way we are exploring is that of world creator. As the name implies, this is an approach that seeks to start from scratch. Often led by a charismatic leader (similar to world conqueror), one of driving principles of this pattern is for the group members to keep themselves pure by not intermingling with outsiders.
The world is bad and/or unsafe, and the group members must protect themselves from its influences. A world creator will selectively borrow ideas and practices from the rest of the world, but only to the extent that it helps their own cause. Unlike a world renouncer (next we ek's topic), a world creator will interact with the rest of the world, and if their methods are successful, they sometimes find themselves in the position of influencing the world, as a viable alternative.
An example of World Creator can be a private religious school. Such schools often start for the reasons stated above, and through time, they can become academically and socially desirable schools, even for people who are not part of the religious group that leads the school. In this way, it is possible for a World Creator to actually become either a World Conqueror or a World Transformer.
What about you? When you look at your family and how you interact with others, do you have a tendency to "do things your own way", and perhaps have other people join you? Are you part of a religious group that takes a similar approach? In that case, you may be a World Creator.
Next week we will explore the fourth pattern of relating to the world - "world renouncer."
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Questions or comments? Each week, this column will explore issues and questions about religion and spirituality in Prince George and around the world. Please e-mail your questions and comments about this article, or ideas and questions for future articles to [email protected].
