How To Change the World
Physicist Max Planck noted in his 1949 memoir, A Scientific Autobiography, that, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
This observation also helps explain how the world changes in general. It changes not by the conversion of opponents, by the winning of their hearts and minds, but by finding new adherents whose minds aren’t already made up, whose minds are free from the weight of tradition.
Thomas Kuhn, who gave us the phrase and concept of “paradigm shifts” in his influential 1962 book, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” agreed with this model of change. If any man can be said to have changed the world, surely it was Nicholas Copernicus, who replaced the geocentric Ptolemaic view of the heavens with a heliocentric view, arguing that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the center of the “Solar” System. And yet, noted Kuhn, “Copernicanism made few converts for almost a century after Copernicus’ death. Newton’s work was not generally accepted, particularly on the Continent, for more than half a century after the ‘Principia’ appeared. Priestly never accepted the oxygen theory, nor Lord Kelvin the electromagnetic theory, and so on. The difficulties of conversion have often been noted by scientists themselves. Darwin, in a particularly perceptive passage at the end of his ‘Origin of Species,’ wrote, ‘I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine…. But I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality.’” As Kuhn notes, “These facts and others like them are too commonly known to need further emphasis.”
But the world does not change only through the succession of generations. It also changes by reaching new audiences, those not already committed to an opposing point of view. This was something even Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, realized. Many Christians sometimes forget that Jesus was born a Jew, lived and taught among Jews, thought of himself as a Jew, and died a Jew. However, he taught that he was a special Jew. He was the Messiah, the long-prophesized Savior of Jewish tradition bringing salvation to the Jewish people.
Unfortunately, those who knew him best, the people of Nazareth, among whom he was born and raised, did not believe this about him. When he returned to his boyhood home to preach, a mob rejected him and drove him away. This moved him to remark bitterly upon how a prophet went unrecognized and unhonored among his own people.
Therefore, he went elsewhere seeking followers, among those not already doubting his destiny. In the Sea of Galilee port village of Magdala he found Mary (the) Magdalene, his most faithful convert, who followed him even to the Cross and the tomb. In the nearby village of Bethsaida, also overlooking the Sea of Galilee, Jesus found more who knew him not, and therefore were receptive to his message. It was in Bethsaida that many testified to the miracles that Jesus was said to have performed. It was in Bethsaida that he healed a blind man and multiplied the loaves and fishes to feed the thousands who came to hear him preach. Many, watching from Bethsaida, saw him walk on the water of Galilee and calm the stormy waters with a word. And it was from among the fishermen of the tiny village of Bethsaida, where people knew him not, that Jesus found five of his most devoted disciples: James, John, Andrew, Philip, and, most devout of all, Peter, “the father of the church.”
This is not to say that hearts and minds are never won. Sometimes dramatic conversions do occur, but perhaps their very rarity is what makes them so memorable. One of the most notable, so much so that it became a metaphor for dramatic conversion, was the transformation Saul of Tarsus underwent on the Road to Damascus. Saul was a Jew born in the Cilician city of Tarsus. He received his final religious education in Jerusalem, where he rose to a position of eminence as a Pharisee, a Jewish sect the New Testament portrays as opposed to Jesus and the early Christian movement. He may also have become a member of the Sanhedrin, the judicial and administrative court responsible for collecting Roman taxes and enforcing Roman laws.
As the followers of Jesus multiplied in Jerusalem following his death, Saul took personal responsibility for exterminating them. But, on the Road to Damascus, Syria, chasing Jewish Christians who had fled there, he experienced a remarkable vision which he compared to the appearance of Jesus to the disciples following his Resurrection. From a persecutor of Christians Saul, who now called himself “Paul”, became their principal champion.
However, the vast majority of his fellow Jews was no more willing to accept Jesus as the Messiah than Paul had been previously. Therefore, Paul took his good news, his “gospel”, outside Israel to the gentiles beyond, to those who had not already made up their minds about Jesus. He established and led many Christian churches in Asia Minor and Greece and the followers of Jesus spread throughout the Roman Empire.
The world is changed by the passage of time, as younger generations come of age in the midst of the debate, and whose minds are not already made up. And the world is changed by finding a new audience and gaining their adherence to your worldview.
So, forget about changing hearts and minds. Find a new audience. Take your message to the gentiles.
