This week I’m in the midst of the next course in my doctorate program at Biola University. The name of it is Culture, Cognition and Worldview. Actually, there are some pretty interesting parts of the course, although the cognitive anthropology side is certainly not my favorite. The focus of the course is on analyzing what people think, why they think what they think, and how what they think shapes their culture and perspectives on life and reality. It is quite broad, and touches on many different areas of belief, actions and reality.

So far, we’ve read four books and written four papers on them. One of the books was a 600 page deadweight on cognitive anthropology that was murder to get through. The writers tried to make concepts as complicated as possible, and I found little relevance for the subject or the writing. On the other end of the spectrum was Paul Hiebert’s delightful book on Transforming Worldviews. Loaded with helpful wisdom and insights, this good sized book is one to which I will refer often in times to come.

In our class, there are a dozen PhD students, and me, a D-Miss student. So there is a lot of cognition, lot of theory, and I’m always stretching us to discuss the practical aspects. I enjoy the interaction with the students and professor, Dr. Hayward, as we frequently follow some interesting rabbit trails mildly related to the class subjects. Some of these tangents include discussions about: mitochondria related with evolutionary theory, shapeshifters and other tribal beliefs, magic and luck and other superstitions, balancing family and career/minstry under God, demonization (in NT) vs. demon possession (not in NT) and how to engage in spiritual battle, long hair or head covering for women in NT is to distinguish them from temple prostitutes who had shaved heads, importance of maintaining childlike “spiritual sensitivity,” Chinese acupressure, prosperity theology, the meaning behind dreams. So you can see that in addition to the primary topics, many diverse rabbit trails were explored.  For my final paper, I think I’ll write about the miracles of Jesus and how New Testament Jews viewed them vs. how Africans view them today – specifically what they reveal about ancient Palestinian worldview vs. modern African worldview. Perhaps I’ll include it in a post in times to come, once I get it done.

So I head back to class on Thursday-Saturday, and then keep plugging away with researching for and writing the paper. Grace and peace to you. Eric