Be Innovative!

Luke 5:33-38

33 Then they said to Jesus, The disciples of John practice fasting often and offer up prayers of [special] petition, and so do [the disciples] of the Pharisees also, but Yours eat and drink. 34 And Jesus said to them, Can you make the wedding guests fast as long as the bridegroom is with them? 35 But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them; and then they will fast in those days. 36 He told them a proverb also: No one puts a patch from a new garment on an old garment; if he does, he will both tear the new one, and the patch from the new [one] will not match the old [garment]. 37 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins; if he does, the fresh wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled and the skins will be ruined (destroyed). 38 But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.

Food for thought!

There is in religious people a kind of passion for the old. Nothing moves more slowly than a church. The trouble with the Pharisees of Jesus' time was that the whole religious outlook of Jesus was so startlingly new they simply could not adjust to it. For them, Jesus was just too much, too worldly, too liberal. And as if not enough, for them, Jesus was turning others into liberals.

In response, Jesus used two illustrations. "You cannot put a new patch on an old garment," he said, "The strong new cloth will only rip the rent in the old cloth wider." To understand what Jesus says, we do well to know that bottles in Palestine were made of skin. When new wine was put into them it fermented and gave off gas. If the bottle was new, there was a certain elasticity in the skin and it gave with the pressure; but if it was old, the skin was dry and hard and it would burst. "Don't," says Jesus, "let your mind become like an old wineskin that has lost all elasticity.

The whole passage is Jesus' condemnation of the shut mind and a plea that men should not reject new ideas. We should never be afraid of adventurous thought. If there is such a person as the Holy Spirit, God must ever be leading us into new truth. Just look at the many inventions in technology, in computers, in cellphones, in medicine, etc. How would medicine fare if doctors were restricted to drugs and methods and techniques three hundred years old?

History is littered with people killed or persecuted for having new ideas. Galileo was branded a heretic when he held that the earth moved round the sun. Lister had to fight for antiseptic technique in surgical operations. Simpson had to battle against opposition in the merciful use of chloroform. Let us have a care that when we resent new ideas we are not simply demonstrating that our minds are grown old and inelastic; and let us never shirk the adventure of thought.

Many people are afraid of new methods. That a thing has always been done in a certain way may very well be the best reason for stopping doing it. That a thing has never been done may very well be the best reason for trying it. No business could exist on outworn methods; a business allergic to innovations is doomed to die. The same with many of us; either we change or we perish.

Have you ever heard this saying? “Whatever you hold in your mind will tend to occur in your life. If you continue to believe as you have always believed, you will continue to act as you have always acted. If you continue to act as you have always acted, you will continue to get what you have always gotten. If you want different results in your life or your work, all you have to do is change your mind.”