The Knosee
I’ve been thinking about the Overton Window a lot lately. The terminology is rooted in politics but is also known as “the window of discourse”:
The Overton window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.[1] It is also known as the window of discourse.
The term is named after the American policy analyst and former senior vice president at Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Joseph Overton, who proposed that the political viability of an idea depends mainly on whether it falls within an acceptability range, rather than on the individual preferences of politicians using the term or concept.[2][3] According to Overton, the window frames the range of policies that a politician may recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that particular time.[4]
My personal application of this concept, I realized, is not rooted in politics. At it’s core, the Overton Window talks about what is “acceptable” within a range, a controlled ‘window’.
That ‘window’ can move and shift and push limits. Often we start out with a clearly defined and anchored window, or set of ‘rules’ and over time it just, slowly, moves. Then one day you wake up and you see that you are no longer where you started but the shift was so gradual you didn’t recognize it in the moment.
This can be both good and bad.
The window can move from things that were once never acceptable (because they were bad or harmful) to them becoming acceptable (such as finding yourself tolerating and accepting abusive behavior).
The window can move from things you never thought possible (first to graduate from college, for example) to exceeding an original construct (ending up a CEO of a successful business).
Our window is defined by our individual realities, points of view, lived experience, defense and safety mechanisms, and external influences, to name a few.
I’ve been thinking about the Overton Window as applied to my faith.
When our faith is tested, truly tested, it forces our Overton Window to move, forces original constructs and limits of faith to shift, expand and grow.
Sometimes we have to rely on what feels impossible, feels so outside the contained ‘Window’ of what our faith looks like, and what God can deliver.
The deeper and traumatic the crisis, the more desperate the need for God for comfort, provision, guidance and protection, the more you cling to radical faith for deliverance from things and situations far outside your control.
This past season in my life has been a cataclysmic Overton-Window-shifting event. It has been unlike anything I’ve ever experienced and has altered and impacted me in every possible way.
There is not an area of my life it has not permeated. I feel changed at a cellular level and it is impossible to “go back” to who I was before.
Before this happened, I thought I had strong faith. I thought I’d been through some really tough times with God, wrestling Him on the mat, holding strong to God’s provision in faith, but everything I’ve been through up until this point has been absolute child’s play. Tinker toys.
Don’t get me wrong, all the prior experiences helped establish a rock bed of faith and relationship as I’ve known and seen God’s direct hand on my life. I dug in deep trusting and relying on the fact that Jesus and the Holy Spirit had never left my side then, they surely wouldn’t now in the most trying and dangerous time of my life.
My Overton Window of what mattered, old beliefs and behaviors tolerated from others, old beliefs I had told myself for too long, how I showed up for myself, it all shifted and is now in a completely different place from where it started. Everything was challenged.
There were days, weeks, and even months, where I felt like the only thing I could do was focus on my faith and walking tight with God to get through this Red Sea moment on the journey to my Promised Land, full of pruning and refinement by fire. Oh, so much fire.
“For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”
Through this process there are many things I used to spend time worrying about, playing in my head, giving mental space and energy to unhealed people who push their pain on to others while avoiding accountability for their own actions, daily life concerns related to finances or work, other people’s opinions and projections, their hate and malice. So many, many, many things to surrender.
This is a key reason we are told that we should always seek first our identity in Christ, not in people.
This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. 2 Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. 3 I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. 4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. 5 Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.
I laughed reading verse 3: I care very little what you think of me, basically.
That doesn’t mean that gives license to be dismissive, rude or, frankly, a jerk.
Often insecurities show their true face as one proclaims, “I don’t care what you think of me!”, when actually that’s all that person cares about, what others think of them, and they define themselves by it.
They become a slave to opinions that do not actually heal or deliver and their actions in the world reflect that. It is an empty well that can never be filled when left unhealed.
Unlike Jesus.
When we dig into faith and work to reflect the fruits of the Spirit in an effort to emulate what and how Jesus taught us to be, we have more compassion for others and ourselves, we seek God to help us heal the broken parts in us which helps us recognize that in others when they behave in evil or misguided ways.
Our window shifts. It changes shape. Ways of being we originally didn’t think possible suddenly become a reality.
In reflecting on this past several years, and especially this past year of absolute hell, I realized that part of this refining process has completely rearchitected my window.
God showed me clearly that, due to going through such incredible extremes I never could have foreseen, it’s prepared me in a variety of ways for things God has for me in the future.
When your life, your livelihood, your very existence, is relentlessly threatened and attacked so much of what once mattered ceases to register, and I needed that.
There was a lot I had to let go of that I was gave (and allowed) too much room.
Because my window for what is “tolerable”, and what is not, has shifted so radically, future trials and tribulations that previously would have been emotionally disruptive or distracting, feel far less concerning than in the past. When your faith is tested in the biggest of ways, you stop sweating the “small stuff”.
Having a cool head; keeping calm and forward moving in faith; being patient and leaving time and room for discernment; wisdom and direction; picking your battles; waiting until the right time to act; all of this, and so much more, are just some of the lessons and training (catch that - training!) God has been walking me through.
God had to move my window
Do you need God to move yours?
Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house, and test me now in this," says the LORD of Armies, "if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough for.
(Malachi 3:10)
