The Framework of the Kingdom

The Real Reason You Resist Correction

There is a particular kind of tension that surfaces when someone corrects you.

It may come from your spouse in the middle of a disagreement. It may come from a close friend who sees something you cannot see. It may come from the Holy Spirit while you are reading Scripture and suddenly feel exposed. In those moments, something rises in you: defensiveness, justification, or even irritation.

And most of the time, we assume the discomfort is about what is being addressed on the surface.

But it is rarely about the surface.

The real reason we resist correction is because correction does not merely confront behavior. It confronts the framework beneath the behavior. It threatens the way we have learned to see.

When Jesus began His ministry, His opening declaration was not a list of moral demands. He did not begin with external reform. He began with a call that went straight to perception:

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17).

Repentance is often reduced to turning from sin. But the Greek word metanoia speaks of a change of mind — a reorientation of the way we think, interpret, and process reality. Jesus did not come merely to improve conduct. He came to reconstruct consciousness. He came to give humanity an entirely new way of seeing.

And that is why His teaching unsettled people.

Why Jesus Spoke in Parables

In Matthew 13, after Jesus delivers the parable of the sower, the disciples ask Him a question that reveals something profound:

“Why do You speak to them in parables?” (Matthew 13:10).

His answer is startling:

“Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given” (Matthew 13:11).

At first glance, that sounds exclusive. But what Jesus is describing is not favoritism. It’s about capacity. The disciples were in proximity and in their discipleship process, they were allowing their assumptions to be dismantled. The crowds heard the same words, but they lacked the internal framework to process what was being said to them by Jesus.

He continues:

“For whoever has, to him more will be given… but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him” (Matthew 13:12).

In other words, revelation compounds in a receptive heart. But when the framework is hardened, even correct information cannot remain. It slips through the cracks.

Jesus explains further:

“Seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand” (Matthew 13:13).

The problem was not eyesight or eardrums. The problem was interpretation.

In Mark’s account, Jesus says something even more revealing about the parable of the sower: “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?” (Mark 4:13). It was as though He was saying, If you grasp this one, you will unlock them all.

The seed is not the issue. The soil is.

The soil represents the heart (paradigm), or the internal framework through which the Word is received. Some soil is hard. Some is shallow. Some is crowded with competing growth. Only good soil produces thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold fruit (Mark 4:20).

The issue has never been a lack of seed. It has always been the condition of the soil.

The Difference Between Worldview and Paradigm

To understand why this matters so deeply, we need clarity about how we think.

A worldview is the overarching lens through which you interpret all of reality. It answers foundational questions: What is true? What is ultimate? What defines success? What is suffering for? Who is God? What does it mean to be human?

A paradigm, however, is more specific. It is a governing pattern within a particular area of life. You may have a paradigm about money, marriage, authority, success, justice, or healing. These are narrower interpretive frameworks operating inside your broader worldview.

For example, if your worldview is fundamentally materialistic, your paradigm of success will revolve around accumulation. Your paradigm of suffering will default to victimhood. Your paradigm of marriage may be contractual rather than covenantal.

But if your worldview is Kingdom-centered, everything shifts. Suffering becomes formation (Romans 5:3–5). Wealth becomes stewardship (Luke 16:10–11). Marriage reflects covenant love (Ephesians 5:25–32).

When Jesus preached the Kingdom, He was not merely adjusting behavior. He was confronting worldviews and then reordering paradigms one by one.

That process is rarely comfortable.

Nicodemus: Seeing Without Perceiving

In John 3, Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night. He is educated, respected, and religiously disciplined. He says:

“Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him” (John 3:2).

Nicodemus sees the miracles. He acknowledges the signs. But Jesus does not affirm his observation. Instead, He cuts straight to perception:

“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

Notice the word see.

Nicodemus had information. He lacked interpretive capacity.

Jesus continues, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6). Without spiritual rebirth, even intelligent people will interpret spiritual realities through natural assumptions.

The issue was not intellect. It was with his framework.

The Woman at the Well: Trauma as Lens

The same can be said about the woman at the well. In John 4, Jesus encounters this Samaritan woman. Her first response to Him is filtered through layers of worldview: ethnic tension, gender dynamics, relational wounds, and social rejection.

“How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (John 4:9).

Her worldview shaped her perception before she ever understood who was standing in front of her.

Jesus patiently dismantles her assumptions, layer by layer. He exposes her relational history not to shame her, but to reconstruct her lens. Eventually she says:

“Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet” (John 4:19).

Perception shifted. And when perception shifts, reception follows.

We learn here that what you cannot perceive, you cannot receive and what you don’t recieve you will never concieve. This is where Jesus wan’t us to get to in order to properly take the seed of the Kingdom and bear fruit. When it came to the woman at the well, he took the time to help her dismantle everything that she had built as a worldview. Her defensiveness protected her, but it was actually causing her more harm than good. Jesus needed to help break down that paradigm so that she could truly understand who he was and that he had come to set her free.

The Blind Man and the Two Touches

Perhaps one of the most revealing moments in the Gospels is found in Mark 8. Jesus heals a blind man in two stages. After the first touch, the man says, “I see men like trees, walking” (Mark 8:24). After the second touch, “he saw everyone clearly” (Mark 8:25).

Why two touches?

I don’t think for one moment that Jesus lacked in power and that the man did not recieve his healing the firt time Jesus prayed for him. Physcially he could see but he did not have the capactiy to interpret what his new eyes were seeing.

The first touch restored capacity. The second restored clarity.

It is possible to encounter Jesus and still misinterpret what you see. It is possible to receive sight and still lack framework.

Many believers live here. They have been touched, yet they still interpret marriage through their parents’ dysfunction, money through scarcity, leadership through control, justice through culture, and identity through trauma.

Jesus does not merely restore vision. He reforms interpretation. This is such a good example to the disciples and to us as to what Jesus’ mandate was in going to the cross. His mandate was to restore our minds, first by addressing the sin, and then, through the process of discipleship, to reintroduce us to the Kingdom mentality, to destroy the worldly paradigms, and to empower us for Kingdom living.

The War Is Against the Lens

Paul describes the internal tension of transformation in Romans 7: “For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do” (Romans 7:15). The struggle is not lack of knowledge. It is conflict between old framework and new Spirit life.

Romans 8 reveals the solution: “For those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5).

This teaches us that transformation requires renewed thinking.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

That means that discipleship is not about collecting more information. It is about surrendering the lens through which you interpret information.

Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15). They had ears. The issue was receptivity.

He said new wine cannot be poured into old wineskins (Matthew 9:17). The wine was not fragile. The container was.

The Kingdom requires a renewed framework and we have lean into the challenges that we face as an opportunity to disrupt old thinking and to embrace a Kingdom world-view.

Why Correction Feels Personal

When someone corrects you, it rarely feels like a gentle suggestion. It feels like a threat. That is because correction challenges the mold beneath the behavior.

Imagine if you were raised being taught that the color red was called blue. You could argue all day long with someone trying to convince you otherwise. The issue would not be eyesight. It would be conditioning.

Or imagine reading the phrase GODISNOWHERE. One person sees “God is nowhere.” Another sees “God is now here.” Same letters. Different framework.

Most conflict, especially in marriage, is not about what happened. It is about how two people interpreted what happened. Two worldviews colliding. Two paradigms clashing.

Correction feels threatening because it exposes the architecture beneath our reactions.

But that exposure is mercy….if you can see it rightly.

The Invitation

Jesus did not come to shame us for having incomplete frameworks. He came to rebuild them.

He calls us to repentance not because He is angry, but because He knows we cannot sustain the Kingdom with an old interpretive grid.

The question of your growth is not in whether you attend church. The question is whether you are teachable.

The question is not whether you read Scripture. The question is whether Scripture is reforming your lens.

The Kingdom is not merely a message to be memorized. It is a framework to inhabit. And until that framework shifts, fruit will remain inconsistent.

The real reason you resist correction is because something deeper is being confronted. But when you surrender the lens, when you allow the Spirit to renew your mind, when you let old wineskins be replaced, something extraordinary begins to happen.

You stop striving for fruit.

And fruit begins to grow.