1. Tim covered a lot of ground when talking about our culture of ideology. What stood out to you the most? What resonated? Which ideas and topics prompted you to think or helped you make a connection? What areas left you with questions?

2. Tim gave us a definition for ideology that describes it as a tool that masks our alienation from ourselves. He said that ideology offers fantasies of wholeness and fullness that masquerade as reality. Ideology, he said, is a comprehensive system that structures reality for us, so seamless and consistently that it seems self-evident.

Spend a little time considering and discussing this definition. What does it make you think about? How much does it click for you? Do you see places in your own life where ideology has functioned this way? or might be currently?

He also described the way in which, within ideological frameworks, our internal isolation from self is treated like a problem to be solved. Ideologies, he said, position themselves as a solution for our internal alienation from self. Yet, this divided paradigm of our existence is one that Genesis describes as being instituted by God at the point of creation.

What do you make of this contradiction? Why do you think we are drawn to ideologies that promise to deliver us from this created state? What do you think we miss out on because of that?

Tim taught that ideologies promise that a conversion from A to B (or what you have from to what you don’t have) will solve your problem of self-alienation. But they always fail to deliver on this promise.

Where in your own life, have you seen that type of promise or messaging? What contexts have you been a part of (or witnessed) in which there exists a promise that a conversion from one state to another will resolve the split places inside of you, delivering you to wholeness? How has that worked out in the end? Where do you see the failures of that promise? What, if anything, have those failures been catalysts for in your life? What has been their impact?

3. Tim talked about capitalism as a dominant ideology within American culture. He so said, “when we think others are self-deceived, but we are not, that is a clear signal that we’re in ideology.” Does this statement resonate for you in regards to capitalism? What about in regards to something else? How do you feel having this paradigm called out as a hallmark of being in ideology? If you can identify places in which you do sometimes think that others are self deceived, but that you are not, are you able to see or accept that space as ideology? How do you feel about it?

4. Tim also talked about the way in which this split nature of self, or alienation from self, is the very essence of our humanity. It’s the thing that gives us the ability to self reflect and evaluate the way we are living our lives. He said that Christian conversion is not changing from A to B, but from A to “Not A,” and that the core confession is to acknowledge that we are not one with our ourselves. We can, he said, hold alienation as the truth about our lives without trying to “fix” it. This allows us to move through it, come out the other side, and move into something truly new.

Where have you seen this type of transformation in your own life? Or what do you think it would look like for you? Do you have experience with a process that looks and sounds like, but you’d consider something different? What has the experience been like? What have been its results?