Perspective - Perception - Paradigm

This Wednesday I shared about one of the reasons why I think Christians have a hard time connecting with people who are not Christians. I think it has to do with faulty paradigms that we're functioning in. A comment I've gotten a lot is that people aren't interested in God, yet surveys show that the vast majority of people consider themselves "spiritual!" The problem isn't people not being interested in God, but maybe our paradigms for sharing the awesome news of God's Kingdom is wrong.
For clarification here's my oversimplified definitions of these words. Perspective being the view that you have of something/someone. Perception how you are interpreting the facts you see from your perspective. And paradgim, the pattern of rules and responses developed to address the perceptions.
So we looked at the Jew that Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan to...you can check it out. Basically: Jesus knew that the Jewish man had Jewish perspective (obviously) and his perception of non-Jews was that he was better. His paradigm for dealing with non-Jews was to avoid them. And yet Jesus shatters that paradigm by saying that the Samaritan did better than the Jews (this guys paradigm of what a neighbor was was very limited and Jesus seriously challenged it) AND by telling him to love the way the Samaritan had...
I think a lot of our ministry and life paradigms may be messed up because deep down inside there is pride that says we are better than others, so our perspective is that of looking down on others. This loftiness in turn affects our perception of them and we interpret the data based on our "higher" viewpoint. We then develop sets of behaviors and habits of life and ministry that become part of us (paradigms)...many times we don't know why we do the stupid things we do...even scarier is that I think a lot of times we don't realize what we're doing!
Anyway, the whole point is: change your perspective in order to change your perception so that you can change your paradigms for life and ministry.
Jesus was numbered with the transgressors and was characterized by compassion...He had a perfect perspective and sinless perception before coming to earth, yet He chose to humble Himself and walk in our sandals! He changed His perspective from being above to being beside...maybe we need to change our perspective from above to beside and that will change our perception of those who don't yet serve Jesus Christ, which will in turn change the way we go about life...God forgive us for our pride.