Reframing is a counselling term used in Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It relies on the idea that the meaning of an event, and our emotional response to it, depends on the context in which it is perceived.
A Chinese Taoist story about a farmer in a poor country village illustrates the process.
(Jesus the Fool, Michael Frost, London: Lion Publishing, 1994. p71)
He was considered very well-to-do, because he owned a horse which he used for ploughing and for transportation. One day his horse ran away. All his neighbours exclaimed how terrible this was, but the farmer simply said, ‘Maybe.’
A few days later the horse returned and brought two wild horses with it. The neighbours all rejoiced at this good fortune, but the farmer just said ‘Maybe.’
The next day the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the wild horses; the horse threw him and broke his leg. The neighbours all offered their sympathy for his misfortune, but the farmer again said, ‘Maybe.’
The next week conscription officers came to the village to take young men for the army. They rejected the farmer’s son because of his broken leg. When the neighbours told him how lucky he was, the farmer replied, ‘Maybe.’
So the meaning of the event can be changed if the event is given a different frame or context – having two wild horses is a good thing until it’s seen in the context of a broken leg, the broken leg seems like a bad thing in the context of peaceful village life, but it suddenly becomes good in the context of being conscripted to war.
Jokes and comedy also depend on reframing. In most jokes an ordinary action that we understand in one way takes on a different meaning, or a variety of different meanings, in the new context in which it is placed.
In curating worship we do a lot of reframing (you could also call it contextualising). We take material – movies, music, incidents, rituals, objects – from the culture and use them in a worship context. Taking biblical material and putting it into a twenty-first century Western context is a similar process. Jesus was himself a reframer, with the most obvious example being what he did with bread and wine – common items at an ordinary meal – that became mystical symbols of his body and blood.
Reframing requires us to understand the essence of the truth we’re reframing. Surface connections between the two events or symbols are not enough. It is a task fraught with potential pitfalls but an essential one if we are to connect the Gospel with the lives of people inside and outside the church.
(More comment on reframing can be found on pages 71f of ‘The Prodigal Project; worship and mission in the emerging culture’ by Riddell, Pierson, Kilpatrick, London: SPCK, 2000.)