This is one of the introductory ideas I included in the curriculum I designed for a local church. I firmly believe that we ought to pay more attention to it.

I am no arachnologist, but it’s my understanding that the center of a spider web is functionally the most essential part of the structure. It’s critical for directing the structure’s geometry and for sensing vibrations. Every part of the web is important, but not equally so. As you travel radially outwards from the center, functional importance reduces. This is instructive by analogy: If we could empty people’s cherished beliefs into buckets – and every human has them – we would see that people do not exactly believe the same things in the same way.