Higher Learning

"'How terrible for you, you experts on the law. You have taken away the key to learning about God. You yourselves would not learn, and you stopped others from learning, too.'"---Luke 11:52 (NCV)

"The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue."---Antisthenes

"I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma."---Eartha Kitt

Learn: to gain knowledge or understanding of or skill in by study, instruction, or experience; to come to know

I make no apologies for the fact that one of my favorite shows of all time is "Little House on the Prairie" (one of the reasons being because again, Charles Ingalls, minus a few personal preferences, is what I consider to be "the ultimate man"). Of course, as with anything, there are a few things about the show that I wish were different. I don't like that it irritatingly, although accurately, tells of a season in time (Ecclesiastes 3:1) when African Americans were newly freed slaves and so therefore characters that look like me were far and few between. I don't like the fact that some of the biblical teachings are scripturally inaccurate. AND I never liked it when some of the men on the show mistook submission for domination. (I fear that many men, even today, still have that last one jacked up!---I Peter 3:7)

It's actually the last "don't like" that I wanted to focus on for just a moment. I recall watching one episode of a show set in the time of "Little House" where a woman was wanting to learn how to read, but she had to sneak around to do it because her husband was illiterate; he didn't want her to gain that kind of information because he knew that with knowledge comes power...and very oftentimes, change.

So, where am I going with this? A couple of places, actually. When it comes to work, religion and relationships, I have often felt a lot like that woman who wanted to learn more; oftentimes I also felt like I was being encouraged and/or intimidated to stay professionally...spiritually...personally "illiterate". Dare I inquire of ways to make a company function more efficiently? Dare I question a clergyman? Dare I speak up when I'm no longer satisfied with the way my interaction with someone is going? The Bible says that God did not give me a spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7), but I must admit that, in times past, I often played or stayed "dumb" in many situations because I was afraid of what would happen, what I might lose, if I didn't.

Family, take it from me: THAT IS NO WAY TO LIVE. GOD IS A FULL SUPPORTER OF WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE...AND ACTING ON THE THINGS THAT YOU LEARN. One of my favorite scriptures as it relates to this subject matter is 2 Timothy 2:15 (AMP):

"Study and be eager and do your utmost to present yourself to God approved (tested by trial), a workman who has no cause to be ashamed, correctly analyzing and accurately dividing [rightly handling and skillfully teaching] the Word of Truth."

Never once have I took that to mean that I must study only one thing or one way. Now, without a doubt, my favorite resource is the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16-17). After all, in the beginning, there was the Word, right? (John 1:1) But when Christ, the one that I try and model my life after (John 15:5), was on the Earth, did you catch that he often spoke in the form of parables (a usually short fictitious story that illustrates a moral attitude or a religious principle)? When his disciples inquired as to why, Christ himself said:

"This is the reason that I speak to them in parables: because having the power of seeing, they do not see; and having the power of hearing, they do not hear, nor do they grasp and understand."---Matthew 13:13 (NCV)

Christ was not caught up in the traditionalism of speaking spiritual truth a certain way; he was more interested in making sure that the people he reached could hear, learn and retain the lessons that he was trying to teach. I often wonder how Christ would feel living in these times where many "saints" question a song that doesn't have scripture riddled through it... denounce movies by professed Christian writers who don't mention the Godhead once in their screenplays...lack in their support of organizations/ministries that are more interested in being like Christ than simply talking about him. (I John 3:18) I wonder how many modern-day Pharisees Christ himself would respond to with the lead scripture for today. Is it really about speaking a message following a certain formula all of the time or should it be more about making sure the message is received? Besides, who is determining which way is right, anyway? Proverbs 1:7 states that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but did you check out the definition of "learn"; the myriad of ways one can come to acquiring the special and necessary gift of knowledge? Some STUDY. Some learn through INSTRUCTION. Oh, and some....by EXPERIENCE.

Just tonight, I was exchanging emails with a wife who was recommending a book to me ("Sacred Marriage" by Gary Thomas). She said she's been trying to encourage her husband to read it, but his response is that he will go the Holy Spirit for direction. Hmm. How does he not know that through the favor of his wife (Proverbs 18:22), the Holy Spirit is leading him to the book for the very insight that he desires?

For the past couple of weeks, I have had an urge to buy a book myself that I've been hearing about for months, but never purchased. It's entitled, "Blink" and the author is Malcolm Gladwell. I recently gave in to the unction and just this past weekend, I read about Marriage and Morse Code. Here's an excerpt from that chapter of the book:

What Gottman is saying is that a relationship between two people has a fist as well [a Morse Code word used to describe a certain pattern of communication]: a distinctive signature that arises naturally and automatically. This is why marriage can be read and decoded so easily, because some key part of human activity---whether it is something as simple as pounding out a Morse Code message or as complex as being married to someone---has an identifiable and stable pattern. Predicting divorce, like tracking Morse Code operators, is pattern recognition.

"People are in one of two states in a relationship," Gottman went on. "The first is what I call positive override, where positive emotion overrides irritability. It's like a buffer. Their spouse will do something bad, and they'll say, 'Oh, he's just in a crummy mood.' Or they can be in a negative sentiment override, so that even a relatively neutral thing that a partner says gets perceived as negative. In the negative sentiment override state, people draw lasting conclusions about each other. If their spouse does something positive, it's a selfish person doing a positive thing. It's really hard to change those states, and those states determine whether one party tries to repair things, the other party sees that as repair or hostile manipulation. For example, I'm talking with my wife, and she says, 'Will you shut up and let me finish?' In positive sentiment override, I say, 'Sorry, go ahead.' I'm not very happy, but I recognize the repair. In negative sentiment override, I say, "...I'm not getting a chance to finish, either...you remind me of your mother.'"

As he was talking, Gottman drew a graph on a piece of paper that looked a lot like a chart of the ups and downs of the stock market over the course of a typical day. What he does, he explains, is track the ups and downs of a couple's level of positive and negative emotion, and he's found that it doesn't take very long to figure out which way the line on the graph is going. "Some go up, some go down," he says. "But once they start going down, toward negative emotion, ninety-four percent will continue going down. They start on a bad course and they can't correct it. I don't think of this as just a slice in time. It's an indication of how they view the whole relationship."----Blink, The Theory of Thin Slices, pg. 29-30

(By the way, according to his research, for a marriage to survive, the ratio of positive to negative emotion in any given encounterhas to be at leastfive to one.)

Now, I can think of a few scriptures that speak on his point: Don't let the sun set on your wrath. (Ephesians 4:25). Whatever is lovely, think on that. (Philippians 4:8) What you want people to do to you, do to them. (Matthew 7:12) But the truth (John 8:32) is that a lot of people have this wisdom, but are still lacking in understanding. (Proverbs 2:2 & 4:7) How do I know? Because the rate of divorce is just as high in the Church as out. (Roughly 50%) Gottman's research sheds some additional insight on the scriptures quoted and how to properly apply them, doesn't it? And yet, it's not a "Christian" book...there is not one scripture in it (far as I can tell) and still, I believe that if people really paid attention to the lessons within it, it could help them.

I recall a woman semi-recently commenting on one of my devotionals...about how she was praying for me (by all means, please do...who doesn't need prayer?!?) because I was using "secular" examples in my "religious" teaching. The Bible says that God is king of all the earth (Psalm 47:7)...I don't put it past him to use whatever he wishes to teach me what I need to know. Different students learn different ways. The main objective should be that we all LEARN.

Family, we have to get to a place where we are not so bound...where we are open to growth, even and especially when it comes to our methods of learning (and teaching). When I think back on my elementary and high school years, it wasn't so much the classes/subjects that I remember so much as the teachers who taught them...all different, but all with something special and unique to bring to the table. If the woman in that "Little House" like show relied only on her husband for information, she would have spent the rest of her days not knowing how to read. Due to his ignorance and insecurity (catch that), I'm sure he wouldn't have minded, but what a limited way to live.

If we spend our time experiencing life only in the way our bosses, our churches, our friends and loved ones expect us to, we too could be missing out on keys that can open doors to abundant living. (John 10:10) Different is not necessarily wrong. More is not automatically detrimental. As a wise man once said, a person who wanders should not be assumed to be lost. We must learn to judge the fruit more than the gardening tools that were used to grow it. (Matthew 12:33) When God says that his ways are not ours, I believe that also applies to all things, including education. Don't be so quick to knock, judge, condemn something just because you don't understand it. After all, according to Proverbs 14:6, "A scofferseeks wisdom and does not find it, but knowledge is easy to him who understands."

Learn to do good (Isaiah 1:17), but be open to how God reveals that to you---and those around you.

He is the Creator.(Romans 1:25)...and creators are usually pretty creative.

©Shellie R. Warren/2008