3/14/2012
I have been tossing this around in my head now for a week. There are just some things I would like to get off my chest so to speak, and some other things that I would like to say that relate to the issues at hand.
Let me start with some things that relate to the issue at hand. Having worked in Christian education for several years, several that sounds like a long time, it was 4 years. During that time I was a administrator/principle for two Christian Church Schools, and later took the training required by our state to home school my children. That being said I learned several things about education and how people learn that many people take for granted, but still do have an effect on how people see things.
Everyone on earth can learn, yet everyone does not learn the same way. There are kinetic learners and the cognitive learners. Now while I may switch these to terms around and even spell them wrong the primary thing is that there are a small group of individuals that learn far better with a hands on approach than a class room approach. Because of this, many of these, (mostly boys) are diagnosed with learning disability's at the least or ADD or another acronyms that mean the same thing. They cannot be taught in the class room environment there for there must be something wrong with them.
Now you might ask yourself just where is he going with this? So am I, the point is most people can be put in a class room and taught to read, write, add and subtract and memorize. And that is just what it is, they can add and subtract numbers or anything that is subject to certain natural laws. Because you can only teach what has a mathematical answer. Or let me try and put this another way, the answers must have already be achieved so the path to the answer can be taught. There for most people learn by simple memorization than they do actual learning. Especially in to days society when most learn to read by sight rather than phonics. Let me take this one step further in today's society if you can not read or write you are considered to be uneducated. The fact is one can learn to read and write and still be just as uneducated as the person beside them they are calling uneducated because they never learned to read and write.
Education is not the gaining of knowledge rather it is putting that knowledge to use once you have it. This in one since of the word is understanding. Wisdom comes from understanding what you have been taught and putting it to proper use. Many if not most of us have knowledge because we have been told something that was already know by someone else and passed down from generation to generation, this is tradition in its base form. In this is how most of society gains knowledge.
The other group learns by understanding, they cannot accept what has been told them is true they must at some point in their lives fit this knowledge into its proper place. If it does not fit into position as society tells them it does they continue to look until it does. These are the great minds that have brought us new understanding, some of which were past knowledge that had been lost through traditions. These are the Martin Luther's, the Galileo's, the Martin Luther Kings, the men that swam against the stream of their day to bring us greater insight in the world of God's kingdom.
The fact is as I said earlier, all can learn to learn on their own, they just need the starting point. For me it came the first time when I was ask to take and look up every verse that spoke on a subject that my church taught was a sin. When I did I found too many discrepancy's in scripture to merit the out right teaching against the subject. Because I am a hands on learner I could not let it lay and accept the reasoning my church gave me of ignoring those passages that said it was ok of which I might add far out numbered those used to preach against said subject. This was over 35 years ago.
Now I say all of that to say this, Paul in
Romans 14 tells us there are those of us Christians that feel there are certain things one should not do as a Christian. While there are others that have no such compulsion to regulate certain things. We are told we are to receive each other in the faith, and NOT FOR ARGUMENT SAKE. We are not to debate these things, they are between each individual and God! Now Paul used as an example two things that were plainly spelled out in OT as commandments. The eating of certain meats, and the keeping of the Sabbath. Yet in today's church we let far lesser traditions bring separation into the church. Things that are not spelled out in scripture as direct commands of God, things that have less scripture backing than these two things Paul listed, yet we use these traditions as measuring rods that keep God fearing people from the kingdom of God. And if that is not enough, through the course of history we have even let these traditions push us to war. And in this we refuse the greatest commandment, that to Love your neighbor as yourself.
I thank God for the men in my life that though they had great conviction did not let these issues cause them to divide the kingdom as some of us do. Men that had they not taught me to question and study out what they preached to be true in my own life for myself I would not be the man, father and husband I am today.
Not for what they believed and taught for many of the things they taught and held to their hearts I have come to see as old time traditions that were right for their day but not for today. But in their lives they maintained a spirit of acceptance for their brothers in the Lord that did not see things the same way they did.
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