Learning
From the Series—Journey
July 3, 2003This evotional continues our series titled Journey: The Road to Spiritual Maturity. We’re exploring four dimensions of discipleship: seeking, learning, influencing, and investing.
The word “disciple” comes from the Greek word mathetes which literally means “learner. “ By definition, a disciple is someone who never stops learning. For what it’s worth, neurologists estimate that we have the capacity to learn something new every minute of every hour of every day for the next three hundred million years! You are designed by God to never stop learning. Learning is a stewardship issue.
This week I had a meeting with our summer intern. Part of his internship is going through a predetermined series of discussion questions. One of the questions that came up this week was: what is your philosophy of successful pastoring? We could discuss that for days on end, but I gave him my short-answer. I can sum up my philosophy of successful pastoring in two words: keep learning. Stop learning and you stop growing. Keep learning and you keep growing. Proverbs 18:15 says, “The intelligent man is always open to new ideas.” I love the way Gandhi said it. “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
Last week’s evotional explored six pathways of seeking. This evotional focuses on three pathways of learning: studying, meditating, and experimenting.
The Pathway of Study
I love to study, but up until a few years ago I always felt like studying was somehow less spiritual than praying or fasting or worshipping. Then I read one passage from the Talmud , the Jewish commentary on the Old Testament. It said, “An hour of study is as an hour of prayer.” That one insight really proved to be a paradigm shift. Studying is a spiritual discipline. Sometimes studying is the most spiritual thing you can do.
II Timothy 2:15 says, “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” I think sometimes there is a disconnect between being spiritual and intellectual, but there shouldn’t be. I think one of the greatest mistakes we can make is to think that the intellectual and spiritual parts of us are enemies instead of allies. I don’t think you can be intellectual, in the truest sense of the word, without being spiritual. And I don’t think you can be spiritual, in the truest sense of the word, without being intellectual. Let me try to explain why.
John 4 says that the Father is seeking worshippers who will worship him “in spirit and in truth.” There is a spiritual component and an intellectual component . Learning and worshipping are not mutually exclusive things. In fact, I’d argue that they are directly proportional. It comes down to this: the more you know about God the more you can worship God. I can worship God more now than I could five years ago because I know Him better!
Depth Perception
In this book, Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot, author Richard Restak says, “The richer my knowledge of flora and fauna of the woods, the more I’ll be able to see. Our perceptions take on richness and depth as a result of all the things that we learn. What the eye sees is determined by what the brain has learned. This suggests a short mantra: learn more, see more.” In a sense, learning gives us depth perception.
Think about it in these terms. When an astronomer looks into the night sky, they have a greater appreciation for the heavens because they see more. They know the constellations by name. When a musician listens to a concerto, they have a greater appreciation for the music because they hear more. They know the notes that are being played.
In her book, Unwinding the Clock , Bodil Jonsson makes a great observation about life. She says, “Once upon a time I thought that getting older would be like moving down a narrowing funnel--life would just get more constricted.” But she said, “It seems quite the opposite.” Here is how she explains it. “It’s like the biologist who can distinguish hundreds of different types of grass while other people see green and more green. The experience of experts are richer than those of other people.”
Here is the point I’m trying to make: the more you know the more you can worship. The intellectual and spiritual parts of us are totally interconnected. Studying and worshipping aren’t at odds with each other. They are the same pursuit --the pursuit of God.
Empty Worship
Think of truth as a spectrum: on one side is “ignorance” and on the other side is “knowledge.” Now listen to what Jesus says in John 4:22. “You Samaritans worship what you do not know.” In other words, they are worshipping God out of ignorance. And when you worship out of ignorance its meaningless. God doesn’t just want you to worship Him. He wants you to know why you’re worshipping Him.
When Lora and I get into an argument (hypothetically speaking, of course), I’ll occasionally try to bail out by saying “sorry” even if I’m not sure why we’re arguing or what I’m sorry about. To be perfectly honest, it’s a little disingenuous. I’m just being too lazy to work through the issue or the problem. And sometimes it backfires because Lora will ask, “What are you sorry about?” That usually starts another hypothetical argument because I don’t know the answer to the question. Here’s the point: when you don’t know what you’re sorry about it’s an empty apology.
That’s worship without knowledge: it’s empty worship. It’s like we’re worshipping God and if God asked “why” we wouldn’t know what to say because we aren’t sure why we’re worshipping. It’s like someone saying “thank you” but they don’t know what for. It’s an empty thank you.
God wants to be worshipped “in spirit and in truth.” Our ability to worship is only limited by our knowledge of God.
Study Habits
In Acts 17:11, Luke commends the Bereans for their study habits. “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures to see if what Paul said was true.”
Let me just say it like it is: you’re going to get out of these evotionals what you what to get out of them. What you learn will be determined by your attitude going into it. If you read with a critical spirit you’ll find plenty to be critical of. If you are hungry to learn you’ll learn something no matter what I write.
The Bereans set an example: they received the message with “great eagerness.” They couldn’t wait to hear what God was going to say to them through Paul’s teaching.
And then it says they “examined the Scriptures to see if what Paul said was true.” That tells me a couple things about the Bereans. Scripture was the ultimate authority in their lives . I hope you get something out of these evotionals, but don’t take my word for it . I’m not the ultimate authority. You need to examine the Scriptures for yourselves! Study to show yourself approved.
Other Ologies
Here’s my perspective on learning: I love studying other ologies--biology, psychology, neurology--because I believe all ologies are branches of theology. I don’t want that to sound pejorative, but learning about what God has made is one way of learning about God. We learn about the creator by studying creation. Romans 1:20 says that nature reveals God’s “invisible qualities.” Gary Thomas says, “Any study that explores, examines, and explains the natural world can shed some light on the nature of our God and help us know him better.”
I split my college education between the University of Chicago and Central Bible College. When I was at CBC I took a lot of classes in theology. And they helped shape my worldview, but if you were to ask me what class had the greatest theological impact on me, I would have to say it was a class on immunology at the University of Chicago Hospital Center.
The professor never mentioned God, but the entire course was an exposition of Psalm 139:14. “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” I would walk away from classes wondering how anyone could doubt the existence of an intelligent designer.
The Pathway of Meditation
Leonardo Da Vinci once said the average human “looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, inhales without awareness of odor or fragrance, and talks without thinking.”
Let me add one more to the list. The average Christian reads without meditating. And here’s the problem with that: reading without meditating is like eating without digesting. I think sometimes pastors are guilty of information overload. We give you so much information to process that you can’t process the information. I like what John Ortberg says. “The goal is not to get through the Scriptures, it’s to get the Scriptures through you.” Psalm 119:99 says, “I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statues.”
Imaginative Meditation
Saint Ignatius of Loyola taught his followers a spiritual exercise known as imaginative meditation. He encouraged them to enter the gospel stories. Imagine the sights and sounds and smells. Move from the role of spectator to participant. Instead of reading about the crucifixion, play a role. Imagine what Mary must have felt as her son was dying. Take the place of the one of the thieves on the cross next to Jesus. Play the part of Simon and carry the cross. Ignatius said talk with characters in the story, especially Jesus. And then meditate on how the experience impacts you because it will reveal something about God and reveal something about yourself.
That may not sound scholarly enough for some of you, but I’m afraid that sometimes we dissect Scripture instead of allowing Scripture to dissect us. We need to enter the stories we read. In his book The Celtic Way, Ian Bradley says, “Too many Christians today have half-formed imaginations.” Our problem is not that we’re too imaginative. Our problem is that we aren’t imaginative enough. We need to use our imaginations as we meditate on Scripture.
The Pathway of Experimentation
I can’t imagine taking a science class without doing experiments. Experimenting is part of learning. But I’m not sure we make that same connection in our spiritual lives. We need to think of experimenting as a spiritual discipline.
James 1:22 says, “Do not merely listen to word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like am an who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.”
The word “listen” means “to audit.” When you audit something you take in lots of information but you don’t do anything with it. You don’t do any of the homework. You don’t take the tests. And you don’t get credit. The same is true in our spiritual lives: if you audit you don’t get credit. You need to put it into practice.
Holy Experiments
Jesus said, “Wisdom is proved right by her offspring.” In other words, the proof is in the pudding. It’s not what you know. It’s what you do with what you know that matters! In the Hebrew language there is no distinction between “knowing” and “doing. “ If you don’t do something you don’t know something. To know is to do. And to do is to know. For what it’s worth, the word “expert” and “experiment” come from the same etymological root. The way you become an expert is by experimenting.
In My Utmost for His Highest , Oswald Chambers says, “If you will give God the right to yourself, He will make a holy experiment out of you.” May you become a holy experiment!