Kettle, sandwich press, and stove. I’ve burnt my fingers three times in the last two weeks. Now I see the iron sitting there licking his lips waiting his turn to have a little taste of me stubbies. It’s just a matter of time before my collision detector also licks it and I’ll be a laterigrade lush lolloping against lads and lasses on the lanes. What is going on? There seems to be a glitch in my learning apparatus, or I’ve been hit with the Y2K bug twenty years too late.
As I sit here softening Stephanopolous’s stiffened fingers with ice, I’m wondering why I’m not learning as well as I used to? Am I returning to adolescence when some day soon I’ll be jumping off the roof with a towel around my neck pretending it’s a cape? My aching fingers quickly turn my pondering into festering, prematurely rushing me into the unintended title of this piece, that if we don’t sweat the big stuff, that is the question of your salvation, then all that’ll be left is… well… you know… sweltering in sulphur, which sounds more Nordic-sauna from the marketing department, than it will actually will be. Relax. It’s just my pain talking. I’m not going to go there. It’s been decided.
The soothing ice is dimming the smolder on the ticklers, so I chill and remember my daughter’s words when she was about six years old: “if you don’t learn, life isn’t worth living.” I forget the context. Likely it was during one of her rants at her little brother as self-appointed parent number three. Yet, at such a young age she right then and there grasped and gasped the meaning of life.
If you don’t learn, life isn’t worth living.
Like a neat little sea-shell there’s nothing offensive here, not until a crab crawls out and scares a little urine from your bladder black adder. If you don’t learn what? What’s worth learning? What if I don’t want to learn anything anymore? Is my life then deemed worthless? So many questions my brain too begins to ache.
I look over at my young son to command him to fetch the petulant king a headache tablet or two, but the headphones on his head in front of his battered laptop reminds me that he’s busy with his maths tutor. Jai at least is learning. Side-noting this online learning company, called Cluey, is rather neat. They don’t just teach kids WHAT to learn, but more importantly HOW to learn. Their tutors are vetted and rigorously trained to provide their ravenous learners with the tools, strategies and framework to ultimately become, boo-boom, autonomous learners to trump the artificial intelligence. Each child is assessed for their individual learning needs and subsequently an individual ‘learning plan’ is crafted for them.
I really like the sound of that – ‘Learning Plan.’ Brrrrr. Say it again. ‘Learning Plan.’ Brrrrr.
As students progress, their flexible… there those two words again… ‘learning plan’ is adjusted according to their shifting needs and contributes not only to their IQ, EQ and AQ, but also their growing confidence. Being an Ed-tech company, it is data and research driven and therefore I can say with reasonable confidence, that ‘confidence’ is the number one benefit parents claim as the ultimate reward for their learning.
That all sounded like an ad. I should go and work for them. I look at my poor abused fingers, skin starting to resemble burn victim Freddie Kruger’s, even if it is half a centimeter square. Shurrup.
Jesus came to teach his disciples to speak metaphor, so here we go. Surely it’s not so inconceivable that our Father in heaven, who views us as His children, also has an individual learning plan for each of us, which He adjusts as we trot, canter, gallop, fall, scrape or crawl through each lesson? Sometimes the lessons are easy peezy japan-ankles. Other times it takes us a number of sessions to have difficult concepts penetrate this thick Mesolithic brow bro. The thicker the shake, the bigger the straw brah. I have no idea how that’s relevant.
Like my young tutored son we too are meant to take note of HOW we learn and the strategies God provides for us during each lesson, either found in His Word, or through a revelatory word from His Spirit, or from the patterns we observe in our life. We too have to swat the many magpies that come swooping down to peck at our heads in the many voices that vie for our attention. Or we can simply step out of the aviary and ovaries and focus on the important sacrificial teachers that have our best interests at heart, to further us along on our learning journeys, so we too can become autonomous learners and ready ourselves for graduation. Yes indeed, we have to come to a point of “washing our OWN robes” (Revelation 22:14), but more so that our learning achieves something valuable.
When, what, how, where and why. Five words my children slurp up more regularly than ice cream. When do we learn? Always. That was surprisingly easy. I must be getting good at this writing stuff. What is learning, and what is worth learning? How should we learn, the framework we can adopt and apply towards autonomous learning? Where do we find our learning plan? And finally why, what should all our learning achieve?
WHAT
What is learning? Paraphrasing the author James (1:23-25) it is the process of hearing and doing so that we can craft for ourselves an identity. We gotta listen and then we gotta do. James then uses the Snow White analogy of ‘mirror mirror on the wall’, that if anyone hears but does not do, then he/she is like a person who looked into a mirror and once moving away, immediately forgets what they looked like and who they are. Of course James was a brother of Jesus so he knows that the mirror represents the scriptures we use to shape our identities, and once we have the right identity we will be blessed in all we do. Therefore learning is the process that leads towards the right identity so we can succeed and live blessed lives. Reject this at your peril but that’s the point. If learning reaches this crucible, should we not seek to overcome our learning difficulties so that we can graduate into a better life?
What are the obstacles to learning? I ask my son whose just finished with his tutor if he wouldn’t like to know what his learning difficulties might be? He answers yes. Good answer. We brainstorm a little and come up with the following obstacles to individual learning. He does the writing because my fingers are sore and now peeling. Laziness. Not viewing each life lesson as a learning opportunity. Viewing failure with despair instead of a learning opportunity. Being forced into shallow work by things like social media as opposed to cultivating the discipline for deep concentrated work. Being inflexible with our opinions that have a tendency to deceive us into thinking that what we know is not only enough, but right. Our indecision in deciding which of all the voices that try and beat us into cultural slavery we’re going to listen to. I check in with my daughter on this last point. She disagrees. She listens to many voices because that’s how she learns what is sound and what isn’t. She needs the comparisons. Noa has a built in Cesium clock in Christ so I’m not worried about her, but it does make me wonder if my voice selection feeds my confirmation bias, or if I’m just old and in need of shortcuts?
HOW
How do we learn? By paying. We sin, we make mistakes, and then we suffer through the consequences. Other times we counsel the wise and listen to them to short circuit the pain. The trick is spotting the wise. There. Boom. Some more succinct writing. I’m on fire.
WHERE
Where do we find our learning plan? Right through the Bible as the Word of God to; make disciples; grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ; live and spread the gospel and pray it be honoured; the list goes on. “But how is this largely collectivist learning plan individual to me?”, groans our self-serving culture. This is when the learning journey becomes real interesting. As Jai follows the school curriculum FIRST, it exposes his areas of need, which his teacher can then target and focus on improving areas of concern that might hamper his graduation. The teacher that cares at least. He uses the decided measure from the educational experts’ brains-trust to assess his flaws. In the same way we have to follow the curriculum FIRST, the Bible, which our mentor, the Holy Spirit, can then use to run a personal tailored syllabus alongside – adjusting our life events to fit in parallel if we have any hope of graduating into the Kingdom. In short, our communal learning plan is the Bible, while our individual learning plan are the deliberate, purposeful events that run along-side.
Pay attention double-oh-heaven.
For the unbeliever the Word of God is this subjective, irritating, optionally disputable so-called manual for life in the current world, whereas for the believer the world is everyday, every hour adjusted around the Word, to accommodate every believer’s learning plan. Let me play that again; the world exists and comes into existence around the Bible. The Word of God does not try and fit in around the world as our secular society would want us believe. The World fits in around scripture. In fact the world came into existence because of the Word. It is a lot to take in but if your God can’t do this, then he ain’t no God at all is He?
WHY
What’s the point of learning? Why do we need to learn? To begin with it depends on how old you are. As an infant we learn quickly because our survival is at stake, so we ravenously grab that breast… where was I? As we grow we learn so we can please our parents, our teachers and peers until we shape our own goals and aspirations to please ourselves. Once we reach a point of joy and fulfillment that learning affords us, we might get to love life itself. So we look to the One who provides more of it, and so thus and therefore we learn to please Him, God Almighty, giver of eternal life. Sometimes we’re so darned gosh golly enamored with ourselves that we never make make that leap – needing God at all.
All learning is towards a goal. Mine is to not repeatedly burn my fingers. While writing this I burnt my hands for the fourth time using Draino without gloves. Idiot. Oh that you and I might be saved from something far worse like that fiery lake! Learn or burn. Oops. I said I wasn’t going to go there and just did. So sorry. I’m no good at this writing stuff after all.
Our goal is to qualify, graduate, hope and overcome. If we eliminate any of these we despair much more. Trust me, I’m a depressive in remission. Do not believe those mountebanks who try and sell you journey over destination, or destination over journey. Nor actions over words for that matter. Life is linear, in case you hadn’t noticed, so practically we do one to get to the other. We travel, to reach. We speak, so we can do. Just like the Word brought our world into existence, so our words, based on ‘the’ Word, continually shapes our reality.
What a privilege to go through this life to the everlasting Kingdom with our own personal tutor and guide. Praise Him, Giver of the learning life.
thankyoubackbone.com 