June 04, 2010
Leaning
Since I want to be a better writer, I take every opportunity to learn more about the craft. However I now have to get educated in areas for which I have no natural interest. For instance my Airport Advisory Board has me learning about enplanements and fuel loads. My NIMS class, through FEMA, is trying to prepare me for disasters. And the Economic Development folks are teaching me how to package and sell our community to prospective businesses. I often must lean on the understanding of others until I’m comfortably educated and feel confident in being able to converse and make correct decisions. It sounds remarkably similar to, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6 NIV)
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Gail;
-----Now that is dangerous! Deeper thought to the concepts of knowledge, understanding, and belief will reveal why. We learn from text books that an atom is composed of protons and electrons. A proton which has actually combined with an electron loses its proton characteristics as much as the electron has lost its electron characteristics. They together become a neutron with neutron characteristics. Neutrons also form a part of the atom. I never built a particle accelerator and teased out of the atom all this information which formulates atomic physics. So I do not know first hand. I must accept these principles from those who have, yet not directly. They passed their knowledge to others who used it in doing what they’ve done. And it worked. So others who have watched them do what they’ve done wrote it into textbooks which teachers used to inform me about it. The laws of physics are currently certain and unchanging, so the sense of the construction of the atom is verified by its harmony with those laws. However, neither did I discover the laws of physics myself. Knowing that I must rely much more upon the testimony of others, since I have not the opportunity to discover it, discomforts me. Are they pulling our leg? To remove that discomfort, then, all I can do is learn the laws of physics myself and observe whether what is said about the atom is consistent with what is said about them, and whether or not they are all consistent with each other. From that comes understanding. Understanding personalizes knowledge into a usable arrangement for the individual. It is not itself knowledge as much as it is an integration of everything known. When that integration indicates there are no more alternative understandings of the knowledge, then the understanding becomes belief.
-----Atoms and the laws of physics are complex, but they are not tricky. So what can be learned about them from teachers can be learned quite certainly. The understanding of it flows out of the knowledge of it, and the nature of it presents only the one alternative which can be believed. But the relationships formed of human interactions are tricky. Economic understanding has two basic alternatives: free-market capitalism, or centrally controlled production and distribution. Politics has two basic alternatives: democratic determination, or totalitarian authority. FEMA is an organization whose principles interconnect with both politics and economics. Since there are alternatives involved in both, the prospect for biases in what FEMA teaches are very high. And biases extend from choosing between alternate understandings based upon belief. That is backward and dangerous. And especially when God’s interrelationship with man is considered.
-----God says not to lean upon your own understanding, not meaning that understanding is to be scuttled. Proverbs 2 speaks to the value of understanding. But the vastly more complicated nature of human interrelations twists into an Alice in Wonderland state by its inherent trickiness. This lends no sure set of principles about itself as does physics about the nature of matter. Making it even trickier is its factual interrelationship with God, which has even less scientifically discoverable principles. But God is who He is, so from that He must be the teacher. All He can do to help us know Him is require a backwards approach, and to approach only it this way. First believe the knowledge He teaches, then reject any understanding of it that is inconsistent with it. No wonder those who know Him not howl against His Word. He asks us only to know Him by the same way they demand us to know them.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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