December 04, 2014
Making Disciples
My friend is a retired
teacher of 30 years and when the name of someone in the community comes up it’s not
uncommon to hear her say, “They were one of my kids; I taught them in school.”
In some cases she also taught a second generation of the same family. Years ago we heard something
similar from Sunday school teachers whose ministry was to teach Bible stories
to generations of children. “Since my youth, O God, you have taught me, and to
this day I declare your marvelous deeds. Even when I am old and gray, do not
forsake me, O God till I declare your power to the next generation, your might
to all who are to come” ( Psalm 71:17-18 NIV).
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Gail;
-----There are two ways the human heart learns. It is impressed by what it hears or sees or reads, and it is impressed by reflection upon what it has caused or done or thinks. The first way is indeed revelation. We should not attach the word “revelation” to God only. He is the ultimate revealer. But any information summarily given to another is a revelation to that other. So we all went through twelve years of revelation, or else we each created algebra, geometry, calculus, and of course, history. Ya. They were revealed!
-----Certainly revelation is the beginning of our intelligence. But I think we expect too much of it. My daughters were complaining about hearing the same old Bible stories in Sunday school by the time they were ten. As important as revelation is, the stuff it brings has no relevance without reflection. For when the mind reflects upon stuff it personalizes it. It explores relationships and meanings and values, comparing those of new concepts with those of long-held concepts, and thus settles ideas into useful positions within its own treasury. Revelation and reflection mostly work like partners to integrate the meaning of new information with known information, always stitching additions and alterations to feelings and desires and attitudes and habits.
-----And so it is that I never fully regarded the “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” thing of Prov 22:6 to mean just sitting around teaching kids Bible verses. I certainly regret not teaching my children more verses, but I am happily seeing them slowly return to the Word they let the pleasures and hubbub of life rather eclipse. Revelation is certainly a part of training. But it is only the introductory part. It is like the shadow from which both the form and the source of light must be inferred. Those inferences are only made upon reflection.
-----Now we can see how tightly revelation and reflection partner. When Erin was four years old MGM’s roaring lion was leading into a movie on TV. She turned to me and goes, “Was this movie made by Hollywood, Daddy?” When I said it was, she turned back to the TV while proclaiming, “Well then! It’s a lie!” I’m not sure I ever so succinctly revealed that truth to her. Yet, she picked it up assuredly. And although neither of my daughters admitted to even one good feeling about going to church, they gave their teachers in high school much grief over the evolution bologna taught there. Neither Char nor I sat around pounding creationism into their heads. We just lived these things as naturally accepted realities, reflecting their training in the ways we did what we did and the why’s that we thought what we thought.
-----“And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deut 6:6-9) The Pharisees came to the place of wearing these ridiculous boxes containing Bible verses on their wrist’s and dangling from frog sized fishing poles between their eyes. They looked as silly as the stupidity of religiosity is. The Word is written on the wrist that does it. And it is the frontlet between the eyes searching for its meaning. These four verses are about revelation intermingling with reflection to build godly mentality into the life of the way in which a child should go, right there at home where he’s being trained up.
-----And it works the same way with disciples at church.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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