Title: What in the Words?
Author: Christopher Harbin
Text: Mark 12:28-34
Ever had someone get the right answer but have no idea what it meant or what to do with it? I think I've been on every side of that reality. I've learned the right answers to questions without the slightest understanding of what those words strung together meant. I've taught people who could memorize without getting to any understanding. I've taught others who understood but had not ability to express what they lived in words. I've even encountered teachers who could follow the memorized script with no comprehension of its meaning. What do we do with the essential words of Jesus? How do we apply the answers we are given to the realities of life around us?
My high school geometry class was really about applying logic to basic units of knowledge to developing theorems. You could have called it a distillation of the logic behind the scientific process applied to the geometry of 2- and maybe 3-dimensional figures. Math and science were my school's strong suits. The administration just pushed faculty to teach classes that needed to be taught. My teacher could read the textbook, but he did not have the foggiest notion of what it meant. He depended on students to actually teach the class, write proofs on the board, and explain how they worked. If the textbook had not come with ready-made testing and grading materials, the course would have been a disaster. The words were all there, but there was no understanding.
Jesus faced the same thing. God's revelation had been given to the people, but there was a gap between hearing the words, even memorizing them, and understanding them enough to put them into practice. All around him, people had memorized large passages of Scripture and knew the 613 commands made in Torah. They held themselves responsible for knowing these in order to keep at least half of them. Some could even distinguish importance between one command and another toward categoriz ...
Author: Christopher Harbin
Text: Mark 12:28-34
Ever had someone get the right answer but have no idea what it meant or what to do with it? I think I've been on every side of that reality. I've learned the right answers to questions without the slightest understanding of what those words strung together meant. I've taught people who could memorize without getting to any understanding. I've taught others who understood but had not ability to express what they lived in words. I've even encountered teachers who could follow the memorized script with no comprehension of its meaning. What do we do with the essential words of Jesus? How do we apply the answers we are given to the realities of life around us?
My high school geometry class was really about applying logic to basic units of knowledge to developing theorems. You could have called it a distillation of the logic behind the scientific process applied to the geometry of 2- and maybe 3-dimensional figures. Math and science were my school's strong suits. The administration just pushed faculty to teach classes that needed to be taught. My teacher could read the textbook, but he did not have the foggiest notion of what it meant. He depended on students to actually teach the class, write proofs on the board, and explain how they worked. If the textbook had not come with ready-made testing and grading materials, the course would have been a disaster. The words were all there, but there was no understanding.
Jesus faced the same thing. God's revelation had been given to the people, but there was a gap between hearing the words, even memorizing them, and understanding them enough to put them into practice. All around him, people had memorized large passages of Scripture and knew the 613 commands made in Torah. They held themselves responsible for knowing these in order to keep at least half of them. Some could even distinguish importance between one command and another toward categoriz ...
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