Sunday, August 30, 2009

Knowledge Discussion Moves Forward



So the regular reader may be wondering why I spent three posts to state the obvious about knowledge. Besides being a cumbersome thinker who is talkative, I have an overall goal. That goal, though in line with the sub-title of this blog, is stated so often here in the past two years (nearly that long anyway) my readers may feel cheated--or at least like yawning for the umpteenth time. Well, I hope I am being an effective witness for the narrow way of Jesus in the long run but even I think I am starting to sound like a broken record. (Guess that's a dated simile, but malfunctioning CD's don't repeat the same line over and over just a syllable or note in rapid staccato
.)

The reason I posted on knowledge is to develop a background of delineated meanings from which an assertion may be made regarding Christian decision-making on a day to day basis, which then leads to some degree of wisdom-gain over a life time. The next stop is to identify how the common man or woman deals with scripture. There might be generated a complex list if I attempted a no-stone-unturned approach, but for the sake of this blog is not a tome, I will work with a few main possibilities. I came up with three:
  • Reaction--meaning the words flip some switch in the heart on and the person goes off. Most of what is thought then is really skewed by this deeply ingrained, emotionally-controlled state which is our baggage in common terms and in secular terms is closely akin to psychosis. (That's a joke, but it may not be far from the truth.)
  • Interpretation--sounds formal but for many of us, it is not. Once the switch is flipped back off (this is not completely possible except under one condition but a person must believe it is at least attempted--that's a later post), the person begins to work on understanding what the scripture actually means. I do not mean formal interpretation as if one is a Bible scholar, just the sense that, "Hey, I better figure out what this means. I'll go ask Joe. He knows stuff like this."
  • Application--"OK, I got it now and I'm gonna do the right thing by this."
For any reason, if one of the readers think another bullet or two must be considered, please help me here.

2 comments:

Josiah said...

It does not feel redundant. Let the Word of God dwell richly among us.


Perhaps we could add listening or meditation. The place before we react or interpret where we are primarily recieving.

ded said...

You jump ahead. Bright young man that you are. You are right, that would fit nicely as an interaction common among believers.