Thursday, April 28, 2011

Knowing to Walking

This idea came up last evening in our home group. As I mentioned yesterday, knowing is one thing, living what you know is another. Two of the scripture passages in what we discussed were from Psalms 119 and 1. Afterward, three words stuck out to me as capturing the process: Learning, Meditating, Living. The first is obviously necessary. One can't consciously live something one doesn't know. And "Living" is the point at which knowledge has become integrated into one's life. Meditating on scripture - whether intentional study/focus or less formally mulling over something, thinking of its meaning, implications and what it would look like in practical life.


I've recently started reading Augustine's "Confessions". In the part about his school days, he speaks of his experiential disconnect between education and being a good person. Taken carelessly, one might think he was arguing, eloquently and skillfully, against education. His actual meaning is the moral outrage of the two - being educated and being good - being separated. His ideal would be to be both, but in an either-or choice, being good is better. It's sad - a token of mankind's deep flaw, sin - that our society doesn't "get" this, some fifteen centuries later, making the same simplistic choice of education the mind but not the heart.

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