Higher Learning

I drove past a local college campus the other day. Out of the blue, the thought hit me that I’m at a point in my life where I will never be obliged to walk the halls of an institution of higher learning again. I was hit with a wave of relief. That was an excellent feeling.

It’s not that I dislike the learning process. Not at all. I’m constantly seeking out information about this, that and the other. I just never liked doing it in a classroom.

The School of God

You may have heard it said among believers that we are all in the school of God. This is true both corporately and individually, and thank the Lord, despite our propensity for inflicting forty-five minute lectures on one another, he does not do most of his teaching through them. Only a tiny portion of my Christian development has come in settings that resemble classrooms.

We all learn progressively, which is why schools have grades. Certain fundamentals must be mastered first, after which new concepts can be built atop the intellectual foundations. Yes, all Christians are in the school of God, though we are often in very different places in the learning curve at any given time, and no single classroom experience would be adequate to equip us all. We are all being both conformed to the image of Christ and transformed from one degree of glory to another, and though we cannot fully understand all that the process involves, we have been told what the end product looks like. It looks like our Savior, properly understood.

That last point is crucial. Our Lord must be understood properly. Revelation is not subjective. Christ is not whatever we would like to make him. We are being conformed to him as he is, not as we think he is, or as we would like him to be. Paul reminds the Ephesians, “That is not the way you learned Christ!”, in futility and hardness of heart like the Gentiles. There is only one right way of learning Christ. Anything else is inferior, defective and illusory. The school of God is about learning to love the Lord with heart, soul, mind and strength, with the will, affections, intellect and actions as he has revealed himself to be. The various situations, conflicts and challenges we encounter along the way are all about learning Christ more accurately and living him out in front of the world more faithfully. Through them, we become conformed to his image.

In Search of Mastery

On this subject, I came across an interesting question this week. You may have asked it yourself. “Is it usually the case that the Lord doesn’t take you out of a situation until you’ve mastered it?”

As far as I am aware, the word of God doesn’t explicitly tell us. If we look carefully at the training process of Jesus’ disciples, we might think there were faith-building exercises they never mastered until after his ascension. First, the Lord fed 5,000 in Galilee, after challenging the disciples with “You give them something to eat.” Then he fed 4,000 in the region around the Decapolis. Even after having experienced the first feeding, the disciples had evidently missed the point. “How can we feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?” they asked. When the disciples later compared these two miracles after finding themselves once again empty handed, it appears the lesson was lost on them. “Do you not yet understand?” the Lord gently inquired. Apparently not.

Their training went on in any case, but in different areas of faith. “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus inquired. Peter rightly responded, “You are the Christ.” But the teaching that the Christ must suffer, be killed and rise again was too much for even Peter’s faith, and he began to contradict the Lord to his face, requiring a stern rebuke. The lesson was repeated on at least three more occasions. The second time the disciples were greatly distressed. The third time they did not grasp what was said. It was hidden from them, and they did not understand. Finally, at the Last Supper, he did it again, provoking Peter to rash professions of his own loyalty and willingness to die with Jesus that he could not back up when push came to shove.

Until he actually died, they could not bring themselves to take the concept literally.

Non-Linear Learning

What we observe is that the Lord taught the same lessons repeatedly, recognizing the disciples were often incapable of processing them the first, second or even third time they heard them. But he did not do so in a linear way, block upon block or rule upon rule. The lessons never stopped coming, but if a particular learning opportunity was unfruitful, the Lord moved on to something else, often coming back to a lesson previously unlearned at a later date.

I find he does much the same with me. Certain practical habits of daily fellowship with the Lord have been fixed features in my life for some years. The Lord doesn’t keep revealing to me the value of and necessity for prayer and Bible study because I have already come to agree with him about them. Likewise, the value of regular giving. I have seen the need for these things and incorporated them into my life. Other aspects of Christian living have taken me a lifetime to learn, and I’m not sure I’ve “mastered” any of them yet. But the Spirit of God doesn’t do anything by halves. I can’t count the number of times I’ve thought, “Well, I know scripture says such and such, but maybe this is the exception” and subsequently discovered that, no, it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. Such reinforcements of lessons only partially received are very confirming.

But keep us in a situation until we’ve mastered it? I can’t say I’ve ever been through that. There are truths we may understand in a surface way, but not fully comprehend until much later. We’re just not ready yet. That was the disciples’ experience, and it’s been mine too.