I joined a small reading group on Chesterton once. Halfway through the first meeting, we were discussing A Man Called Thursday” when I noticed that people remained fixated on talking around the book....discussing small details about Chesterton’s life and when the book was written, etc. Suddenly I realized that no one talking had read the book! When I asked who had read it, no one raised their hand; after further investigation, I discovered that one guy out of ten people present had ever read any book by Chesterton and that was when he was in college 25 years prior. The consensus was that Chesterton’s writing was “hard to read”
I had a client once who learned to write down everything that happened during his day in order to help him with short term memory loss. It took him awhile to master writing down important details of his life and he expressed dissatisfaction about continuing the practice because “it isn’t helping me at all!”. After talking over this issue, I discovered, he had not realized that he was supposed to read the journal when he needed to remember what happened in the past.
I was attending a church where the ministers sermons continued to fall flat.....it wasn’t due to lack of detail or depth, instead, we found out that the minister was “winging it”. She was not engaged in an active, personal Bible study or regular quiet time with God. The sermons were not an outgrowth of her walk with God. I am now following people who are leaving the church.
When we enter into discussions about theology, hermeneutics and engage is exegesis, it is important to know the subject matter under discussion. Often, I read posts that seem, at first glance to be simply heretical, but soon after, it is revealed that the person writing is either blindly parroting someone else’s heresy or just assembled the idea out of thin air. Perhaps our discussions would be more interesting to read if they were and out growth of our current personal study and prayer.
I had a client once who learned to write down everything that happened during his day in order to help him with short term memory loss. It took him awhile to master writing down important details of his life and he expressed dissatisfaction about continuing the practice because “it isn’t helping me at all!”. After talking over this issue, I discovered, he had not realized that he was supposed to read the journal when he needed to remember what happened in the past.
I was attending a church where the ministers sermons continued to fall flat.....it wasn’t due to lack of detail or depth, instead, we found out that the minister was “winging it”. She was not engaged in an active, personal Bible study or regular quiet time with God. The sermons were not an outgrowth of her walk with God. I am now following people who are leaving the church.
When we enter into discussions about theology, hermeneutics and engage is exegesis, it is important to know the subject matter under discussion. Often, I read posts that seem, at first glance to be simply heretical, but soon after, it is revealed that the person writing is either blindly parroting someone else’s heresy or just assembled the idea out of thin air. Perhaps our discussions would be more interesting to read if they were and out growth of our current personal study and prayer.
