I've been thinking about chapter 6 in our book, where Brian talks about Jesus' teaching style and how parables force us to think on a deeper level than just information. Jesus wants to transform us, not merely inform. I tend to identify with what he says on page 47 "Some of us want fast, painless, effortless information and not slow, energetic, engaging transformation." Can you identify with that?
Along a similar track, I bought 2 new books today. Brian McLaren's newest is Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 simple Words. It promises to be an exercise in spiritual transformation, which is probably what I need right now. And Rob Bell is stirring up a lot of controversy with Love Wins. which is a new look at heaven and hell which a lot of conservative Christians are branding as heresy. I watched a youtube video of Rob Bell talking about it. He is challenging us to deeply rethink what Jesus said about the fundamental character of God and the centrality of God's love.
Rethinking is exactly what the parables force us to do. How far do we go in that process?
I think we find the answer to why parables in the book. McClaran notes the uncertainty of meaning forces the hearer (learner)to discover the meaning in an individual and personal way. Knowledge discovered is always remembered longer and has more meaning than knowledge fed to us spoon by spoon. Over the years trying to teach difficult and abstract concepts to graduate students I found a student centered approach wherein the student discovered the concept worked much better than simply giving them my take on the meaning of the abstract concept. In the way I tried to make myself available to help students learn, Jesus was (and still is) always there to guide his followers as they tried to discover the true meaning of the Kingdom of God.
ReplyDeleteLast week I heard someone say that they always learned more teaching than when they were a student. I believe that this is true because the "teacher" does not have the teacher there to give them the answer and must figure it out in order to present it to the student.
Sorry I couldn't be there last night. I woke up yesterday with a terrible cold and i thought it was best not to share.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that thinking or rethinking the nature of God and the nature of our relationship with him is a bad thing, but I do think we need to be cautious in making assumptions about the nature and character of God and our relationship with him since we really don't understand the nature of God well at all.
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