These essays are written in sequence and build on each other. Read the preceding essay here.
We have been discussing how Christ did not separate God’s Will from God’s Love.
In the same way, He did not separate learning from doing:
Blessed are they that
— KJV, Luke 11:28
hear the word of God,
and keep it.
True Knowledge Is Experience
When an adult refuses to jump off the roof of a 10-storey building because he is 100% sure that he will be harmed upon impact, he expresses knowledge of the power of gravity.
This knowledge is not a result of hearing about gravity or reading about gravity.
As a child he would have experienced a few nasty falls. Those experiences provided him with a fear of falling and a healthy respect for heights.
When he gets a bit older, he is taught about gravity in school. What he learns about gravity allows him to evaluate possibilities beyond his direct experiences; to extrapolate and predict what might happen in certain scenarios.
The technical details and facts about gravity that are stored in his brain comprise learnedness. If the learnedness were to suddenly vanish from his brain, his awareness of gravity would remain. This is an aspect of knowledge.
Real knowledge is a deep personal awareness that is not dependent on the brain’s retentive capacities. For the “knowing” one, the facts and data stored in his brain are useful for application and extrapolation purposes, but they are not the knowledge itself.
Such deep personal awareness comes from personal experience.
Therefore knowledge of The Word only comes from experiencing It.
The innate curiosity of children drives them to constant testing and experimentation, and these actions lead to the experiencing they need to understand the world around them.
This speaks to a general principle: experience is the fruit (the result) of action.
Therefore knowledge of The Word is the result of action taken in the sense of The Word.
Learning must not be separated from doing. Reading The Word is no substitute for action, no matter how studious the reader may be.
The Christian must act if he wants to gain spiritual wisdom:
Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine,
— Matt 7:24
and doeth them,
I will liken him unto a wise man
The action-oriented experiencing of The Word in day-to-day life provides the real knowledge, and the learning (reading, discussing, etc) of The Word allows the Christian to extrapolate and predict happenings in Creation, beyond his own direct experiences.
We shall explore this further in later essays.
Today’s Resolution
- We shall seek the knowledge of The Word not merely by reading, but by acting in the sense of The Word in our thoughts, words, and actions, seeking to learn in humility from the resulting experiences.
The Word, (Re)Discovered 