Yesterday, I was watching tv and
somehow stopped on that great philosophical program, the World Poker
Tour. I stopped just as poker pro Tony Dunst began a segment
explaining what happened in a previous hand. He started by
mentioning a concept that, as soon as he said it, I perceived had a
broader life application than just poker playing—The Curse of
Knowledge. In the hand Tony was explaining, the situation was near
the end of a tournament, one of the top pros was playing against a
recreational player who entered the tournament and had advanced to
the last four. The amateur was dealt a good hand, and made a move
that signaled it. The pro, used to playing people as skilled as
himself, discounted the obvious and finally played, eventually
playing himself into losing the hand. Tony's commentary was that it
was an example of The Curse of Knowledge—that it is difficult to
imagine what it is like to not know the things you know.
Somehow, I have never heard that
thought communicated, even though I've certainly experienced it on
both ends, and had a gut feeling this was not a unique thought of
Tony Dunst, so I looked it up on the net. I found a more general
explanation written in a blog by Maggie Summers at
www.sliderocket.com/blog/2012/05/presentation-tips-curse-of-knowledge
. There, and possibly down a little bit of a rabbit trail, the
writer quotes Albert Einstein, “If you can't explain it simply, you
don't understand it well enough.”
This only too well applies to my
experience in following Jesus, but so does it's converse. I grew up
going to a Calvinistic denominational church where a master's in
divinity was demanded to be allowed to be hired as a pastor. I heard
many sermons which I later learned were not that different from
seminary lectures. Only when I was married did my wife point out
that most of those sermons went over everyone's head to a large
degree. I can look back now and see that the problem was compounded
by a tradition that no one was expected to actually ask questions,
and then further compounded by the simple fact that the speaker had
spent hours preparing the presentation, but the listeners had no clue
the subject they would be hearing about until the speech started (or
maybe when they was the sermon's title in the bulletin, although
sometimes even that wouldn't be a help).
On the converse side, I spent some
time in some traditional churches of the pentecostal variety in which
leadership was based on gifting with (usually, not always) some basic
Bible School training. It actually isn't that hard to build up a
half hour or more by connecting via a speech a number of verses that
are apparently related. Before Jesus, in the days of the Old
Testament rabbis, this was called “pearl stringing.” That a
method is that old doesn't make it valid. As I wrote previously, a
verse can be taken out of context. When we have been told this, the
person speaking usually means literary context, that the way it is
spoke about is something other than what it means when one reads it
as part of the chapter or so it appears in. That, though, can be
easily seen by reading the passage in the Bible. Those previous to
us in the faith, or unbelievers, for that matter, can have an easier
time seeing this today, than those previous to us that either were
illiterate, like most of the believers in the days of the New
Testament, or did not have access to the Bible, like most persons
from that day through to the trend of universal education in the
West, which brings us up to the last few centuries.
Only in the last couple of years have
I come to learn that there are (at least) three types of
context—literary (which I just mentioned), historical, and
cultural. For the last two, one needs more than just a Bible. In
sermons and “teachings” (as some are long on getting people
excited and devoid of actual teaching), one hears and I have heard
examples of both, but the idea that they are types of understanding a
scripture in context is a relatively new revelation to me. For
example (and, since this is the Christmas season and that story is on
my mind, I'll use examples from that story), historical context tells
us that where Jesus was born was politically controlled by the Roman
Empire, and as Israel rebelled semi-successfully against Rome in
166-164 B.C., the Romans didn't trust the Jews. Those of us who have
been believers in Jesus for a significant period of time have heard
that, but I never heard any teacher flat-out label that fact as part
of understanding the Bible in context.
Here's two examples of cultural
context in one sentence. In Matthew 1:19, it says (NKJV), “Then
Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a
public example, was minded to put her away secretly.” In our
culture, a man isn't referred to as a woman's husband until they are
married, but, at that time, they were betrothed, which is similar,
but not the same as our culture's term “engaged.” One difference
is in the next phrase, “not wanting to make her a public example”.
In Jewish culture (I'm not exactly clear how being occupied by Rome
affected this), if a betrothed woman was found to be pregnant by her
future husband (to use a phrase appropriate to our culture), and he
knew it didn't occur by him, he could have her stoned to death. From
that fact, Mary's reply to the angel in Luke 1:38, “ Behold the
maidservant of the Lord! Let it be according to your word.” showed
extreme faith, particularly in comparison to Moses and Gideon, in how
they reacted to God's supernatural direction. That Mary was so
faithful at only 12 to 14, probably, leaves me in awe, but maybe
that's because I didn't come to follow Jesus until I was 15, and
still, at 60 feeling that I'm playing catch-up when it comes to
learning how to hear and be obedient to the Spirit.
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