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Blog 492 – 12.11.2016
Giving Is Getting

By the same logic as the title, teaching is also learning and that is the direction I would like to go with this piece. If it is true, and I believe it is, that we only get to keep what we give away then it is equally true that we only truly learn those lessons that we teach. I am planning to order some new business cards to hand out hawking my blog. On my first batch in the center I had them print:

David White
Writer, Speaker, Singer/Songwriter

I think that I left off a very important title – Teacher. When I got out of the U.S. Army after almost a year in training, almost a year in Vietnam and ten months assigned to an Airborne Tactical Division, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, I enrolled and was accepted at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. I started out to pursue an undergraduate degree in Elementary Education. I wanted to prepare to be a teacher. A couple of years later after being somewhat distracted from that goal I enrolled and was accepted in a Bible College in Texas where I intended to prepare for a teaching ministry as a pastor of a Christian church. I attended the Bible College for three years only and tried to be an Associate Pastor at a small church in Tennessee. Over my forty some odd years in Christianity I had many Sunday school teacher positions, pastor/teacher, taught children and adults, and preached many sermons/lessons. Though much of what I was taught and taught myself I now see differently the lessons of love, forgiveness, and the Oneness of the Creator and His Creation still are a very real part of my thinking. I think it is equally true of all of us that we teach what we believe and that we believe what we teach.

Sometimes we all learn something that clarifies our former understanding and even causes us to reject some things that we formerly believed. That is not apostasy as some view it but learning in a very real sense. If you haven’t changed your mind in forty years that is really like saying you have not learned anything new in forty years. And it is only as we give away those precious lessons we have learned that we get to really learn them and keep them. All the rest is as the wiseman of Ecclesiastes says, “Vanity and vexation of spirit.” A lesson well learned and well taught is like a thing of beauty, a joy forever. Ecclesiastes means “preacher/teacher” by the way. And even as cynical as the author of that book was the commentator at the conclusion of the book says:

“But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is a wearying of the body. The conclusion when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His Commandments, because this applies to every person. – New American Standard Bible Ecclesiastes 12:12 &13.

I looked that up in ten different translations hoping that someone got it right and everyone without exception said “Fear God.” I am sorry but that is wrong. Fear is in every case the wrong response to God or anyone or anything else for fear is not real but a lie created by ego in opposition to love. Love is all there is that is real so verse thirteen should be properly rendered, “Let us here the end of the matter, Love God, that is all.”  The two commandments, really three, that Jesus gave to supercede all the commanments of the Law and the Prophets were, “Love God, love your Neighbor, love Yourself.” One cannot to even one of those three things properly without doing all three. Even those years in Bible College learning to be a preacher/teacher were not wasted. I did learn how to read between the lines.

The best teachers I ever had shared what they themselves had learned and the worse were those who tried to parrot the tired old thoughts/beliefs of others and it was so easy to see that they really did not believe themselves what they were trying to teach. Sort of like when parents say to their children, “Do as I say not as I do.” If our beliefs do not inform our actions what do we really believe? We get what we give.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
And teacher of sorts,
David White