Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Better Through Exodus 19:1-8 (Credibility - Part 3 of 5)

In speaking to the issue of what is the definition of holy, as one part of what holy means, we should all agree that we need to engage our minds in the process.  We should also all agree that it needs to be all of our mind or brain that is engaged.   So let me engage your whole brain.  Who is most credible in the use of their mind? Is it: 1) a person who is very smart and feels little, 2) a person who feels much and is not very smart, or a person who feels deeply and is very smart?  I am convinced the most credible mind for deciding on a definition for holy is that person who both feels deeply and is deeply smart.  This kind of person has a quiet ethical credibility,

Further, I do believe our emotional state does influence our decision making, so that it is best to bring it out into the open and handle it positively rather than hide it or try to subdue it.  It is the person who ignores their emotions and/or the person who ignores their logic that gets in the most trouble.

I continue to be convinced from my devotional reading of Scripture that this is true, since emotions are found in many stories influencing decisions.  From these biblical instances and other evidence, I believe that the person whose thinking is most credible is that person who considers both feeling and logic.  Peter F. Drucker, the great management guru of the 20th century, lays out an obviously logical format for making decisions in his many books on management, but he also acknowledged the need to listen to that voice he called the "daemon" for a short time to make sure we heard its voice and not just the logical voice in decision making.  Ironically, it seems that emotions could most effect those most unaware of them.


[This piece of writing is likely to be broken into 2 parts with one section staying in this post and the other going to my communication basics blog for a more full treatment.]




For a number of years, I have been studying the topic of emotional intelligence alongside of rational or logical intelligence.  The pages in my notebook on emotional intelligence go back to at least 2006, but some of the things on the topic I may have been studying much longer.  Personally, I have been "studying" emotions since I was pulled out of my 3rd grade class to see the principal and then the school psychologist.  Today, I will limit my discussion to psychologists and philosophers, who are also authors, that have especially helped me with my emotional intelligence.  They are: 1) Daniel Goleman, 2) Robert Plutchik, and 3) Aristotle (yes, that Greek philosopher).  To sum up what I have learned, I would say four things directly related to each of them:

1) emotional intelligence is more important than logical intelligence based on biological factors (Goleman),
2) there are basic emotions from which the other combinations of emotions spring (Plutchik), and
3) psychology has been hindered by the notion that fight and flight are opposites and so are both anger and fear, which can easily be shown to be a false set of opposites by its inconsistency with other emotions and other approaches (Aristotle)
4) the important triad of ethos (ethical/credible), pathos (emotions), and logos (logical) have been overlooked to our detriment when it comes to appeals for our decisions (Aristotle).

I find that every one of these lessons is important, but especially the last one.  I find that by ignoring the emotional component when it comes to people's minds being persuaded and by not recognizing that both emotional and logical appeals are necessary for a person to be considered ethical or credible are both critical to defining holy correctly.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle people need to get over is the negative view of their emotions.  I think Daniel Goleman's work on emotional intelligence and his rooting his ideas in the biology of the brain are a big help in cutting edge science of the brain.  But there is also an ancient tradition in rhetoric that shows that ancients like Aristotle also recognized its great role a long time before the latest science.  Not all  have taken a negative or dim view of emotions.  In going through the educational system of the United States, whether private or public, we are tested on our IQ, but there is not an equivalent EQ test.  Goleman's own test is nowhere near a type of compliment.  But the picture below does show importance of the emotional part of our brain that interacts with the logical portion.

There are some helpful things written on emotions, but also some that are confusing or misleading.

On a personal level three people have helped me the most: 1) my mother, 2) my Great Aunt Lilly, and 3) Pastor B. Wayne Johnson.

Three professional people have helped me with my emotional intelligence perhaps the most: 1) Dottie Lideen (the schoool pychologist mentioned earlier), 2) Pastor Jim Learned, and Roger Buck, a Director of Christian Education and Stephens Ministry Coordinator.




In studying under Dr. John S. Piper, Tom Stellar, and Dr. Daniel P. Fuller, I learned to use my own brain more and other people's brains less to keep my own brain from becoming lazy.  This does not mean other views are not important (they are!) for seeing options for biblical interpretation, but what it does mean is what Einstein discovered:

So let's look at the text now that we have a better sense of how our minds work overall.


[while this is still under construction, next week (5/11/14) is when I hope to add to it.]


Sincerely,

Jon

Blessed and Holy: Understanding Them Better (Teach Things- Part 5 of 5)

PREFACE

One of the major requirements for this blog for dealing with the definition of holy is to make sure it sheds light rather than blocks light.  When something blocks light, then it quite obviously stands in the way of light.  That is a great way to discern the value of anything a person reads on the definition of holy.  We always need to ask, "Did this source shed light on what I am trying to find or did they shed darkness on what I am trying to find?"  In the end: "Did I find what I was looking for?" or are we like U2 saying: "Still haven't found what I'm looking for". 

A major drive in people is to find what is lost, until it is found.  You likely arrived as this sight as a result of a search engine looking for the definition or meaning of holy. 

A coin has value while it is in our pocket, but when it is lost, its value grows just like an item's value increases from scarcity.  A lot of times over the years, to find something, I just needed to turn on the lights or grab a flashlight.  The light functioned like a search engine.  It showed me what I was looking for.  Make sure that what you read on the definition of holy sheds light!

The purpose of my blog is to shed light on the meaning of holy.  I bring things out into the light that have been blocked from people's view.  It is not that the definition of holy was not previously well-known.  It is that its meaning got lost somewhere along the way, resulting in many differing definitions. 

For me, one of the primary things that was blocked from my view, when I read my Bible before the last 10 years, was the definition of the biblical word that we translate as "holy" as "moral wholeness".  When I first saw "wholly" listed as a definition for the Hebrew word qadosh alongside "holy" as a translation in a Bible dictionary, then I knew that I had not seen or heard of that definition ever before.  None of my teachers, who had often helped me perceive things anew, had brought this to light for me before this time (that I could recall).  I was at the time searching to find a word in the Bible that united a set of different kinds of major moral values like love and truth together. 

An important tool for teaching is what I call the 5 C's Cascade.  It is a great tool for classroom enlightenment or persuasion.  The fundamental rule of it is that you must complete the full cascade for persuasion to really happen. 

The cascade looks like a series of water falls.  You could also use the analogy of a set of 5 dominos that if one falls the others must fall with it.  The analogies are manifold.  Let's stick to the water falls in this case, since cascade language fits best with that analogy. 

Here are the 5 steps of teaching for persuasion or shedding light at the barest bone level:

1) challenge
2) connection
3) celebration
4) chance
5) choice

You could also word them this way with a bit more explanation:

1) challenge (to see)
2) connection (to see)
3) celebration (to see)
4) chance (to see)
5) choice (to see)

or you could amplify it even more this way:

1) challenge (to see an amount)
2) connection (to see a relationship)
3) celebrate (to see whole)
4) chance (to see action)
5) choice (to see a thing)

I have become convinced from my time as a teacher and as a coach or my other time as a teacher and a pastor that the problem with most teaching is that it does not challenge.  It just floats along with the tide of darkness rather than reaching for the lights.  Good teaching is supposed to enlighten or bring to light things otherwise previously not seen.  School is supposed to function as a corrective to nonsense and darkness.  But does it do so, when it settles for darkness?  How is it that we don't challenge the darkness instead?

If there is no light in the classroom, then how can we say that there is a teacher in the room?  One of the great things about Jesus was that he was a teacher (otherwise known as a rabbi).  He challenged the status quo, if you haven't noticed.  He also shed light while other teachers loved the darkness instead.  His teaching skills might have been one of his biggest reasons for his opposition to oppose him. 

Challenge

My greatest teachers all challenged me to see things that I previously wasn't seeing.  I can remember many examples, but let me mention one that I remember extremely well when it comes to challenging me.

James Johnson, a professor of mine at Bethel College (now University) in St. Paul, MN called me in to explain what I needed to do with a paper that I had written.  I had written a paper for his history class on the First Great Awakening that I thought was going to get a good grade. I didn't get even a good grade, but also instead of stopping there he challenged me to re-write the paper to see the history of not just Jonathan Edwards and his camp, but also see that of others in opposition to him.  I realized then that I was to bring both sides to light, not just one side to light and to accurately represent history through a vivid comparison of both sides in full view.  Only then was my paper shedding light on history rather than a mixture of darkness and light according to my own choosing.  I needed to shed light and give people a legitimate choice of options.  I learned a great deal that opened my eyes to see things that I had not previously seen.  

                                                 Photo of Bethel History Faculty in '80s
                                                          James Johnson (far left)

Connection

But it was not just Dr. James Johnson's challenge to see a greater amount than just one side, it was also Dr. John S. Piper's and Tom Stellar's (Dr. Piper's right hand man, if any) teaching me to see connections.  Dr. Piper introduced me to a method of arcing that his teacher, Dr. Daniel P. Fuller, had taught him at Fuller Theological Seminary.  This method opened my eyes so many times to see things that I had not seen before that I decided later to study myself under Fuller.  I still like to call Dr. Fuller every so often and thank him, when I see a new relationship in the text that I never saw before through my revised arcing method. 

                                                           Dr. John S. Piper in 1979

                                                             Dr. Daniel Payton Fuller

Celebration

But it was not just Piper and Fuller, who were teachers who opened my eyes.  While I had gone to Fuller to learn about church planting in the School of World Mission (now the School of Intercultural Studies) and exegesis (the scholarly name for reading the Bible itself) under Dr. Fuller, I also discovered two unexpected sightings while I was there.  I saw a leadership program that tied into my training under Tentmaker's, Inc. and my own self-study of Dr. Peter F. Drucker (then at Claremont Graduate School) that would challenge me as a leader more than I would be challenged as a student of church planting.  So I changed my concentration from church planting to leadership.  I also found an opportunity to learn more about translation and language studies as a whole and to take my learning to a higher level than I had achieved at Bethel College (now University) under Dr. William A. Smalley, Dr. Don N. Larson, and Lois Malcolm (now a professor at Luther Northwestern in St. Paul, MN).  I found Dr. Betty Sue Brewster,. Dr. P. Daniel Shaw and Catherine Rountree, who all helped me see the bigger picture of language and communication at its broadest level.  It was then that I began to see and know that it was only a matter of time before a reason for celebration could happen.  I just had to remind myself not to count all my chicks till all my chicks were hatched.  That is the time to celebrate, but in the middle of progressing, it is good to be reminded to wait.  This sense of celebration mainly came from learning the TEAR method of language study that helped me see best the larger picture of language and communication.  To the best of my ability, it appears that the TEAR view of language came primarily from Eugene A. Nida.

                                                              Eugene Albert Nida


Chance

But there is something more about the TEAR view of language than meets the eye.  It is also that it shows that there is a chance to make a difference in the area of method or technology.  Dr. P. Daniel Shaw was my first teacher that taught me how to use the TEAR approach to language.  I was finally made able to use it effectively when I read a Bible text or anything else for that matter.  So what Dr. Shaw gave me that the others previously had not was to see the chance of getting things accomplished that previously had seemed impossible.  I remember very well that once I grasped the action words in a passage that suddenly I also saw better the relationships in a passage and it solved a problem in Piper's and Fuller's method that they had not solved for me.  I will always have to acknowledge Dr. Shaw for first letting me see in ready the Bible new chances and new possibilities. 


Choices

So what teachers taught me to see other choices?  Who opened my eyes to be smarter?   Often the difference between a smart person and a person who is not as smart is knowing that the choices are more diversified than the less intelligent person realizes.  Who most opened my eyes to this? 

Ironically, John S. Piper needs a lot of credit here though he would not be on the same page as my philosophy professors and anthropology professors on a number of topics.  His list of choices would be shorter than theirs.  He is the one who told me to study philosophy.  Another theologian here who deserves some credit before I talk more about philosophers and anthropologists is Dr. Robert H. Stein.  He taught me how to find new choices among the German scholars that others ranked as of no value.  In the end, one of his ideas in A Basic Guide to Reading the Bible, may end up to have given me a choice in understanding the words of Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew that no one else even suggests.  So he cannot be underrated, that is for sure. 

There is a long list of those who taught me to see choices that others never have gotten the option to even see, let alone have the option to make those choices.  I've got to acknowledge my philosophy professors from college, who helped me see when theologians made a choice based on a philosophical school rather than a biblical text.  That opened up things to see other choices.  Their names include Dr. Don Postema, Dr. Melville Stewart, Dr. Stanley Anderson, Dr. Paul Reasoner, and Dr. Niel Nielson.  In anthropology, both Dr. Thomas Correll and Dr. Sperry (sp?).  Alongside of them I was also introduced to Dr. Michael Rynewich (from Macalester) and Dr. David Rausch from the history department.  All of them opened my eyes to seeing the many choices that others did not see.

This largely culminated in three major papers I wrote while at Fuller Theological Seminary.  One was a paper where I summarized all the possible views on baptism looking at all the choices from a broad cultural view.  Then I did later another paper that involved a ton of research where I suggested other choices for interpreting Paul's comments on singleness.  I tried to turn over every rock of choices and then tried to discern which were good choices and which were not.  But my advantage was that I had a lot of choices before deciding.  This also led me to the Center for the Study of Biblical Research in Pasadena, CA where I learned more about Jewish culture or philosophy. 

The big benefit from all of these choices is having more choices from which to choose, because I can see them while before I could not. 

In all of this discussion, I have left out other names that also could be mentioned.  I hope I have another time to give them their due.  Already, my mind is beginning to catalog those who I have missed. The trade off in not mentioning them here is that my writing does not grow even longer.  That is a good choice.  Thank you. 



[I will re-visit this and other writing as possible.  thank you for your patience.] 



In Christ,

Jon