Who's the Lazy Learner?
Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2021 10:35 am
Consider 2 kinds of learners:
L1 is a devout lifelong member of a church who has always been obedient and faithful. For most of her life she only read church-approved materials and was often called upon to teach them because of her broad knowledge and faith-affirming insights. Because she is so excited by the teachings of the church, L1 dives deep into church history and doctrine, but becomes troubled when she finds incongruities and even apparent deceptions. She tries to bring her questions and concerns to leaders but is constantly chastised and shamed for showing a potential for coloring outside of the lines. So she takes it upon herself to read everything she can on the topics of concern. She spends years, or even decades studying, cross-referencing, proofing, and sincerely praying to discover a way to make all the pieces fit. Eventually, after years of painful cognitive dissonance and countless long dark nights of the intellectual and spiritual soul, L1 is left with no other option but to apply inductive reasoning, update her belief system, and continue moving in a direction that is more intellectually and spiritually satisfying though divergent from her original worldview.
L2, despite being a top leader in the same church as L1, is not a theologian and has never seriously studied religion beyond the same church-approved materials that were available to L1. L2 is a retired corporate lawyer, car salesman, or airline pilot who has devoted most of his spare time to serving in lower level leadership positions in his church. He has slowly risen up through the ranks precisely because he did NOT look under the hood. Any sign of unorthodox thought would have marked him as a potential timebomb and knocked him out of the running long ago. He may have even publicly targeted intellectuals as "enemies" to him and his fellow leaders. He is well versed in surface-level official history and doctrine but he has made himself unavailable to people like L1 who are paradoxically told that they should look to him for deeper answers. In fact, he has repeatedly scolded and demonized people like L1 for looking for answers beyond the same approved sources upon which he relies, and has commanded them over the pulpit to NOT look for answers. He hasn't had much time for deep study himself; all of his time has been spent organizing committees, reviewing budgets, writing milk-before-meat talks and traveling to deliver them. A lot of his time has been spent interviewing people like L1 to determine if they are maintaining a low enough level of learning to qualify as "worthy" regarding the level of their belief in church leaders and policies. When enough L1s start asking questions that L2's ignorance and/or obfuscation become an embarrassment to him, L2 pays church-employed scholars to write scholarly-sounding documents for him to hide his own ignorance. He approves them but without enough commitment to actually attach his name to them or publicly promote them because he is not capable of determining whether or not they are good scholarship.
One of these people is a lazy learner. Can you spot them?
L1 is a devout lifelong member of a church who has always been obedient and faithful. For most of her life she only read church-approved materials and was often called upon to teach them because of her broad knowledge and faith-affirming insights. Because she is so excited by the teachings of the church, L1 dives deep into church history and doctrine, but becomes troubled when she finds incongruities and even apparent deceptions. She tries to bring her questions and concerns to leaders but is constantly chastised and shamed for showing a potential for coloring outside of the lines. So she takes it upon herself to read everything she can on the topics of concern. She spends years, or even decades studying, cross-referencing, proofing, and sincerely praying to discover a way to make all the pieces fit. Eventually, after years of painful cognitive dissonance and countless long dark nights of the intellectual and spiritual soul, L1 is left with no other option but to apply inductive reasoning, update her belief system, and continue moving in a direction that is more intellectually and spiritually satisfying though divergent from her original worldview.
L2, despite being a top leader in the same church as L1, is not a theologian and has never seriously studied religion beyond the same church-approved materials that were available to L1. L2 is a retired corporate lawyer, car salesman, or airline pilot who has devoted most of his spare time to serving in lower level leadership positions in his church. He has slowly risen up through the ranks precisely because he did NOT look under the hood. Any sign of unorthodox thought would have marked him as a potential timebomb and knocked him out of the running long ago. He may have even publicly targeted intellectuals as "enemies" to him and his fellow leaders. He is well versed in surface-level official history and doctrine but he has made himself unavailable to people like L1 who are paradoxically told that they should look to him for deeper answers. In fact, he has repeatedly scolded and demonized people like L1 for looking for answers beyond the same approved sources upon which he relies, and has commanded them over the pulpit to NOT look for answers. He hasn't had much time for deep study himself; all of his time has been spent organizing committees, reviewing budgets, writing milk-before-meat talks and traveling to deliver them. A lot of his time has been spent interviewing people like L1 to determine if they are maintaining a low enough level of learning to qualify as "worthy" regarding the level of their belief in church leaders and policies. When enough L1s start asking questions that L2's ignorance and/or obfuscation become an embarrassment to him, L2 pays church-employed scholars to write scholarly-sounding documents for him to hide his own ignorance. He approves them but without enough commitment to actually attach his name to them or publicly promote them because he is not capable of determining whether or not they are good scholarship.
One of these people is a lazy learner. Can you spot them?