Just as science has learned the miracle of flight from studying the wings of birds designed by God and has not given Him credit, we find other areas where the secular world has caught on to things that have been revealed for centuries. I want to look at one that is popular in education known as Learning Styles or Multiple Intelligences.
The basic idea is that people have different ways of seeing the world and understanding it. They are intelligent in different ways. An extreme example would be an idiot savant who can work miracles in music but can’t dress himself. The opposite would be the Renaissance Man (or Mary Poppins) who is highly skilled in almost every area.
The application in education is that people learn in different ways so we should customize our teaching. We all know people who never read the directions and yet can figure things out. Others can’t do either but if you show them once they have it. Some people do well with math but can’t read well. This is why math and science tend to go together while English and history are interesting to the same people. Even in mathematics the person who loves algebra will hate geometry because they appeal to different types of learning styles.
I wonder if this is just an application of the Biblical idea of spiritual gifts. The Bible teaches that everyone is given at least one spiritual gift by the Holy Spirit. When it comes to their area of giftedness, they are something else. At the same time they might have a hard time understanding each other. The clearest example of that are the gifts of knowledge and mercy. Some people are naturally scholars and can lay it all out for you. Others are very sensitive to people and their feelings and can really relate, but can’t explain how. They are opposites.
As in learning styles, spiritual gifts can be taken to extremes. Just because you don’t have one quality does not mean you don’t need some understanding of it. For instance, just because you are a spacial learner doesn’t mean you don’t need to learn to read and write. Or just because you have the gift of administration, it doesn’t mean you don’t need to witness.
Believers have nothing to fear from genuine science or other types of scholarship. Much of what researchers discover we already know. We serve the Creator. He is the one who wrote the book. Truth will win out in the end.
homo unius libri
It's been really great going through your blog post, very well informed and described. Great to read and know more about such kind of stuff.
ReplyDelete