Troublesome Topic: We Always Learn Something

We saw earlier that God is the best teacher possible; He understands perfectly how we learn things. In the Former Covenant God gave His people regulations that caused them to be constantly learning things. The key principles of the Former Covenant carry over into the New Covenant. So God wants us to be learning the same principles by living in such a way that we are always learning from His Spirit, from His word, from life, and from others.

The idea that we are always learning something came to me in the most unexpected way. When I worked as an assistant manager in a restaurant, I was talking to a co-worker one day and we got on the subject of cartoons because cartoons were on the TV on the wall of the restaurant. He still loved cartoons even though he was in his late 20s while I knew very little about them. It came out that I purposefully did not let my children watch cartoons.

He asked, “why not?”

I answered, “Well, there is nothing good they can learn from them.”

His response was, “I don’t watch them to learn something.”

I did not think fast enough to answer him, but it hit me later that I should have said, “We always learn something!”

Everything we absorb affects us in some way. Our brain is constantly changing the circuitry and the levels of over 100 chemicals the brain utilizes because it is being influenced by what is going into it. The brain sorts it and organizes it in order to remember all that stuff and incorporate it into our futures. Indeed, we are always learning something. Even when we are just watching cartoons in order to relax, the brain is working and learning and changing.

We think that we are just relaxing to give ourselves a well-deserved rest while Satan laughs at our naiveté and joyfully fills our minds with garbage. In this “information age” in which I am constantly assaulted by information and images, I need to realize that my mind stores everything it receives, and what my mind absorbs it will use, either for good or for bad. I may not be able to recall everything that went into my brain when I need it, but it is in there somewhere. Even when kids are bored in school and are not paying attention, they are learning something. They may be learning how to sleep with their eyes open, or how to pass notes clandestinely, or how to create great adventures in the imagination-station of their minds, but there is learning going on. Everything that happens to us and everything we are exposed to shapes us in some way for the future.

Frogs absorb water through their skin; likewise, we always learn from what happens to us and around us. So be careful what you expose yourself and your children to

The next lesson in the Full series on Covenants is: Does This Make Me More Like God?