Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Learning for Those Who Don’t Love Learning

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Learning for Those Who Don’t Love Learning · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  We've been on the topic of lifelong learning of late. In talking about your
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  new book on this topic, Pastor John is titled Foundations for Lifelong Learning,
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  Education and Serious Joy. In your new book, you talk about the excitement
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  of learning. That's a phrase you use, the excitement of learning. And
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  you mentioned the joy of learning hundreds of times, implying throughout that there's a
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  joy in discovery and a joy aim in this discipline of lifelong learning. Now,
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  you and I both get fired up when it comes to new discoveries that
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  we find in the Bible or in old books by dead guys, right,
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  And we kind of talked about this in our episode before Thanksgiving. But speak
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  today to someone who doesn't feel this joy of discovery, and they don't think
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  of themselves as lifelong learners. Maybe they never liked school, Maybe they didn't
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  get very good grades in school. They're just not wired to be lifelong students,
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  not naturally. Maybe they're more doers, more practical, very practical,
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  and not drawn to read hard books, to the point that even your new
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  book on lifelong learning would be a daunting hard sell for them to even pick
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  up and read. What encouragement would you give to them? I'm reading this
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  question and thinking, who am I actually going to talk to the listener out
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  there right, and they're probably not listening. There are not just two kinds
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  of response to lifelong learning. There are five, ten, twenty hundreds of
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  ways people respond to things like lifelong learning. Everyone is on a continuum from
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  the most academically accomplished scholar one end to the drug addict or the mentally ill
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  person on the street outside my house that I spoke to yesterday who cannot make
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  an ordinary conversation, has no concept of, let alone interest in the foundations
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  of lifelong learning. And everybody is similar in between those extremes. I do
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  talk to those people, the educated and the broken too, kinds of brokenness.
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  Maybe I care about them, I share the gospel on the street,
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  I pray for them, I pray with them. I try to connect them
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  with sources of help or their mental condition, their economic condition, their housing
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  condition, their physical condition, their spiritual condition. And probably neither of those
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  ends of the spectrum is listening to this podcast, And I'm thinking, so,
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  who am I going to talk to? In answering Tony's in here?
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  Maybe so realistically, you haven't asked a stupid question. I know these people
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  that you're talking about, all right, Maybe the most realistic audience of folks
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  to talk about is ordinary members of our churches who graduated from high school.
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  They were glad to get out. They got some maybe trade school or professional
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  school, or apprenticeship, maybe some college. Maybe they even graduated from college
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  because the parents wanted them to and they were glad to be done. Maybe
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  some of them are generally not readers at all. They may be dyslexic.
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  I know people like that, but they function just fine in their jobs.
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  They found a way to make it work. They might have add but have
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  learned to live productively with that. They simply do not approach the world as
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  a place you'd want to go to squeeze meaning out of it. But that's
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  the way I've read about the world. We'll squeeze, squeeze some meaning out
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  of this experience today, or dig up discoveries. They just don't think that
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  way. They're mainly passive in the way the world comes at them. They
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  deal with it when it comes. They do what they have to do.
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  They don't see problems as a puzzle to solve or as an exciting challenge for
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  wrestling. Their way to some new solution and greater understanding. When they think
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  of learning, it's basically just figure out what the next thing is that needs
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  to be done. Like I got some shelves to put together from my Ikia.
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  Like, okay, I'll read the instructions as much as I need to,
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  although I hate to read instructions. Right, I may go to YouTube
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  instead. Watch them do it. Try a new recipe, that's what they
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  do to learn. Try a new fishing lure, find an apartment. Life
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  is not for learning, it's for living. I get it, Okay,
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  I get that. I know some of these folks. I think a person
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  with that kind of disposition can lead a god honoring people, loving life.
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  So what would I say to them about lifelong learning? And I think what
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  I should try to do is relay. Maybe that would be a word that
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  avoids its academic connotations. Relay what the Bible says about growth in words and
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  terms that are not connected to school to school or academics or study or even
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  reading. So let's assume that you do not resonate with even the phrase the
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  joy of learning. It may be that what you mean by saying I don't
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  find joy in learning? What you may mean, is I don't find joy
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  in the process of thinking, or the process of intentional study, or the
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  process of reading, or the process of focused observation, or the process of
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  pushing exerting the mind in some endeavor. So what feels off putting is not
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  so much the discovery of something wonderful, but the discipline process of study and
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  reading, an analysis and mental exertion. If you're a Christian, I assume
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  there are things about God and Christ and Salvation that are precious to you,
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  precious, and you know them, and you hold fact to them, and
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  they are a help in daily life. And if someone could add another truth,
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  another one of those wonderful, precious things to what you already have,
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  if somebody could add another truth about God, another truth about Salvation that made
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  you happy because it was such good news, you'd be glad. You wouldn't
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  say, oh, I don't want any more good news. I don't want
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  to be happier than I am now nobody says that. So it's not the
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  happy outcomes of lifelong learning, but the process that leaves you cold. Study,
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  reading, thinking, analyzing, mental effort. All these feel so contrary
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  to your personality, and that would be a huge thing to recognize if we
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  could just agree on that, namely, that we both love many of the
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  outcome of lifelong learning. So it might be we should linger here for just
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  a minute. When Peter says in two Peter three eighteen that we should grow
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  in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus, it's a command. He said,
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  wou should do this, do this grow. He doesn't specify how.
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  Now if a person said to me, I don't really want to grow,
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  I don't want to know more about Jesus. I don't want to experience more
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  grace, then I would say we're dealing with a problem of disobedience, not
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  a problem of neutral personality issues. That's a defect of love, not a
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  personality trait. So I am assuming that our non lover of the process of
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  learning would still love to know more about Jesus, would love to have wonderful
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  things about Christ feeding his mind that he doesn't yet understand that he wants to
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  taste and enjoy and experience more of God's grace and goodness in Christ. So
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  he or she here's the call to grow in this And they hear the prayer
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  of Paul that we should increase in the knowledge of God. And they hear
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  Hoseiah's warning, people perish for lack of knowledge, so let us know,
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  let us press on to know the Lord. They hear all this, and
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  they want this fruit, They want the outcome, They want these results.
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  They realize that not to want them is a lack of love for Jesus.
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  So I would say to them, Okay, if study and reading and lifelong
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  learning is not the path, then pray earnestly that God would show you what
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  is the path for you, you and your particular personality in your way.
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  You may be surprised how he answers. For sure, he will say this,
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  Get in a good church and sit under the preaching of God's word.
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  I know he'll say that that's in the Bible. Everybody should do that.
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  Every Christian should be in a good church. If they can't, be in
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  a small group of believers who pray for each other and share thoughts about what
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  they've seen in the Bible. God may show you a way to grow in
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  knowledge and grace that is totally surprising to you and totally enjoyable. But don't
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  stop praying till he does. Don't pray for a week and say well,
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  nothing happened. No, pray for a year, two three, Pray as
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  long as you need to in order to obey the command grow, find your
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  way to grow. Go forward. If you're not going forward, you're going
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  to go backward. That's why it is. We're not in a pond.
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  We're in a river, and it's slow in the wrong direction. If we
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  don't swim forward, we're going backward. Here's one last thought. I hated
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  to read until I was in the eleventh grade. I mean it was really,
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  really undesirable. I can remember in the sixth grade had to put a
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  sticker on the board, a little cardboard thing in front of the class for
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  how many pages you read, and I would look for the books with pictures.
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  Then something happened. Something happened, and after the eleventh grade I loved
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  it, even though I am a very slow reader. I know a man
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  who he barely finished high school. His grades were so bad. Reading was
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  torture. He went into the army, and when he came out two years
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  later something had changed. He applied to Bible College on his own, put
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  himself all the way through. Here's the last illustration. I was having breakfast
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  with a friend recently, and he told me about his son who almost dropped
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  out of high school. He finished, but then for several years worked in
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  a minimum wage job, and then got married to a good woman. And
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  this woman, to use his phrase, kicked him into behind. He might
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  have said something else, but he kicked him. He applied to design school
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  because she kicked him into behind, and he finished design school, and today
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  he designs visuals for companies all over the world. Now, if you had
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  asked me what happened and what happened in all those instances, in including yours,
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  I'd say, I don't know what happened. God just brought something into
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  our lives, and it was time. Something changed, and things change.
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  What was once boring can suddenly and for no apparent reason, become a lifelong
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  passion. It happened to me, it might happen to you. Don't be
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  a fatalist. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
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  You might be surprised, inspiring. Thank you for your testimony, Pastor John,
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  and thank you for this new book, Foundations for Lifelong Learning, Education
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  in Serious Joy. Get a copy today. It has the potential, I
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  think, to kindle in you a renewed desire or a new desire to become
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  a lifelong learner, even if you don't find yourself naturally drawn in this direction.
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  Thanks for joining us today. If you want to ask Pastor John a
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  question, type about your question and send it to us via email. Ask
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  Pastor John at desiring good dot org as our email address. Ask Pastor John
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  at desiring good dot org. We're talking about education and lifelong learning, and
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  we transition a bit next time to talk about Bible study in particular. On
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  Thursday, Pastor John will walk us through the process he uses to find the
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  answers in the Bible to a given topic that he wants to study. Very
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  practical, very insightful. Don't miss it. I'm your host, Tammy RANKI
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  will see you back here on Thursday.