LEARNING TO UNLEARN

In every generation, God calls His followers to be witnesses of a transformational faith, turning hatred into love, curses into blessings, dualism into harmony, prejudice into reconciliation, and fear into faith.  In you and me, the Gospel of the Kingdom will reach a point of inescapable significance or evaporate. It will either give life or drain life – there will be no neutral exchange.  COVID-19 has amplified this

How then, do we use this season of suspicion to BE witnesses, changing from having a faith that is THEOLOGICALLY motivated to living a faith that is TRANSFORMATIONALLY orientated?

I believe this can only be achieved when we SOUPIFY OUR CONVICTIONS.  We have to learn how to unlearn.

In John 13:34  the Lord challenges the religious to unlearn their understanding of God (we call it theology) that has become a burden on society and generally drained the living daylights out of people -“A new command I give you – unlearn the old” Jesus says: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

COVID-19 revealed a cancerous theology in the Christian community.  The desire to expose evil and place suspicion on people and activities completely overshadowed the desire to BE messengers of hope and vessels of peace.  There exists a pursuit of rather being right, than being kind.  “If you get the vaccine then I will unfriend you” was a recent post on my Facebook page.

How then do we journey on a road that will reflect a Christ consciousness?  The first step towards a transformed life, I believe,  is not learning new “truths” nor applying new virtues, it starts with the painful process of unlearning old convictions that are not built on the consciousness of Christ.

The soupification of our convictions will only happen in a cocoon of discomfort.  It will require a platform of brokenness that will lead to an honest evaluation and a deep realization that Christ came to demolish institutionalized religion and came to fill the wineskins with a new consciousness.  The greatest virtue in the armour of faith is learning to unlearn: unlearning theological prejudice, unlearning cultural partiality, and unlearning dogmatic preferences.

We all grew up with unchallenged “truths” being built into our lives.  We accepted any teaching as truth as long as we trusted the teacher.  My personal journey of a ‘born-again, regenerated faith’, more than 40 years ago, started mostly by learning new values, new virtues, new doctrines, and new teachings.  Nobody ever taught me the skill of first unlearning the old, before learning the new.  I would suspect this is the same for most people reading this post.  And, truth be told, transformation happens more by unlearning old things than by learning new things.

Spiritual maturity is not only about obtaining new and bigger ‘containers’, but also about emptying old ‘containers’ that have accumulated spiritual ‘clutter’ through many years of conforming to the patterns and teachings of the world.  The patterns of the world is one of suspicion, fear, animosity, bigotry and relentless dual-thinking that divides people into “them” and “us”.  The biggest limitation to true transformation is not erroneous ‘new teachings’ but very often building new convictions on old platforms.

The sermon on the mount in Matthew 5 is a perfect example.  When Jesus calls his followers to be perfect (vs 48), it follows six instructions to first learn to unlearn.  Six times the Lord declares “You have heard that it was said,” (Matthew 5:21, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43) and every time He follows it up with, “But I tell you.”

Learn to unlearn, forget the original teachings that shaped your thinking and your theology.  Don’t live any longer in the way that the world dictated your thought processes and by what you were taught when you were still part of it (Romans 12:2). Let your way of thinking be completely renewed and be open to be retaught.

Richard Rohr says the following:

“God is not found in the soul by ADDING anything, but by a process of SUBTRACTION. The spiritual life is more about UNLEARNING than it is about LEARNING.  It is only when we get out of our own way that the Lord can take over and fill us with greater capacity. But it’s a gruelling process to come to this level of surrender, and few of us go willingly.

 But God can change us and the world if we allow the God of peace to touch us, disarm us, heal us, and send us out as instruments of God’s peace.  When you can become little enough, naked enough, and honest enough, then you will ironically find that you are more than enough.  At this place of poverty and freedom, you have nothing to prove and nothing to protect.”

 The challenge, therefore, on our journey of transformation, is to open our hearts not only to learn but also to unlearn, not only to add but also to subtract.

Neale Donald Walsch said the following:

“Yearning for a new way will not produce it. Only ending the old way can do that.  You cannot hold onto the old, all the while declaring that you want something new.  The old will defy the new; The old will deny the new; The old will decry the new.  There is only one way to bring in the new. You must make room for it.”

We have to make room for the new by soupifying the old.  We have to be prepared to unlearn the wisdom of the world and the philosophies of this age if we desire to embrace the ‘foolishness’ of loving our enemy, forgiving those who seek to harm us, and by praying for our persecutors. As written in 1 Corinthians 1:20b, “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”  Is it not time to unlearn what we once held as wisdom?

There are many habits that we need to unlearn, but few are so aggressively revealed as those that we so often find on social media.  There are three that probably need more attention than others:

• LEARN TO UNLEARN THE TOXIC PRACTICE OF SOWING SUSPICION

No, not every Trump supporter is a “white supremacist” and not every Democrat is a “Marxist”.  Far from it.  Once we are convicted by the Biblical truth of Genesis 1:27 “That all of man is created in the image of God”, we will start seeking the divine in people and not the divide.  I am a firm believer that any post on social media that sows suspicion, even if written under the pretence of prayer or in the name of truth, whether it be against the vaccine, against other races, against other political parties, against other cultures or against other religions, cannot be from God.  We learn to unlearn suspicion simply by seeking the image of God and not the traces of evil in every human being.

• LEARN TO UNLEARN THE AGGRESSIVE PRACTICE OF BEING HOSTILE

James 3:18 provides a clear guideline for those who seek communities of righteousness; “Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.”  Righteousness will never be obtained through hostile attitudes.  We live in an angry world.  And I am not referring to the atrocities of ISIS or persecution in North Korea.  I’m referring to road rage, Facebook fury, and internet intolerance.  We learn to unlearn hostility simply by giving a smile and not presenting a fist.  Try it next time another driver suddenly pushes in front of you.

We tend to fight darkness instead of lighting a candle.  It seems easier to attack than to embrace and so often within Christian circles hostility is seen as a virtue for truth while reconciliation a weakness and compromise.

The translation of the Indian greeting Namaste is one of infinite depth. It means: the divinity in me …. salutes the divinity in you.

• LEARN TO UNLEARN THE DESTRUCTIVE PRACTICE OF BEING NEGATIVE

The key to positivity is to surround yourself with positive people.  Some quotes in this regard are worth repeating:

• Negativity may knock on your door but that doesn’t mean you have to let it in. (Anonymous)
• You can’t live a positive life with a negative mind. (Anonymous)
• What we dwell on is who we become. (Oprah Winfrey)
• And finally, returning to the subject of unlearning, “Removing negativity from your life leaves room for positivity to grow.” (Anonymous)

Practically this means that only when we are willing to pull the plug of negativity in our lives and drain out every trace of it, can we be filled with new and living water.  When we add clean water to a glass already half-filled with polluted water, all becomes contaminated.  There is no half-caterpillar-half-butterfly.  We are either one or the other.  It will be a waste to start the process and not complete it.

May we, therefore, all learn to unlearn before we relearn to learn.