The Tests and Trials Communications Protocol
[[skip discussion of faith, and refer to 12/31/10 notes on 2 timothy 1:6-8]]
The communications protocol that I will now discuss is the Tests and Trials communications protocol, in which God the Holy Spirit brings on, or allows, what the scriptures call tests and trials to happen to us that will lead us unto specific truths. In my mind I had called this the simulation communications protocol to get around the negative connotations and the pre-existing emotional and intellectual baggage associated with the phrase "tests and trials" that seemed to block my ability to think it through. However, as I worked on this essay, I realized that this area is so rife with confusion that alternative language without any reference to existing terminology would create even more confusion than illumination since there would be no explicit linkage from what I was saying to what my readers have encountered in their past and what they would encounter on a daily basis from well-meaning souls. Since any "pain" I would feel by addressing this issue would be the one-time expenditure of mere intellectual effort, while the pain that would be potentially relieved in my readers would be quite actual and continuous, dictated the use of the conventional terminology used by the Western Church.
Another bit of confusion that needs addressing is my classifying tests and trials as a communications protocol. The confusion arises when one decides that the term "communications" should be exclusively restricted to the conveyance of ideas by way of speaking, reading, and watching. This restriction is improper because not all truths are best expressible or learned as spoken or written words. Immediately after the Second World War, when the United States took upon itself the task to rebuild Europe, Germany, and Japan with the aim of nuturing and fostering democracy, it was quickly recognized that, while the factories and houses needed physical re-building, what was more important was the transmission of the knowledge necessary to perform that re-building and to best use what was built. That "knowledge of performance", not easily communicatable by speeches, lectures, or books, was known then as "American Know How". An essential component of the truths that are properly classified as "know how" is that merely knowing them as words is not enough: there is a performance component producing results that confirms that the knowledge is truly understood because the goal is not the knowledge itself, but the products that come about when one applies it. For years, I "knew" the verses that said that the Holy Spirit resided in me, as well as "knowing" the verses that said that I was supposed to overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil, yet all that "knowing" did not deliver me from anger fits, jealousy, or my pornography compulsions. What I finally grasped on Independence Day of 2008 was not "knowledge", but "know how". It was not the mere "knowing" of those facts, but the "knowing what to do" with those facts that made the difference in my life.
Bible teachers, bible scholars, pastors, and theologians deal in knowledge.
Theo-engineers deal in "know how".
The previous essay dealt with how to work with God to get knowledge.
This one deals with how to work with God to get "know how".
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