Adages & Parables 401
February 5, 2025
Welcome, Fellow Students!
If you are a Transfer Student from the School of Hard Knocks, this class might help each of you, regardless of your background, in your studies and your goals to grow in the faith and knowledge of God, Jesus, and the Bible.
[Where’d everybody just disappear to?!?]
For those who have stayed in their seats, if you have chosen this class merely as a curiosity, you may be utterly disappointed, but I do appreciate your indulgence. This is, after all, an Elective Course…
As your Guest Lecturer, I offer no credentials, nor any degrees in any area of study. I am only an ordinary person who has chosen to continue my Graduate Studies from S.H.K. University. However, if it makes any difference to anyone, I do have some children who call me Grandpa. Truthfully, the only accomplishment that I have to offer is not even my own accomplishment. It is an honorarium granted by the Dean of Students.
Just so you know, I have been repeating this course for over 50 years, and I have found it to be uplifting, educational, and life changing.
For your first day, the assignment is to write a comment on this old adage: “When God said ‘brains’, I thought He said ‘trains.’ So, I raced down to the station, but that train had already left!”
While you are mulling that over, or scrolling for the latest trending video , I will continue…
“BEWARE OF THE DOG” is a warning sign on many gates and doors. You’ve probably seen them. Right? Maybe not. Perhaps you’ve been bitten instead…
A sign that is much more rare is this one: “BEWARE OF THE DOGMA.” (I just made that up.)
Now, dogmas are just as ferocious and dangerous as any junkyard dog protecting its property.
Be assured, it definitely will bite you.
From MerriamWebster.com, please allow me to present a few excerpts to define the subject matter of this assignment:
Dogmas are “something held as an established opinion -especially : a definite authoritative tenet; a code of such tenets; a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds; a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed {especially} by a church.” {my edit}
Take your pick , and submit an outline for an essay about the one you prefer, but know that I think any one of them would be appropriate to use.
Still, this assignment has a second part: Write an essay on how dogma affects civil communication and discourse. You may agree or disagree with my own opinion I’ve expressed below…
True Christianity is not a collection of dogma, no matter how brief and ambiguous or how extensive and detailed it may be.
Faith is a verb, and its empirical practice requires actions derived from a personal relationship with God through a saving knowledge of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.
Now, think: He is the living God. and we are living people. It only makes sense that the two become united, walking, talking, and living within walking distance of one another in a communal relationship.
When dogma intervenes in that relationship, it becomes dictatorial, chaining interactions to a pole.
Look. Part of the reason Jesus hung on a pole was to break those chains. If you disagree you need to check out the discussions Jesus had with the Religious Leaders of his days on Earth. For example, read this excerpt from Matthew 23:25 (Berean Standard Bible)”
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.”
As part of your research, my advice to you is to read the entire chapter of Matthew 23 in whatever Bible translation you prefer.
Jesus isn’t playing games, and you shouldn’t fall into the same trap as did those Religious Leaders, getting all bound up in dogma.
Basically speaking, in practice, dogma is a strict set of rules that must be learned by rote, adhered to without question, and defended without exception. This latter edict is what I have found far too many times when responding to Christians online.
Whose dogmas are the correct and proper choices?
That’s where either one of two things happen: One person will have to compromise his beliefs with another who holds tightly to the leash of a different dogma. Or one person has to argue vehemently with great passion to prove himself right. (Here I have purposely used the qualifier “himself,” because now Jesus’ teaching has nothing to do with such conversation. It has degenerated into a confrontational egocentric stubbornness of “I’m right/You’re wrong.”)
This next Bible verse has a principle within it that I espouse and may help in your assignment by considering what I am trying to get at:
“No one can serve two masters: Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” — Matthew 6:24, BSB.
To my point, a person cannot serve both the Gospel of Jesus and the dogmas of church denominations…
The song by the late Keith Green in the YouTube video with the other two below gets to the message I am trying to convey, and I think they might be worth your time and help to inspire and aid with your homework in developing your own essays.
Keith Green — Make My Life A Prayer To You (live)
