A Model For Learning

There are a couple verses in the First Epistle of Peter which open up to us an entire model for learning that began for many of us back in Kindergarten where, it is said, we learned all the basics we would ever know. On the surface of them the following verses would seem to have little connection with such: “But when you do good and suffer, if you endure, it brings favor with God. For you were called to this, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in His steps.” Let’s take a closer look, though. The word we are especially interested in is that word “example.” Jesus left us an EXAMPLE that we should follow (in His steps). In the Greek that word is something like “hupogrammon” or “underwriting.” It carries with it the idea of a hand guiding another hand beneath it in its effort to write. It brings to mind how many of us learned to write from a parent or kindergarten teacher.
The first phase of the learning process involved that hand over hand or hand under hand experience from the learner’s perspective, as the larger adult hand or teacher’s hand guided the smaller or unlearned hand through the motions of making a letter. This is an example of “going through the motions” in a positive sense with the continuous sensation of reassuring touch propelling the learner. As a beginner I am going through the motions in order to learn the motions for the first time so that one day those motions can become more automatic. I am making marks on a page in the form of a letter. only because the guiding hand is making them with me without which I would be making no marks at all. This is the physically GUIDED stage of the learning to write process.
Once that initial letter has been made on the page or board with the physical help of the teacher and those motions have been repeated enough times, the learner (disciple) is now in a position to begin the second phase of the learning process. This phase involves tracing the letter that is already there now on the page. The physical touch of the teacher is no longer necessary. The teacher has left his or her mark and all that’s required next is for the learner to trace and retrace the mark or marks of that letter until it becomes second nature. This is the tracing stage of the learning to write process. Once the learner has become comfortable making the motions required in tracing, he or she is ready for the next phase: the imitation stage.
In the imitation stage the learner can remove the pencil point from the traced guide letter, move the pencil point “next door” and begin in that space to copy or imitate making that guide letter exactly as it is seen only inches away. Only it will not be exact, it is beginning to depart some now from the exactness of the model into a version resembling the original but reflecting the unique, individual interpretation of the learner. At first glance some of these imitated or copied letters won’t look quite alike among themselves or even much like the model, but with practice they will begin to take on a consistent interpretive shape in which one can recognize the expert style of the teacher AND the imitative style of the learner, all in one.
Now the learner is ready for the fourth and final phase of this learning process (although there is something like a bonus stage we will mention later). In this phase not only is there no physical presence of a teacher but there is not even a visible model letter to trace or imitate. One might say that the learner is “on his own” now. He or she is about to make a letter from memory of what it felt and looked like making that letter in the three earlier phases of the process. This is now a unique interpretation of a letter that cannot be precisely duplicated by any other person and that can be recognized by any person that knows how to read letters. Again one letter may not look quite like that same letter made over again by the same person at first, but over time a consistency begins to emerge which distinguishes that learner’s handwriting from any other.
Some learners will produce writing that is more skillful and exemplary, of course, than others, and, ideally, these would be the very ones who begins this process anew with other learners, guiding them physically at first through the motions of making a legible letter. This that aforementioned fifth bonus phase, in which the excelling learners have themselves now become the teachers!
But what more does this have to do with Jesus being our example? Everything. When we are first born anew we feel as if a physical presence gathering us close to His breast and “hand over hand.” He seems to personally guide us through the motions of walking with Him, in fact He as Shepherd carries us along like little lambs scarce able to walk. We trace closely what we learn of Him from the lives of our first pastors and leaders, even acquiring some of their mannerisms. Our leaders then begin to give us a little more latitude in the discipleship process (a disciple is a learner, after all) giving us little opportunities to lead others but we continue to imitate much of what we remember and observe in their lives, not all of it favorable because, unlike Jesus, they aren’t perfect.
Then as the years pass and the little opportunities become bigger, we are beginning to assume our own unique identities as believers and to know something more of who we are in God. We still stumble and we still require ongoing accountability with other parts of the Body of Christ, even more so, but we are beginning to see more clearly where we do or don’t fit. The bonus stage kicks in as we capitalize on more opportunities to guide others through a process that shaped and, in many cases, even healed or delivered us! We are mindful, too, of the wisdom that informs and reminds us that the worst mistakes are those made by the more experienced disciples, not the neophytes.