“But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.”
Mark 4:20
Early in my education career, one of the topics on which we frequently received professional development was Bloom’s Taxonomy. Terry Heick summarizes, “In one sentence, Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchical ordering of cognitive skills that can, among countless other uses, help teachers teach and students learn.” I believe helping people understand these different levels of thinking within the context of spiritual understanding will help them know whether they will produce fruit for the Kingdom of God. Depending on which level you reach in your ability to think and reason through things, that will be your determination of how much your understanding of God’s Word will impact the world around you. (Spoiler: Fruit-bearing begins at the APPLICATION level.)
(I thought perhaps I would sum up this entire idea in one devotional, but quickly realized y’all don’t probably want to read a 20 page report, so I’m going to cover one level every week until it’s done!)
This week I’m going to unpack the importance (and the dangers) of the fourth level of thinking: ANALYSIS.
I have previously stated that I believe fruit-bearing begins at the APPLICATION level, when we begin to put into practice the COMPREHENSION of the KNOWLEDGE we have gained. But in order to increase our fruitfulness by thirty, sixty or hundredfold we have to now go into deeper levels of understanding by exploring the higher levels of thinking on the Bloom’s Taxonomy, the first of which is ANALYSIS.
The ANALYSIS level of Bloom’s is all about breaking down objects or ideas into simpler parts. Sometimes you have to really break things apart to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for why something is like it is. To me, the difference between a more surface level understanding like COMPREHENSION and the really rich understanding of ANALYSIS can be compared to car knowledge.
My surface level of understanding about the way cars work is if you put gas in the car, it goes. If you let the car run out of gas, it stops. If you put diesel in in a gas car (or vice versa) it doesn’t work, and you’ve got an expensive mess on your hands (I feel like I should mention this is not from personal experience; I’ve just heard from others and learned through their mistakes!). However, I do not know any of the details about what elements gasoline contains, nor have I seen the inner workings of a car-gas system of pipes and parts where gasoline is converted to the energy and combustion it takes to make it work. But a car mechanic does, because he has taken a car apart, has seen the inner workings of the machine, and can probably give you a very thorough detailing of how a car runs. That car mechanic has analyzed the workings of a car at a much more complete level than I, so while I can use my car based on the understanding I have, what more can that car mechanic do as a result of the study and analysis he’s done? He can use a car, build a car, fix a car, and his skills will make him so much more useful than I. His fruit-bearing in the automotive world far surpasses mine.
I would say this kind of ANALYSIS would be most beneficial in studying the Word of God. 2 Timothy 2:15 says, “ Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” We can’t stop at a surface level of understanding of the Word, we must really dig in and examine what God is trying to have us glean.
Jesus made people go deeper than surface level when He taught them. In Luke 10 when a man asked Jesus what was needed to inherit eternal life, one of the things Jesus said was, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This man probably had some surface level comprehension about what that meant. Love (be kind, offer care, give hugs, etc.) your neighbor (people who live near me, are kin to me) as yourself. And yet, this man wanted to make sure he rightly understood what Jesus was saying. And it turns out, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan gave the man a deeper analysis of who his neighbor was. Without this extra understanding, it is likely this man would have gone his whole life potentially neglecting many of his “neighbors” without right perspective on who a neighbor was. Let’s not even get into the fact that what most people today consider “love” by worldly standards is completely shattered when you dig into the Word of God to see what He considers love. There are even multiple words for “love” when you study the hebrew and greek words used, so depending on which is used (agapao is used in this example) you may gain a different insight.
If you want more resources on how to rightly divide the Word at the ANALYSIS stage, check out our ECHO U Facebook page, as a highly qualified teacher of inductive Bible study named Mindy has been taking many of my fellow church attenders through a process to break the Word of God down at the ANALYSIS level.
The danger of ANALYSIS is that it requires effort to gain this kind of understanding, and you have to really want it. Sometimes we want to use shortcuts to gain this deeper level of understanding without doing the hard work it takes to pull things apart. I have been guilty of Googling different biblical commentaries that will give me someone else’s analysis of scripture, but do I really know how qualified they are to interpret for me? Are they rightly dividing the Word, and how would I know if they weren’t? Is what they pulled out of the scripture meant for their understanding alone; does it have application for me or does it cloud what God may be trying to get me to see? It is likely God wants to speak to you specifically about scriptures that you might never dig out for yourself if you remain satisfied with someone else’s take on it.
Also, don’t just gather up understanding (even deeper levels of it!) but be prepared to put it into use always. You do have to take all this stuff and go back to the APPLICATION level, but with more tools to take you further.
The good news is once you’ve done the digging for yourself, and have a deep understanding of some of the inner workings of scripture, your application abilities begin to skyrocket! Instead of a basic understanding and fruit-bearing for the Kingdom of God, your new-found skills and knowledge will push you into the thirtyfold!
Next week we’ll look at SYNTHESIS!