Some often feel that when a tragedy strikes that the people involved are the worse sinners on the planet. However, the bible teaches that time and chance can happen to us all.
“There were present at that season some who told [Jesus] about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered and said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:1-5).
Concerning these verses, The Bible Knowledge Commentary states:
“Jesus taught the crowds that calamity can happen to anyone because all are human…Jesus’ point was that being killed or not being killed is not a measure of a person’s unrighteousness or righteousness. Anyone can be killed. Only God’s grace causes [or allows] any to live. This point is brought out in verses 3 and 5—unless you repent, you too will all perish. Death is the common denominator for everyone. Only repentance can bring life as people prepare to enter the kingdom.”
Repentance, changing one’s mind to think like God, is the only path to eternal life for mankind. It’s God’s involvement in our lives through the indwelling of His Holy Spirit that helps us to develop a singlemindedness which focuses, not on this physical life, but on our spiritual life both now and in the future.
One important aspect to single-mindedness is the way we view tests or trials. All too often tests and trials tend to distract us from God. Instead, they should be leveraged to develop a single-minded focus on life.
Throughout scripture, the words “test” and “trial” are used interchangeably. According to the Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon (ESL), the primary Greek word means a situation which tests a person’s strength, fidelity, integrity, virtue, and consistency. Tests measure to what extent an individual uses knowledge, understanding, and wisdom to evaluate and react to a test.
God’s uses tests to measure whether an individual employs worldly or Godly knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. He also desires and expects His people to use every test to measure themselves in this life so they may escape the condemnation of the world. “For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world” (1 Corinthians 11:31–32).
It is important that we properly evaluate how well we apply our knowledge, understanding, and wisdom to each test we encounter. We must not allow misconceptions or wrong thinking to get in the way of our own personal evaluation. In the field of education, effectively measuring the understanding and application of knowledge is widely documented. Though much is known, both instructor and pupil often fail to properly measure learned proficiency. The main reason for this failure is that most tests measure “correctness” and not “understanding”.
On medium.com an article titled “Correctness vs. Understanding” by educator Dr. Theo Dawson uses an example exam question. Here is the scenario:
“Sophia balances a pile of stainless-steel wire and ordinary steel wire on a scale. After a few days, the ordinary wire begins rusting.”
The question on a conventional exam measuring merely “correctness” would normally be something like: “What will happen to the pan with the rusting wire?”
Followed by the following choices: 1) the pan will move up. 2) the pan will not move. 3) the pan will move down. 4) the pan will first move up and then down. 5) the pan will first move down and then up.
If you possess some basic knowledge of chemistry, which one would you choose as the correct answer? If you don’t, you can simply guess and have a 1 in 5 chance of obtaining the correct answer.
Let’s now change the question from multiple choice to essay: “What will happen to the height of the pan with the rusting wire? Please explain your answer thoroughly.”
Here are three example responses from 12th graders.
Student #1: “The pan will move down because the rusted steel is heavier than the plain steel.”
Student #2: “The pan will move down, because when iron rusts, oxygen atoms get attached to the iron atoms. Oxygen atoms don’t weigh very much, but they weigh a bit, so the rusted iron will “gain weight,” and the scale will go down a bit on that side.”
Student #3”: “The pan will go down at first, but it might go back up later. When iron oxidizes, oxygen from the air combines with the iron to make iron oxide. So, the mass of the wire increases, due to the mass of the oxygen that has bonded with the iron. But iron oxide is non-adherent, so over time the rust will fall off of the wire. If the metal rusts for a long time, some of the rust will become dust and some of that dust will very likely be blown away.”
The correct answer to the multiple choice is 3) the pan would go down.
There is no single correct answer to the essay. In fact, all three answers are correct. However, the answers reveal different levels of understanding. Student #2 answer reveals more knowledge and understanding than #1. #3 shows more knowledge than #2. Lastly, student #3 would have answered the multiple-choice question incorrectly resulting in the one with the most understanding receiving a lower score.
What does this example reveal? Quoting from Dr. Dawson: “Despite clear evidence that correct answers on standardized tests do not measure understanding and are therefore not a good indicator of usable knowledge or competence, we continue to use scores on these tests to make decisions about who will get into which college, which teachers deserve a raise, and which schools should be closed. We value what we measure. As long as we continue to measure correctness…rather than knowledge, more useful forms of learning will remain relatively neglected.”
Measuring by “correctness” – simply being able to parrot back a “correct” answer – is not limited to the education sector. It is also the normal way we personally measure our competency and understanding. This is why we see people who cram for an exam to “correctly” pass only to forget much of the material and never apply it to life. The exam and grade are an end in themselves. The exam is viewed as simply another assignment.
This approach is a very damaging thought process that spills over into our everyday life. We can begin to see life as a series of assignments such that we look back on our “correctness” score on which to base our value or esteem. This is not good or effective. Instead, we must see each test in life as preparation for our future life, not just momentary, not as “just another assignment”.
Correctness is not adequate evidence of “understanding” nor a development of real-world skills. If we want to evaluate our skill level, we must observe how well we apply the skill in real-world contexts. As followers of Christ, we must build usable skills that have value of application beyond the act of passing an individual test. We need usable skills developed from the wisdom and “understanding” learned by the tests we encounter throughout life in order to apply God’s Word more accurately.
If we are measuring our spiritual proficiency by the how often we pray, study, and memorize scriptures, or by the number of messages we hear, the number of articles we read, and how often we fast and meditate, we are measuring by “correctness”. These are important things to do. However, what is even more important is how we apply or utilize what we learn from tests to our daily lives. We are using a method that can blind us if we are just “doing” without understanding and application.
For example: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!” (Matthew 23:23–24). If we are merely using “correctness” as our measure, we end up focusing on the small things and missing the importance of the “weightier matters” that are to guide our lives. We need to look at tests and trials differently than we often do.
James explains: “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, . . .” (James 1:2). According to James, trials are not simply exams or tests that we receive a passing or failing grade in and then move on to the next one. Trials are to result in an enthusiasm about mastering the tests by using God’s knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. It is about guiding our minds to mastering the tests for ourselves and for all of mankind. Successful results bring joy.
James continues: “For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing” (James 1:3–4 NLT). Patience means steadfastness, consistency, and endurance.
Our approach to trials should be one of perfecting the ability to be steadfast, consistent, and enduring in pursuit of God’s Will that goes far beyond any physical outcome. It’s about gaining the experience as a child of God to become steadfast, consistent, and enduring for the next test which will surely follow. This is the singleness of mind that God desires to be developed in each of us. It is the same singleness of mind that Christ had for His Father’s work.
James informs us where the source of our success lies: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5). God’s complete desire is for us to succeed. He generously gives us the knowledge, understanding, and wisdom to overcome if we acknowledge Him and ask in singleness of mind: “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:6-8).
The Greek for “double-minded” means “a person with two minds”. The Theological Dictionary of the New Testaments defines it as a “divided person”. It only occurs twice in the New Testament, and both are in the book of James. James defines the “double-minded” as unstable. The Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon states the Greek for unstable means “unstable”, “inconstant”, and “restless”. Each are antonyms of steadfastness, consistency, and endurance.
A double-minded person is restless and confused in his thoughts, his actions, and his behavior. Such a person is always in conflict with himself. One torn by such inner conflict can never lean with confidence on God and His promises. Correspondingly, the term unstable is analogous to a drunken man unable to walk a straight line, swaying one way, then another. He has no defined direction and as a result does not get anywhere. Such a person is “unstable in all he does.”
Doublemindedness occurs as the Holy Spirit begins to convict us of our sin and provides a capacity to respond to God’s love. However, we often seek to receive from God for our own benefit and to fulfill our own passions and desires or we try to do it all under our own power. We want our trials to have our outcome instead of God’s. Often our sinful nature continues to direct our hearts and desires instead of dying: “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures” (James 4:1–3). We tend toward loving ourselves first and love God and others second.
However, loving God is comprehensive and all-inclusive. “Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37–39).
Hebrews states that those who are double-minded lack in faith: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible” (Hebrews 11:1-3). Followers of Christ cannot be both “certain” and “doubting”, as is the double-minded person.
Double-minded people are easily swayed by doubt or uncertainty. They can never embrace trials because they lack faith. If we are double-minded and do not take command of trials through faith, trials will only reveal our weaknesses instead of our strengths. “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). In order to accomplish the perfection of steadfastness, consistency, and endurance, we must become single-minded, so we can ask God for assistance in overcoming trials.
Life’s tests and trials are the vehicles God uses to transform our minds. This makes the way we view, leverage, and measure them a matter of life and death. Tests and trials are not simple assignments that we pass or fail. Their purpose is to teach us to apply godly responses, to live like God. They are to teach us to overcome with His nature as the Holy Spirit actively works in our lives.
When we approach trials with a single-minded desire to reflect our Father and Jesus Christ, they will produce the fruit of patience, of steadfastness, of consistency, and of endurance. All these attributes are necessary to overcome until our physical end of life.
We have a choice. We can be single-minded in becoming like our Father who is Life or continue to struggle through trials and tests with a double mind. Clearly, the best choice is to replace any doublemindedness with single-mindedness.
Bill Hutchison