{"id":5665,"date":"2026-08-21T08:50:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T12:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5665"},"modified":"2026-08-21T08:50:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T12:50:27","slug":"lifelong-learners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/21\/lifelong-learners\/","title":{"rendered":"Lifelong Learners"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a>
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each day this month of August we\u2019ll be looking at one of the extraordinary metaphors that the Bible uses to illustrate the nature of our relationship with God.<\/em>

It\u2019s quite possibly the most challenging certification exam in the world.

We’re talking about the process to become a licensed driver of one of London’s famous black cabs.

Aspiring cabbies have to obtain The Knowledge \u2013 a comprehensive grasp of every detail of every street within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross Station in the downtown area of the British capital.\u00a0

Drivers of the Hackney Carriage, as the black cabs are officially known, have been memorizing the streets of London since the horse-drawn days of 1865.\u00a0They disdain GPS-based electronic guidance systems.\u00a0They shrug off Uber drivers as mere wannabes.\u00a0

Acquiring The Knowledge means mastering more than 25,000 streets and something like 60,000 points of interest \u2013 every office, museum, church, school, pub, flower shop, and light pole.

In London, you signal a cab by raising one arm.\u00a0Then you open the door, slip inside, and indicate a destination.\u00a0The cabbie, without consulting a single prop, folded map, or flat screen, immediately sets off on the shortest route.\u00a0\u00a0

It takes a long time to master The Knowledge.\u00a0It takes an even longer time to earn the right to drive a Hackney Carriage.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

The process generally entails two to four years.\u00a0Cabbie hopefuls must pass both written and oral exams, demonstrating complete mastery of the 320 essential routes (or “runs,” as they are commonly known).\u00a0

If an examiner says, “Starting from Manor House Station, go to Gibson Square” (which happens to be the first route listed in the Blue Book, the “Bible” for cabbies), a trainee would need to recite something like the following from memory:

\u201cLeave on the left Greens Lane, right into Brownswood Road, left into Blackstock Road, forward Highbury Park, forward Highbury Grove. Right into St Pauls Road, comply at Highbury Corner, leave by Upper Street, right into Barnsbury Street, left into Milner Square, forward into Milner Place and Gibson Square is facing.\u201d<\/em>

This is not something one picks up by perusing\u00a0a book over the course of a weekend.\u00a0\u00a0

The\u00a0Knowledge, it turns out, is far more than just knowing about<\/em> London’s streets.\u00a0Cabbie candidates\u00a0must come to know<\/em>\u00a0every avenue\u00a0and alley\u00a0through ongoing personal experience \u2013 by actually testing out\u00a0the “runs” day after day after day.\u00a0\u00a0

We shouldn’t be surprised that there’s also a world of difference between knowing about<\/em> Jesus and knowing<\/em>\u00a0Jesus.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

Knowing about<\/em> Jesus\u00a0\u2013 what we call theology \u2013 is definitely useful.\u00a0But it is not the essential thing when it comes to following Jesus.\u00a0One of the unfortunate realities of American church culture is that people have gotten the idea that Christ’s\u00a0only “ask” is that we get a passing grade on the\u00a0SAT (Spiritual Aptitude Test).\u00a0If you memorize the right answers to the right theological questions, and align your opinions with certain political and social views (or so the thinking goes) you receive the grand prize of a great future when you die.

Knowing<\/em> Jesus, however \u2013 what we call discipleship \u2013 is the real deal.\u00a0And it has little to do with mastering theological fine points.\u00a0\u00a0

The word \u201cChristian\u201d appears just three times in the New Testament. The word \u201cdisciple\u201d makes 261 appearances. It is, by a long shot, the preferred description of Christ-followers. That makes being a disciple or lifelong student one of the key metaphors on the pages of Scripture.

\u201cDisciple\u201d translates the Greek word mathetes<\/u><\/em>, which means \u201clearner.\u201d We believe that Levi was the birth name of the author of the first Gospel. \u201cMatthew\u201d seems to be his nickname \u2013 bestowed on him presumably because he was a first-rate student of the things of God.

What does it mean to be a disciple?

A disciple is an intentional imitator\u2026a spiritual apprentice\u2026a lifelong pursuer of the Real and Only Life\u2026a forever student in the school of Jesus Christ. Being a disciple of Jesus means intentionally presenting ourselves to Christ every day, so that our thoughts, words, actions, and motives might gradually become more like his.

Who is qualified to follow this path?

The word disciple, unfortunately, has all too often been used by recent generations as if it were a synonym for \u201csuper-Christian.\u201d Some fellowships have even taught that discipleship is optional \u2013 a graduate level course for unusually zealous men and women.\u00a0

All the evidence from the New Testament, however, is that Jesus issued only one call to humanity \u2013 a call to a life of absolute dependence on him. A disciple isn\u2019t someone who has achieved a certain level of maturity, but a student who has simply enrolled in becoming like Christ.\u00a0

First graders may have a long way to go before receiving a bachelor\u2019s degree, but they definitely qualify as committed learners. It\u2019s not how far we\u2019ve gone down the path. What matters is our commitment to being a lifelong path-pursuer.\u00a0

What might it look like to follow Jesus?

At the end of his monumental, 889-page scholarly introduction to the New Testament, British pastor and theologian N.T. Wright suggests that what we have inherited is \u201ca new way of relating to one another, a way of kindness, a way that accepts the fact of anger but refuses to allow it to dictate the terms of engagement.\u201d\u00a0

Since Jesus\u2019 death accomplished our forgiveness, we must pass that on to each other.\u00a0\u201cWe must become, must be known as, the people who don\u2019t hold grudges, who don\u2019t sulk.\u00a0We must be the people who know how to say \u2018Sorry,\u2019 and who know what to do when other people say it to us.\u201d

Can you imagine what it would be like if the first thing people associated with Christians was, \u201cOh, those are the people who don\u2019t sulk and whine\u201d?\u00a0

We are called to show hospitality.\u00a0<\/em>
To serve the poor.\u00a0<\/em>
To sustain an ongoing conversation with God.<\/em>
To give away money cheerfully.\u00a0<\/em>
To stand up for those who have been unjustly treated. \u00a0<\/em>
But never take private vengeance.\u00a0<\/em>
And always show compassion to those who are hurting.<\/em>

Lifelong learners of Jesus, in the end, are those who remember that in a God-supervised world, there are no grounds for feeling anxious.

The Knowledge will definitely help you get around London.

But the knowledge related to discipleship is better still.

It will help you go from here to the end of life\u2026and beyond.<\/em>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Each day this month of August we\u2019ll be looking at one of the extraordinary metaphors that the Bible uses to illustrate the nature of our relationship with God. It\u2019s quite possibly the most challenging certification exam in the world. We’re talking about the process to become a licensed driver of one… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[129,1159,1172],"class_list":["post-5665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-discipleship","tag-metaphors","tag-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5667,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5665\/revisions\/5667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}