What is Transformative Learning?

So, someone e-mailed Heather a while ago with this insane question (from a professor to a Graduate Studies Class) about Transformative Learning. Heather turned to me immediately and said "Can you think of an example of Transformative Learning?" I totally thought of my best musical one right off the bat......

I'm in a lesson in college and we're working on the Rose 32 (I can't remember which one, but that's unimportant.) Anyways, we're talking about how to inflect the melodic line and how to make it sound interesting and how to play it your way without sounding stupid. We go on further and then this example totally rocked my little 19 year old, musical brain 'Are you saying "I'M going to Chicago" or "I'm GOing to Chicago" or "I'm going TO Chicago" or "I'm going to CHICAgo"?' Wow, it IS that simple! There's not a magical, pixie dust formula for all music? Sweet! I still teach and play that way to this day. Not only does it inform me greatly, but it makes every performance of something I'm doing different than the one before. I'm no longer just trying to play, I'm trying to speak elegantly through my instrument. (Dissertation on this to come at a later date :op)

So, after I threw that one out there and felt all good about it I forgot about it; until the other day when I was thinking (and this is probably what the original questionee said) Transformative Learning is the process of walking out faith in Christ. Duh! Why didn't I think of that the other day? So, I found all these transformation verses. I like finding stuff like this since there's so much of the Bible to discover.

2 Corinthians 3:3 You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.(NIV)

That feels nice doesn't it? To me that's a total assurance of my salvation in Christ, having already accepted Christ into my life. Not only that, it's like we're his little kids and He's writing to his friends about how great all His kids are ("You see the depths of my heart and you love me the same", (I did that one from memory too!) If, as it says, each one of us is a letter (and I wish we were a letter-writing generation) then we, like a letter, develop from start to finish. A letter today (a couple paragraphs) isn't like the letters of old. Back in the day that's all people had, heck, we have whole books of certain peoples letters (Beethoven, Mozart, whomever.) Those letters went at length about all sorts of things: good, bad, happy, sad, hot, cold, everything. The letter's transforming from one topic to another, one idea to another, just as we change from one season to another.

I love that word season. The Christians I hang around say it ALL THE TIME. A season is a time when God puts you in places you need to be to place love "on tablets of human hearts." If we weren't assured in our salvation there would be no seasons in our lives, no development, a 21st Century-one-paragraph-letter. At that point God would be casting us aside as He so chose. That is not the heart of God...He wants to develop us, as a letter, to His people and to those who have not yet cast their eyes upon Him and opened their hearts to Him.

Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (NIV)

The part I like most about this is "...by the renewing of your mind." To me, everyday goes right after that. As God's writing your life, as a letter, He's constantly challenging you, convicting you on things that you'd never had a conviction about before(or changing convictions you already had), showing things you never noticed before, giving you new compassion for those around you, doing all sorts of things that help prevent you from conforming to the world. Our Senior Pastor likes to say He's "depopulating hell". That doesn't mean you're having this major epiphany everyday. (That might be too much to handle.) But, you are seeing things a little bit differently everyday as you become more and more like Him, like what He wants you to be. Not only do I believe you'll be able "...to test and approve what God's will is...", but you'll also be able to accept that His will is higher than yours, that He is sovereign, and that you don't REALLY have control.

Philippians 3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body. (NIV)

Here is hope. Hope that when we're done here that there is a place that is so glorious, so incredible, that words do not describe it. Not, cannot...do not. That there is no pain, no suffering, nothing. A place that God made for His people that He's showing us glimpses of daily. Our Senior Pastor at Church once proposed that this is "...our daily bread." Man, that's pretty smart. He's going to transform us, one day *like this....since He's trying to show us daily* into something that is so Awesome (there's that word again) that we cannot even fathom it. Alright! Now that's Transformative Learning! Can I get an Amen!