Created to be a Burden

In Radical Disciple, John Stott says God designed us to be burdens to each other. If so, then Paul’s admonition to bear each others burdens (Galatians 6:2) not only involves helping each other with the burdens we have to carry due to our sin; it also requires assisting each other in carrying the loads we have that result from our finitude. In that case, it seems that the best way we can prepare for eternity is to become as adept at the art of burden-bearing as we can - since this skill will be central in the eternal Kingdom community.

Religion, Science, & Unfalsifiability

Recently an interlocutor of mine claimed that religious beliefs, unlike scientific beliefs, are unfalsifiable. But beliefs of these two sorts don’t differ in this way. There is evidence for and evidence against both types of beliefs. So both kinds are at least theoretically verifiable and falsifiable. Moreover, when believers persist in maintaining beliefs in either category in the face of counterevidence, they often do so because they have adequate grounds for those beliefs and insufficient reason to think the contrary evidence is decisive. In these cases, though the beliefs are practically unfalsified, it doesn’t follow that they are theoretically unfalsifiable. 

Teaching, Learning, and Humility

I'm reading What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain and Exiles from Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America by Mark R. Schwehn. Bain says the best teachers have the humility to assume that when students aren't learning well, the teacher is at least partly to blame. Schwehn says students need the humility to presume that others have the wisdom and authority to teach them. So humility is a virtue required of both teachers and students in order for learning to take place. As a teacher, Jesus modeled humility and urged his disciples to imitate his example.