Navigating Love

They call it 'The Knowledge' and it started changing brains in 1851.

This week is the third in a ten-part series on learning to love better with our minds… and today, we take to the streets and the hardest test in the world.

"Remember, you are loved, so go, love better!"

New episodes drop on Tuesdays.

Transcript

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was supposed to be the crowning achievement of British industry, but for Sir Richard Mayne it only brought complaints.  The Great Exhibition, also known as the Crystal Palace Exhibition, was an international event that took place in Hyde Park, London.  The brainchild of Prince Albert, it was organized to highlight the advances in industrial manufacturing and in almost every field the British exhibits showed their supremacy.  The Great Exhibition is considered by most historians to be the first World’s Fair and the predecessor to what would become an illustrious history of spotlighting human ingenuity and the growing industrial revolution.  For Prince Albert, the exhibition was a roaring success, for Sir Richard Mayne it brought to light a troubling revelation.

On the world stage, as foreign dignitaries flocked into London hailing hackney carriages to take them around the city, Sir Richard Mayne as the police commissioner for the first World’s Fair found a glaring problem.  The cabbies had no idea where anything was.  Complaints rolled in from visitors about the London cabbies, and when you are police commissioner in charge of keeping law and order in the greatest exhibition of British history – disorder in the streets becomes your problem.  So, Sir Richard Mayne conjured up a plan to never have London embarrassed again.  From that day forward, London would have a reputation for order, precision, and efficiency amongst its cabbies.  All taxi drivers would have to be able to navigate the city and its historic landmarks.    Today, London cabbies simply call it “The Knowledge”

I’m Scott Beyer and this is the Love Better podcast where we explore the truths and lies about love and more importantly how to turn love into a skill – something we can get better at and hone along the way.

            This year, we are learning to love better by exploring the greatest commandment – Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  We’ve searched our hearts and plumbed the depths of our soul for how to love the Lord better, and halfway through the year it is time to investigate our minds.  How do we love God with all our mind?  What does that even mean?  This week is the third in a ten-part series on learning to love better with our minds… and today, we travel to the convoluted streets of London and the cabbies’ brains that are rewired to navigate it.

            The Knowledge is the world’s toughest taxi test.  According to Transport for London, the integrated transport authority responsible for managing the transport system in Greater London, London’s taxi service is the best in the world.  Granted, they might be biased, but the data seems to back them up,  London cabbies have been tested against GPS systems and consistently get their passengers to their destinations with more accuracy and faster than Google.  A London cabbie won’t drop you off at the wrong entrance or take you through rush hour traffic – they know exactly where to go and they never struggle with internet connectivity.  Don’t remember what theater your play is at?  Just tell them what play you are going to and they will know where to drop you off.  Mastering The Knowledge means memorizing over 20,000 landmarks with the ability to bring them to instant recall, find the most direct route between the two, and execute safe driving habits all at the same time.  There are over 25,000 roads in London and a student of the Knowledge must know them all if he wants to acquire the coveted green badge that will allow him to drive one of London’s iconic black cabs.  To quote the advice of the testing staff – “You have to eat, sleep, and breathe The Knowledge.  If it’s not taking over your life, you’re not doing it properly.”

            The Knowledge is passed in several stages and it takes most people four years to pass it.  Cabbie Apprentices, also known as Knowledge Boys and Girls start out by walking the streets or riding around on mopeds.  They spend months with laminated maps and pounding the pavement to learn the ins and outs of London.  Unlike places like Manhattan, Melbourne, and Chicago that are designed in user-friendly grid patterns… London is a veritable pile of spaghetti with roads winding in every direction as time and history have allowed them to run amok.  Apprentices must learn these streets so that they are more than just facts, they are imprinted on their brain… and neurologists say that is EXACTLY what happens.  More on that later.

            For now, I want you to simply be impressed by what humanity can achieve when we apply ourselves.  Cabbies come from all walks of life, from IT professionals to tradesmen to lawyers to students.  From youthful twenty-somethings to those in their fifties attempting a career change – anyone can become a cabbie.  The pay is good – in the six figures – and you get to set your own hours.  The sort of flexible that many people crave.  It is arguably the hardest test in the world with a failure rate of 80% - equivalent to the Navy Seals wash out rankings, but anyone can do it.  There is no time limit, no restrictions, and no requirements other than a willingness to absorb yourself in the city.

            I cannot help but be embarrassed of my own achievements as I think about the Knowledge Boys and Girls of London.  While they are willing to dedicate years to knowing the city that they love – how much dedication have I shown to absorbing myself in the God that I love?   After all, Peter tells us that the Scriptures provide us with “everything that pertains to life and godliness” and Solomon tells us that to “fear God and keep His commandments is the whole of man” – if the Bible is the roadmap to God, how good have I become at navigating it?  And if I was concerned that the issue is the difficulty of the Bible – Paul reminds us that the Bible isn’t difficult, just deep.  In his first letter to the Corinthian Christians, in chapter 1 he writes:

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. (1Co 1:18-21)

God gave us His Word for everyone – it is meant to be accessible.  The same God that loved the world so He gave us His Son is merciful in delivering us the good news about His Son in a way that can be accessed by all.  This is true logistically and linguistically.  The Bible is the most accessible book on the planet, more widely published than any other document, religious or otherwise.  It can be read in more languages, more dialects, and through the advent of the printing press and the internet made available to more than just groups.  It is accessible to individuals.  The language is simple enough that an 8th grade reading level can comprehend it and the very nature of it is meant to be read and reread for further depth.  Training aids abound – from commentaries to concordances to sermons stored on the cloud – there is no excuse for having a shallow knowledge of the Bible.

If the greatest commandment is to Love the LORD our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength – is it not fair to say that our mind ought to be saturated with the word of God?  And if it isn’t – it seems like that must be from a lack of love, not a lack of access, or a lack of education.  After all, even if you were illiterate, there are scores of ways to have Scripture read to you.  Personally, I still enjoy having James Earl Jones me the Bible – even if that requires me listening to it in King James.

In the Old Testament, the kings of Israel were given a command that reminds me of The Knowledge test.  All godly kings must know God’s Word, and even as they were surrounded by human advisors, their minds needed to be saturated in Scripture.  So, Jehovah gave all kings a command in Deuteronomy 17:

"And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:18-20)

The first step for a cabbie apprentice is to travel the roads yourself.  Grab a moped and whip around the city, leisurely stroll down the parkways and avenues and look at the signs.  Slow down, see the sights, gaze at Big Ben, and smell the fish wafting from the chippies.

The first step for a king?  Write the Scripture in your own hand.  Imagine reading the Bible out of a copy you had handwritten yourself?  Somehow, I suspect it would read differently if you wrote it yourself.  Writing the text yourself feels a lot like writing a contract.  It is hard to write, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” and then go out and be mean to others.  When we write it on paper, we tend to write the words on our minds, too.

Feel free to test me on this.  For the price of a spiral bound notebook and a good mechanical pencil you can begin to write a section of the Bible in your own hand.  Take your time – there is no rush and no rewards for speed.  The task is the reward.  Record the 23rd Psalm in your own or transcribe your own copy of the Sermon on the Mount.  Start with something small like Paul’s letter to Philemon or John’s letter to his beloved friend, Gaius.  Here’s what I know – you will see things you haven’t seen before.  Landmarks hidden in the landscape of the Lord’s Word.  When the king made a copy of the law it was a copy that was always with him – in more ways than one.  The copy became an heirloom, a ready friend, and the roadmap of the Lord became imprinted in his mind.

The problem with today’s technology is that the accessibility of information reduces our motivation to internalize it.  Why learn the roads when the GPS can do it for me?  The answer the cabbies give is that there is no substitute for the human touch.  Navigation systems get things wrong, don’t always pick the best route, or fail to recognize that the actors want to arrive at the stage door, not the front of the theater.  GPS maps the city, but cabbies know the city.

A good Bible app can map out the word for you and help with a word search, but it doesn’t know the Word.  Only souls with minds can know the Word… and more importantly knowing the Bible, means the Bible changes you, too.

Neurologists have studied cabbie apprentices.  Dozens of trainee drivers had MRI scans before and after they acquired “The Knowledge”.  In an article from Current Biology, researchers found that trainees had increased grey matter in the hippocampus after all their memory work.  Even an attempt at “The Knowledge” led to increased hippocampus size.  In short, knowing the city that they loved, changed them.

When you attempt to know the Bible instead of just having access to it, it changes you from the inside out.  That’s exactly what Hebrews says, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (Heb 4:12)

When we learn to navigate the Word of God, we are actually learning the map of our own hearts and souls.  Scripture is a roadmap to heaven and an overlay for the human condition.  That’s what Peter meant by “everything pertaining to life and godliness” – the Bible teaches us about God and our lives.  God specifically designed the accounts in the Bible to teach us about ourselves.  When you know the text, you begin to know yourself… and there isn’t a Bible program in the world that can do that for you.

And those London cabbies have a point – GPS is only as good as the access to it.  What happens when the internet is down or you need the information faster than your fingers can type in the address?  Or what if you don’t have the address at all, just the general region?

The Bible is the same way.  There will be times where you will need the Scriptures already engraved in your heart and the path to navigate already embedded in your brain.  When you are in the middle of a conflict, or a door of opportunity is opened, you may not have time to grab a Bible – you need to be a Bible.  As the old song goes, for some folks you may be the only Bible they ever read.  Cabbies need to know the city because they have passengers counting on them.  You’ve got passengers in life, too… and when you are having that crucial conversation with your child or your spouse or that coworker that’s seeking God but not sure where to start – you need to already know how to navigate the paths that lead to God. 

Learning to love the LORD with all your mind means filling it with His Word.  Learn to love better.  Learn to navigate the Word of God.  And seriously, give that notebook a try.  You won’t regret it.

As always, thank you for listening and hopefully we've done something to help make your life a little bit better.  If you have a chance to rate, review or share the podcast it would be a blessing.  By sharing with others or leaving a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, you help us reach more people.

And if you are ever in the Louisville, KY area, I’d like to invite you to worship with us at the Eastland congregation next Sunday.  If you want more information about Eastland, visit us at eastlandchristians.org.  Or if you are looking for more tools to enrich your Bible study, visit my personal Bible site, Biblegrad.com, where you can sign up for daily Bible devotionals called Biblebites and receive them in your email each morning, take online Bible classes, or find videos that will help you study through the Bible throughout the year.

And until next time, “Remember, you are loved, so go… love better.”