Separating the Theoretical from the Practical

“Theoretically, x should happen when y.” How many times do we say or think that phrase throughout the day? We plan, anticipate, and behave based on this statement every single day. Yet, oftentimes, we spend very little time constructing the theory and just act, OR, we spend all of our time trudging through theory and fail to do a single thing with all the knowledge and useless information we’ve learned. And why do I say “useless” information?

All knowledge is useless if you refuse to utilize that knowledge.

Does this mean any skills you have and fail to use for your job are useless? Is my knowledge of guitar or Descartes’ First Meditations useless since I’m a math teacher at a private school?

No.

However, it does mean that having a skill, theory, or piece of information alone is not valuable to anyone without implementation.

If I have the ability to play guitar, but avoided my church worship team and never played at home, I might as well not know how to play.

If I know about Matthew 5:44, yet I do not love my enemies and pray for them, I might as well not even know about the Scripture.

If I understand my diabetes and the needs I have based on my insulin regimen, but fail to take my insulin or follow the plan I have laid out with my doctors and family, then I might as well not even have made the plan in the first place!

My point is not to avoid knowledge you have not implemented, but to implement knowledge you have learned thus far and that describes the world best as you understand it. If we failed to live as if we knew something, it has zero effect on our lives and we may as well not even know it.

Separating the practical from the theoretical is fine and dandy, and we discuss many theoretical things on our podcast and in this blog. But we have to realize that a change to our mindsets begins the journey to changing our behavior and, eventually, our character. And a change in our mindsets starts with a change in our inputs and the thoughts and theories we dwell on.

So, although the theoretical may seem less useful than the practical information we write about or discuss, just remember that it all comes down to how you implement it.

Micah Davis