The point of peer to peer learning is synergy—the condition in which the total effect of your learning partnership is greater than the sum of your individual efforts. Which is to say that two people working together somehow manage to more-than-double the output of either of them alone.
How? Test these two agreements with your learning partner(s):
- Agree on disagreement. Learning together doesn’t mean you have to reach the same conclusions at the same time. Asked if she ever argued with her high-powered evangelist husband, Billy, Ruth Bell Graham replied that if a couple never disagrees, one of them is unnecessary.
- Don’t insist on closure. Much of the Bible doesn’t lend itself to full, complete and final closure because most of what’s there involves sneaking a peek behind the infinite curtain. “Sacred Scripture in its customary style,” Augustine is supposed to have said, “is speaking with the limitations of human language in addressing men of limited understanding.” Which is another way of saying: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12)
Humility before the Creator (and your learning partner) may require you to say something like, “This is how I comprehend it at this point. How does it look to you?”
