A cognitive problem goes along with the falling away from sound doctrine of II Thessalonians 2: 3-4.. In the parable of the salt in Matthew 5; 13 it says "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men."
We may think that "savour" merely refers to how salt gives food a better taste. But the Greek word behind savour is Strong's Exhaustive Concordance number 3471, moraino, from 3474, moros, "dull or stupid, as if to shut up, heedless, blockhead..." Moraino is a cognitive condition. Under the many false prophets operating for decades, the churches have lost their intelligence, which means their spiritual discernment.
Short attention spans is one effect of dumbing down, or what is called Attention Deficit Disorder. The ability to focus attention for a period of time on one topic underlies several cognitive abilities, such as the ability to tell the difference between what is important and what is not important, the ability to create clear gist meanings, the ability to remember at the right time what has been stored in long term memory, the ability to think in cause and effect terms, clarity of perception of space and time, the ability to isolate and pay close attention to something which is a small part of a more complex whole, the ability to hold more than one item of information in consciousness at a time, and the ability to combine information into new possible connections, or, in other words, creativity. All these cognitive abilities underlie understanding, which includes understanding of texts, and the scriptures. People who are dumbed down have difficulty in reading and understanding a text, and this includes the Bible.
Dumbed down people who claim to be Christians have a problem in understanding fundamental doctrines of the Gospel. In what can be called the II Timothy 3: 4-8 church there is a lot of confusion about the difference between physical Israel and the Israel of the New Covenant, about what the church is, in relation to Israel of the Old Covenant, and the Israel of the New Covenant. Paul writes about these differences, but as Peter says in II Peter 3: 15-16, some of Paul's writings are hard to understand and that "they that are unlearned and unstable wrest (wrestle)...unto their own destruction."
The dumbed down Christians have problems in understanding Paul in key texts like Romans 2: 23-29, Romans 9: 6-8, Romans 11: 25-26, Galatians 3: 3-29 and Galatians 4: 24-26, all of which deal with the differences between Old Covenant physical Israel and New Covenant Israel, what Paul calls the Israel of God in Galatians 6: 16. That scripture must be interpreted literally is more likely to be uncritically accepted by those who are dumbed down cognitively.
We may think that "savour" merely refers to how salt gives food a better taste. But the Greek word behind savour is Strong's Exhaustive Concordance number 3471, moraino, from 3474, moros, "dull or stupid, as if to shut up, heedless, blockhead..." Moraino is a cognitive condition. Under the many false prophets operating for decades, the churches have lost their intelligence, which means their spiritual discernment.
Short attention spans is one effect of dumbing down, or what is called Attention Deficit Disorder. The ability to focus attention for a period of time on one topic underlies several cognitive abilities, such as the ability to tell the difference between what is important and what is not important, the ability to create clear gist meanings, the ability to remember at the right time what has been stored in long term memory, the ability to think in cause and effect terms, clarity of perception of space and time, the ability to isolate and pay close attention to something which is a small part of a more complex whole, the ability to hold more than one item of information in consciousness at a time, and the ability to combine information into new possible connections, or, in other words, creativity. All these cognitive abilities underlie understanding, which includes understanding of texts, and the scriptures. People who are dumbed down have difficulty in reading and understanding a text, and this includes the Bible.
Dumbed down people who claim to be Christians have a problem in understanding fundamental doctrines of the Gospel. In what can be called the II Timothy 3: 4-8 church there is a lot of confusion about the difference between physical Israel and the Israel of the New Covenant, about what the church is, in relation to Israel of the Old Covenant, and the Israel of the New Covenant. Paul writes about these differences, but as Peter says in II Peter 3: 15-16, some of Paul's writings are hard to understand and that "they that are unlearned and unstable wrest (wrestle)...unto their own destruction."
The dumbed down Christians have problems in understanding Paul in key texts like Romans 2: 23-29, Romans 9: 6-8, Romans 11: 25-26, Galatians 3: 3-29 and Galatians 4: 24-26, all of which deal with the differences between Old Covenant physical Israel and New Covenant Israel, what Paul calls the Israel of God in Galatians 6: 16. That scripture must be interpreted literally is more likely to be uncritically accepted by those who are dumbed down cognitively.
