Learning war no more, beating swords into plows and spears into pruning hooks is a daunting task and doomed to failure … without three—maybe, four—vital life skills.
The football world was stunned, but not surprised, when Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback to ever step on a field, announced that he was retiring after 22 seasons in the NFL. After all, he had just posted the best season-long stats of his career, leading the league in passing yards (a career high of 5,316) and touchdown passes (43). He could walk away a winner. He had nothing left to prove.
Brady fandom was even more surprised when he announced 40 days later that he was unretiring and would return to the Tampa Bay Bucs for another season. So, Brady is out on the gridiron; he is probably playing somewhere this week — barring the unforeseen — and his legend continues to grow.
Of all of the remarkable aspects of his storied career is a skill seldom mentioned. Brady has a gift for unlearning.
For example, he had to unlearn one offensive system and learn another. He did it with limited practice amid Covid-19 restrictions and still won a Super Bowl. His team was going nowhere that first year, but Brady was able to unlearn some bad habits, routines, patterns and mistakes, shake things up, and after the two-week bye, the Tampa Bay Bucs looked like a new team.
The renowned futurist, Alvin Tofler, once predicted, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”1
Not many people can learn, unlearn and then relearn life lessons, but those who can, like Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr., future Hall of Famer, are often happy and successful at what they do.
Learn
The ancient Israelites, it could be said, were life-long learners. From the hour they fled in the middle of the night from the land of Goshen, running toward the Red Sea, they were learning something new. They learned new things about the one true God, the “I Am That I Am,” they had never known. They received new laws and commandments and they accepted new leadership, even if they complained and grumbled. They learned about their future destiny and about a land they would someday occupy.
In this promised land, the Lord God continued to teach them. And in the opening words of today’s text, the prophet Isaiah invites the people of God to convene for instruction: “‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.”
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