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GOD NOT ONLY LOVES AND VALUES EACH PERSON THE SAME BUT HAS ALSO GIVEN EACH PERSON EQUAL 'SMARTS'

Everyone is equal before God. He loves every single person with the same amount of love -- as if you were the only person in Creation. That's how you'll feel when you encounter Him.

We hear this so many times from those who have traversed the barrier between life and death. Every person is of equal importance in God's Plan for the universe. You'll be surprised on the "other side." You contribute in ways you cannot (and could not) imagine. We are cogs in a grand machine. Is every person also equally intelligent?

This is a point of discussion because our society as currently fashioned has caused many to feel less intelligent (and thus less "important") than others. The short answer: yes, everyone has a unique and equal intelligence in the way of essential consciousness -- not as modern society defines "intelligence" (which is based on narrow worldly constructs), but in the way God does.

We're not "smart" enough to have the whole picture (be assured of that). We don't pretend to be. But consider the theories of Howard E. Gardner, a professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He believes that even by worldly definitions there are at least eight and possibly twelve different types of human intelligence.

Since 1999, Gardner has identified eight intelligences: linguistic, logic-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. He is informally considering two additional intelligences, existential and pedagogical.

Our educational system currently focuses on just two: verbal-linguistic skills, and mathematics-logic.

These are the kind of "smarts" that get you high grades on IQ tests and SATs (and into schools like the one at which Dr. Gardner teaches).

But one has to ask: is short-term eidetic memory better than long-term memory? How does one test long-term knowledge?

And how does one test for wisdom?

What test could have predicted Robert Frost, or DaVinci (let alone Jesus)?

We ask this after having visited close to a hundred universities and colleges back in the days of being on the lecture circuit.

The problem is that our educational testing and standard exams have no way of gauging most aspects of awareness.

The skills so valued by standard tests are skills which robots most readily emulate.

And the result has been a mechanical way of viewing, educating, and promoting mankind. The fruits of that are all around us.

The focus is on short-term memory (best of all, an eidetic one). But: is a person intelligent if he or she makes it to the Supreme Court on eidetic recall but has not the clarity to see abortion as evil -- to recognize a reality beyond the limited physical realm?

We value layers of complication but in the process often bury and blind ourselves with them.

In this muddle, only prayer and the Bible bring clarity.

When it comes to the mind, we are created differently -- but equally. The mind goes beyond the physical. It was a great Canadian neurosurgeon named Wilder Penfield who once said that all of the brain is in the mind but not all of the mind is in the brain. Far from it.

Mind goes to spirit.

Only prayer opens up that kind of intelligence.

We have nothing against testing, to a degree. But note when Jesus went around, He spoke simply, directly, without polysyllables (and without equations on a blackboard). Our Church is often stifled by intellectual pretension.

Upon death, we will see with new eyes; we will have a perception that is fantastically expanded. We will all have the same perceptual abilities. And we will see that the most crucial type of cognition is spiritual intelligence.

Everyone has unique abilities and ways of viewing matters, skills that are fashioned to form the real tests, the tests of life (which include what we contribute to each other).

You are given what you need to fulfill your role in God's Plan for Creation.

The "smartest" people have learned to help and pray for others. The most aware have their focus on eternity.

Mary Undoer of Knots plus The Holy Cloak novena, $7.25

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