Why We Need: Understanding
“The best way to understanding is a few good examples.” Isaac Newton
Twenty years ago, I walked into the lecture hall for day one of “Contracts”, a required course in the first year of law school. What followed was a four-month tale of survival, replete with all the required plot elements: confusion, fear, despair, hope, and, ultimately, successful escape.
The “1L” year is grueling enough on its own, and I hadn’t helped myself in the lead up; only a few weeks before classes began, I watched the classic ‘70s film The Paper Chase, which, suffice it to say, does nothing to assuage one’s anxiety about contract law. It was as if some dark specter already hung over the classroom before I had even been introduced to “expectation damages”, “promissory estoppel”, and other such scintillating concepts.
Once into the semester, an archaic casebook and ambitious young visiting professor eager to prove his brilliance took turns hiding the ball, reshaping even the simplest doctrine into a labyrinthine hall of mirrors. “Infuriatingly incomprehensible” was an apt description of most readings and lectures.
Looking back, what sustained me in the midst of that multiverse of madness was an understanding of two things: 1) why I was there (it was a prerequisite to a larger objective), and 2) how it would ultimately end (with an exam in December that, in all likelihood, I would pass—regardless of the implications for my GPA).
That understanding, despite daily lack of comprehension of the course content for weeks on end, sustained me (a clear, concise, better-late-than-never study outline ultimately saved me—but that’s for another essay).
Viewed thus, my turbulent contract law experience embodied an important fact: understanding and comprehension, while related, are not the same thing.
At first blush, however, any distinction at all between understanding and comprehension is difficult to discern.
Not only do most dictionaries use the one in the definition of the other—treating them as synonyms—but so have most people in our lives. We’ve been asked innumerable times “Do you understand?” by a superior, be it a parent, teacher, coach, manager, etc., and what’s meant by that question is “Do you comprehend what I’m telling you?”; i.e., an inquiry as to whether we mentally grasp the statements and instructions being spoken to us in a way that we’ll be able to utilize and execute.
As it turns out, comprehension does require a grasp; understanding, though, requires something altogether different.
The English word comprehension comes down to us from the Latin comprehensionem, meaning “a seizing, a grasping hold of, an arrest”. It shares the same root as prehensile, as in a “prehensile tail” of an animal—a tail that is capable of holding or grasping objects.
To comprehend something, then, is to seize it, grasp it, wield it toward some end. It is to intellectually control a concept in a largely utilitarian sense. No wonder, as it comes to us from the Latin-speaking Romans—those ancient and unceasing builders of roads and empires, always seizing new engineering concepts as tools…or people groups as vassals.
In contrast, understanding entered our vernacular from a very different clan and culture. Its germanic, Old English origin lies in a more tribal cultural scene, where physical proximity to an accessible, blood-relative “king” (from the root kin, as in kinfolk or akin) was central to well-being.
The historical sense of the word was a bit complex, a little tricky to describe, but here goes an attempt: to understand is to…well…“stand under”.
Far from the active, technical, manipulable, outcome-oriented nature of comprehension, to enter into understanding is to step under a covering, to trust something above, to place oneself beneath a narrative, a proposition…a relationship. It is to give up grasping and begin restfully receiving. It is, ultimately, “to be close to”.
It is why living as a son reveals to us that understanding—not comprehension—is more valuable than silver and gold.
And in that, we begin to see that even when we are confused, we can experience the clarity of covering. Even when the situation is dire and out of our control, we can see the big picture and experience peace. Even when we don’t comprehend the circumstances, we can understand the purpose.
We begin to trust, more and more, that we are indeed sons of a good Father, and—no matter what incomprehensible instance we find ourself in—we can come under his covering; we can sit in the shelter of his shade.
And when we are tempted to stand under the accusations that flood us, or the negative narratives and self-condemning story arcs we construct over our lives, we need only look to examples of other sons—we need only look to the Son—to be covered by the truth that makes us free.
Do you understand?
“By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established…” Proverbs 24:3