I blogged this back on March 25, 2004:

Reading [Ludwig Wittgenstein’s] Philosophical Grammar again…

As a child I had some morse code toys that I played with. I had the chart for dots and dashes and letters, but I never memorized my equations beyond “SOS.”

For years I assumed that proficient coders, those who still used ham radios, or the men and women of the past, must have memorized the chart so they could decode the signal.

But they didn’t need to decode it unless they never became proficient enough to be of any use on the radio. They understood it. The chart was long gone from their minds.

A football player can know the rules not only without thinking of how they look in the rulebook, but without any articulation at all. He simply acts accordingly.

Only the immature need graphs and algabraic equations. How many phonetical rules can I recite? Yet I read quite well.

And this needs to be brought to bear in discussions of faith, or discerning the body, or receiving by faith, etc.

Otherwise, we are going to speak a great deal of nonsense.

And, by the way, when I hear the SOS signal, I don’t decipher the letters individually. I don’t think of a chart. I simply understand it is a distress call.

We should want to trust Jesus in as direct a way.