Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold,
    but the Lord tests the heart.

• Proverbs 17:3

You know, brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not without results.  We had previously suffered and been treated outrageously in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition.  For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you.  On the contrary, we speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.  We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts.

• 1 Thessalonians 2:1-4

Oh, if the Apostle’s words were true about my motives, that God was testing my heart …

In early July 2020, I started three morning weekly posts: a Tuesday morning “Heavy Topics” where I mostly find issues with philosophers, a Thursday Bible study, presently working through the book of James, but I started with 1 Timothy, and a Saturday morning quiz.  Of these three, I made the statement in an introduction post that the quizzes would continue whether they got a lot of views and likes or not.

My idea was that there are a lot of churches that are not having Sunday school due to the COVID-19 protocols.  If I could provide a resource for an additional Bible study, that would be helpful, but the Saturday morning quizzes could be used in a variety of ways.  They could test the members of a Sunday school class.  Groups could get together, social distanced, and see who could complete the quiz the quickest, any number of ways to handle it, but if it only led to people looking up the answers, shaking the dust off their Bible, that would be wonderful.

But it does something for me.  When I first started in training, I had been a maintenance engineer.  If something broke and needed to be redesigned, I sketched up some drawings, but I was mostly in charge of contract management and troubleshooting.  Then the maintenance superintendent wanted me to head the training department.  It did not work out that way, but I was the straw boss for a long time, and then I was transferred, but I always had those people who relied on me giving them the right information and I had to make sure they understood.

I was in charge of analysis, design, and development of most of the training for the department.  In design, you determine what the trainee must be able to do to perform the work in the field.  This became the learning objectives.  If we did not develop a course that would teach those objectives and test the trainees to ensure the objectives were met, then we did not do our job right.  And the supervisors relied on me to not make it easy.  At my first assignment, the trainees were maintaining nuclear reactors.  They had to know it.  I had gone to a couple of test writing classes, and I got good at writing tests and quizzes.  But then I bounced from one job to another, and I rarely had a chance to write tests for the knowledge portion of courses.

I missed that in two ways.  My love of industrial training was watching the trainees get better knowledge and skill and even get promoted based on their knowledge.  For the last twenty years of my career in training, I was the consultant that taught the class and then left town before the people used their newfound knowledge.  Hardly any job satisfaction at all.  Only once did they want an examination, an examination that the mill superintendent took and flunked.  But the people that he supervised all passed; after all, they needed to know it.  My tests were never easy, and you had to pay close attention to make a perfect score.  It was all there, if you wanted it.

So, when you take any of the quizzes, there may be some very easy questions and some very hard questions.  Sometimes, I dream up a diabolical question and then a Voice in my head says, “Come on now!  If you had not done the research, would you have known that obscure fact?”  So, I could make the quizzes harder.  I hope I have made some of the questions hard enough that you had to look up the answer.

But of all my posts each week, the quiz is the hardest to write, but it brings me back to a time when I loved what I did for a living.  I started using quizzes that were already written, just modifying them, and in some cases correcting them.  But now, dreaming up the concept of the quiz is fun.  Researching is a Joy.  Crafting the questions is my passion.  And the videos as rewards may take up the most time, but it is like playing instead or working.

As I said before the first quiz ever came out, that I would keep them going, but I just wanted everyone to know that these quizzes, even the silly ones, bring me Joy beyond measure.  And sometimes, the more diabolical, all the better.  And I hope you have gotten something out of them too.

Here is a LINK to the page that links to the special posts and the quizzes are at the bottom of the page.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.