PerryDox – BeJustAChristian

PerryDox is a website containing Perry Hall’s documents.  I chose this title because I love paradoxes and puns, and PerryDox combined both, plus “dox” is computerese (if that is a word!) for documents.  Within this site you will discover serious study, silliness, and lots of scriptures.

Perry Hall was born in Louisville, KY too many years ago.  He has the God- approved and wife-sanctioned limit of one wife who has not done him in yet since they married in 1984.  Four children have interrupted this peaceful co-existence who constantly give him more material than they ever wished or imagined – two adopted, two the old-fashioned way.  His family is a picture of America – He is white, as is his wife and two birth children, but his adopted children are black.  Plus he has a sister born Korean.  Basically Perry and his family are American mutts and the face of America.

Since 1983 he has been learning from preaching that he does not know as much as he thought he did.  Perry received his B.A. from Western Kentucky University in History and Philosophy and started his Masters work in the Philosophy of Religion which might explain more about him than he likes.  Currently, he is preaching in Winston-Salem, NC after spending 15 years in Boca Raton, Florida.

My Thoughts:

Within the realms of academia and the highly educated, I cannot move or exist.  Simply put, I am not a scholar. In fact, much to my own dismay and the disdain of others, I am an odd mixture of childish wonder and amusement, with a splash and dash of intellectual curiosity and minimal respectability.

To be taken seriously in the intellectually wound world, one must have degrees and letters behind his name. Alas, I have more letters in my name than after it!  And as evidence of my easily amused mind, I say with great glee and a glint in my eye that I may not have a PhD, but I do have a PDH – my initials – Perry Dean Hall.

Having said that, I wish I had several degrees, and think education is wonderful.  I respect any and all who have accomplished what is difficult to do. Education takes discipline, but is also takes time. Right now, I choose to spend my time with my children who need me as much as I need them.

Part of my mental conundrum is that I sometimes feel more at ease teaching children, being surrounded by their glowing faces, captivated by their openness, than I do teaching adults.  And yet, if I have confidence in God’s blessings, I am compelled to also admit that God’s grace lends itself to me influencing the adults, and hopefully those adults even more educated than me. “Out of the mouth of babes” sometimes includes adults.

First and foremost, I am a teacher. I equally enjoy teaching by words spoken or written, both to adults and children. But to be a good teacher, means I must utilize a gift of grace which is thinking which is part of free will. To teach only what others have taught is not thinking, but repeating.

Thinking like a child keeps my imagination inventive, and even adults tend to enjoy the experience…if they have at least a little bit of their own childhood still intact.

Thinking like an adult convinces me that if God has blessed me with an independent mind, then I must think beyond the limitations placed upon me by both my own limited education, and the requirements of others to be educated.

Ironically, could it be that a highly trained mind is too trained to see beyond its trained limitations and trainers?

Therefore, I humbly submit to you something simply and yet sublime – something each and every one of us has – my thoughts.