Encyclopedia of the Abundant Life

Prologue

As I age, I see how it has turned out—the many things that I did right and the many things I could have done better. They are all evident to me now. I was raised in a very small community, where no one had graduated or even gone to college. My whole life was pretty much learned one step at a time. I did many things wrong that I could have avoided if I had understood the principles and truths that this book details.

I never took any course on how to write a book. I have just written down my experiences, the things I have learned, and the way I would have lived if I had known this earlier. This is not just a book to show what John Benedict thinks, but it is a book that could be used as a checklist in actions and attitudes and that will help people encounter life successfully.

Certainly, I did not live the way I am writing. I wish I had. In fact, I am surprised how well my life evolved based on my lack of knowledge and action on many fronts. I can only credit God for picking me up when I fell and for opening doors which revealed opportunities that I had not seen.

I realize that learning by listening is a great step forward even though learning by experience is the way to learn fast and well. The trouble with that approach is that when you walk too close to the edge of a cliff and you fall over, you don’t have a second chance.

What is life about? I bet you thought it would be easy! Life is anything but easy. Oh yes, we have easy moments that hopefully dominate most of our lives. But we all have crises, misunderstandings, failures, and wrong steps in our lives. Hopefully, you will not only use this book to know how you should live but also how you should train and teach your children. At the same time, remember that they will follow your example more than your advice.

Let’s walk through the major activities of our lives and review how we might perform those acts, starting with education. Learning is a good place to start because what we learn affects everything in our lives.

Education

Education immediately brings the idea of schools to mind. Not only in school, but everywhere and at all times, education should be a way of life. You can grow every day by seeing life as a learning experience and taking advantage of every book, conversation, and experience as a journey to knowledge. But we must think of life as a learning experience, not only entertainment and work. You can read books to learn about anything. At an early age, children should develop a perseverance for learning. The parent is greatly responsible for generating that concept in their children.

Reading, writing, and arithmetic sound trite, but they are truly the basics of learning. Reading opens up the whole world to you. Your choice of books will determine your growth, skills, and work success. But you must read with the intent of learning and not only for entertainment. This is similar to strength training. One must focus on the muscle being exercised and activate that muscle to grow and become strong. Fitness is work, and it requires discipline and perseverance. So too, education is work, and it requires discipline. There are millions of books about almost everything. The problem is not finding a book but making a choice of which book.

By reading those books, you gain knowledge far faster than through experience. You can read items that direct your path toward work or play, educate you on other people and how to interact with them, show you people’s achievements from thousands of years ago, and predict what will happen in the future. You can read about medical marvels and failures, wars and climate catastrophes, and some of the most famous men in history, such as Einstein, Strauss, Plato, Alexander the Great, Churchill, Robert E. Lee, Patton, and Nimitz. You can read about the battle that turned the war in the Pacific, the German failure in the USSR, which cost a horrendous loss of life, the dangers and failures of communism, and current issues that affect you and everyone else in this country.

Writing teaches you how to talk and express yourself. It also is a definitive way of communicating. Unlike speaking, when you write, you have the choice to change your words. You can focus and express yourself more precisely. You can communicate with thousands and even millions of people with one book. Writing is a permanent record, unlike hearing, which only stays with listeners for a short time. There are estimates that you remember only ten percent of what you hear. That varies a great deal depending on your interest, the ability of the speaker, and the topic. Writing can be permanent. It will be available when you need a record.

Speaking is dangerous. James 3:5–6 says, Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. Words sometimes slip out of our mouths through impulse or lack of care, which can be harmful. We can’t erase them. Once you’ve said it and people have heard it, the damage is done.

Arithmetic is often thought to be a painful part of learning, but that is only because of a lack of understanding. Arithmetic is a very useful tool to control your money, build houses, calculate distance, and keep track of speed. In the very early years, it was used for a variety of tasks, such as measuring the height of a tree from the ground. You even use math to cook recipes. There are untold applications of math in our daily lives.

Some people are numbers people. They can calculate math in their heads with no computers, pencils, or paper. For example, you enter an auditorium, and you wonder what the capacity is. You can count the people in one small section and then count the sections. A simple multiplication will then give you an estimate. For example, if you count one hundred people in one section, and there are fifteen sections, multiply one hundred by fifteen. The total then is an estimate of 1,500. In a more complicated situation that has eighty people and twelve sections, multiply eighty times ten, which is 800, and eighty times two, which is 160. Then add the two for an estimate of 960. This can all be done in your head with a little practice.

When shopping for food, comparing prices is a math problem. You need to compare prices since prices vary so much. Different-sized containers and different brands offer math problems. Although most labels now show cost per unit, the units are not always the same. Units that are used include metric, English, weight, and volume. This poses a math problem to compare metric with English measurements and volume with weight. Weight using ounces, lbs., grams, kilograms versus volume using cups, pints, quarts, gallons, cubic centimeters, liters, tablespoons, and teaspoons. Often volume is labeled as ounces. A large bottle of pop for example might say two liters, 67.6 ounces, and that translates to approximately two quarts. Key conversions for volume and weight are:

1 tablespoon = 3 teaspoon = 14.787 cubic centimeters

1 gallon = 4 quarts = 8 pints = 3.784 liters

1 liter = 1,000 milliliters = 1,000 cubic centimeters

1 pound = 16 ounces = .4536 kilograms = 453.6 grams

1 kilogram = 1,000 grams = 2.205 lbs.

Weight and volume of water:

1 gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds or 3.785 kilograms

1 liter of water weighs 1 kilogram, 1,000 grams or 2.205 lbs.

Back to measuring the height of a tree from the ground. In trigonometry, we know that the ratio of one leg of a triangle to another is .5 when the angle is sixty degrees. That enables us to simply walk away from the tree until, when looking at the top, the angle to the ground is sixty degrees. Then we multiply the distance we stand from the tree horizontally is half that of the height of the tree. So, if we walk twenty feet away from the tree to get that sixty-degree angle then the height of the tree is forty feet.

Driving is mostly a math problem. When will you arrive at your destination? Depends on speed, distance, and traffic. Only traffic does not include math. How soon do you have to apply your brakes for an upcoming red light? Do you have time to pass a car before you change to the left turn lane so you can exit? The list goes on and on.

As you see, math can be fun and there are a million ways to use it.

There are major differences in food prices, and one needs to use math to see what that difference is. Recipes offer the same challenge. Weight and volume or mixed. The metric and the English system are mixed.

Most sports require math. In football, it is first and ten minus the last gain. In basketball, a three pointer starts outside a marked distance from the basket. How much arch do you need to put on the shot? In hockey, you can only pass a certain line with the puck while your teammates are behind the line. Arithmetic will make you a better shopper, worker, leader, investor, parent, and even athlete. What else can do that?

Now that we are talking about reading, writing, and arithmetic, I would like to add health. Don’t you think it shows in this country a major missing link in education? Our education system ignores one of the most important issues in our life, health. The United States has the most expensive health system in the world, yet our longevity is one of the worst. If schools would teach nutrition, exercise, medication, and medical systems, I have no doubt that our country would improve in health dramatically. Knowledge is power. Most people learn about health when they go to the doctor, but that is only for one problem. Most health problems are related to taking care of your body, beginning with the proper food. How many young people or adults know about nutrition? They hear that meat is full of protein and that milk is a very healthy food, but there is much more to meat and milk. People know about vitamins, but who can say what they do for the body and what foods excel in them. Then you have potassium and dietary fiber, two of the most important nutrients in food. I suspect that ninety-eight percent of our population cannot even describe what they are and what foods have them. Let’s start a revolution. Promote schools teaching health.

Today’s focus is now on college. As many as seventy percent of all high school graduates attend college, some for a very short period. We have become too centered on college. True college can be a maturing process and knowledge feeder. Some very technical fields require college, but many educational courses do not help you grow as well or as fast as experience does. Nothing substitutes for experience. Many college graduates are totally unprepared for work. It is only when they get a job and enter the real world that they learn the details and systems of work, develop motivation to excel, and look forward to growth in this or an allied vocation. Often, their college education—with all the money and time that has been invested in it—has done little to prepare them for the