Mar 8:21 How is it that you do not understand?
Mar 8:21 How is it that you do not understand?
Alternative: Why can't you put it all together?
There are several different Greek words translated into English as "to understand," and there are various words in Greek that mean different types of understanding. The word translated here as "understand" here is the means putting things together. Christ use the same term in Mar 8:17 (discussed here) to introduce this section.
This word perfectly captures what Christ's requires us to do in order to understand his words. We must put together concepts in a different way than we normally do. It is interesting that after two thousand years of Christian teaching, we still have to work to put together Christ's meaning. Christ says elsewhere (here) that understanding his words requires work. It is like a puzzle.
Why do we find it hard to put this puzzle together? This is Christ's question for us here. Part of the answer is that we are not taught to do the work of putting it together. Starting before Christ and continuing through to today, religious instruction teaches us a particular view of faith but it doesn't teach us to do the work of putting together concepts for ourselves. Indeed, too often in history, religious leaders have been discouraged people from doing the work.
Why do we need to work? Because without doing the work, we don't understand the material. Why do teachers have students work out problems themselves instead of just giving them the answers? We need to work through the process in order to learn how to put what we see in real life with the concepts that we have learned.
Christ wants the apostles to connect his words with what they are seeing in the real world. He has said all along that he speaks in symbols using parables for a reason. Their real world experiences with Christ multiplying bread should have taught them that having enough bread to eat is never the problem. So this could not have been the meaning behind Christ's words.
"Understand" is from suniêmi (syniemi) which means "to bring together" or "to set together." It is also a metaphor for "perceive," "hear," and "understand" as we would say that we "put it all together" when figuring something out.
