Got a question? Email me. I don’t have all the answers; God does. (If you want someone who thinks they’re infallible, I can point you to those blogs.) So as usual, all errors are mine.
Question. I teach an adult Sunday school class at my church. The books we use are awful. They regularly try to force the scriptures to go along with the subject that they want to talk about. Once, I pointed out an error and was rebuked for deliberately looking for problems. Why are we so often nonchalant about things in church that we would never tolerate in secular education?
Reply. Having worked in secular education, I have to disagree. These things do get tolerated. You should see some of the crap they put in our history books. I’ve used those situations as teachable moments: “Okay kids, today I’m going to discuss five things your book got wrong.” Students actually love it when I do that.
But in secular education, for the most part, teachers have been trained to be teachers. They went to college, then spent a year or more in graduate school, learning how to teach and getting the credentials to do it professionally.
In Christian education, this sort of training is not so common. Even when your pastors have seminary degrees in pastoral care or bible, very few were ever required to take a class on educational psychology. They don’t really know how to assess whether the people they teach are actually learning a thing. Nor do they even think they need any such class. They figure if they said anything people need to remember, the Holy Spirit will remind them of it when necessary. So it’s okay if they’re rotten teachers: God makes up for our weaknesses. Plus, we’re people under grace.
Now, that’s the pastors. They don’t always teach the classes. Laymen, or teachers like me, do. And Christians tend to teach—myself included—that if you want to lead a Christian class or bible study, go right ahead. Your enthusiasm, and the Spirit’s leading, qualifies us to do it. Now, does it mean we’re gonna do a good job as teachers? No. But ideally, the Holy Spirit is supposed to take over, and direct, our groups—and we’re supposed to let him do so, and pay attention.
Problem is, we don’t always do that. We have axes to grind. We suffer from pride; we think we know it all. It’s a boost to the ego when people ask us questions. “Wow, I must be wise, ’cause people value my opinion!” After a while, we start to believe it, then start a blog so we can show off our wisdom… Wait, this sounds familiar.
Or we take the other extreme, and try too hard to defend sacred things. We figure there are certain topics, certain beliefs, certain dogmas, which are too holy to question. Or even discuss. Fr’instance, say someone in our Christian classes wants to know how we’re so sure God exists. Some of us will take that question seriously, as we should. Others will respond with the attitude of, “If you doubt God, what’re you even doing here?” and shut the discussion down, lest it lead anyone astray. And they do this with any questions about our doubts: Doubts about salvation, doubts about forgiveness, doubts about the bible, doubts about God’s goodness. Doubt is healthy—it means your brain is working!—but they think the proper response to doubt is spiritual warfare, and to fight it with apologetics instead of dealing with it.
But once again: These problems aren’t just found among Christians. They’re found in secular education too. Some teachers are know-it-alls. Others have sacred cows, and don’t want to take questions about them: Just accept their authority, and shut up.
Easier to dole out facts.
I admit, sometimes I don’t feel like taking questions. Particularly when they’re dumb. I taught junior high science one year, and the subject was astronomy, and certain kids had tons of questions about space aliens. It’s way easier to tell them to be quiet, than deal with the underlying problems in their thinking.
It’s way easier to tell our students to memorize answers, instead of teaching them to think their way to the solution to the problem. (That’s why Americans suck at mathematics: It’s the only class where critical thinking is necessary, and if they’re not getting any such thing in any other class, it’s “too hard.”) It’s way easier to tell Christians, “Memorize the catechism,” or “These are our doctrines; we don’t debate them,” than actually struggle with the scriptures.
Memorization is only a step in the learning process. It’s meant to be the first step. It’s hardly the last. But it’s as far as many Christians are willing to go, and no further. And memorization challenges no one: Here’s a fact, and there’s no debate about whether it’s true. It just is. Regurgitate it when called upon.
But teachers, Christian or not, often make our students memorize complicated “facts” which actually aren’t true. And if the students aren’t permitted to question them, we’re never gonna catch our mistakes, the students are never gonna deal with their doubts (and stifle them instead), and our education will be filled with error. Our Christianity will be filled with error. That’s just unacceptable.
But that’s why there are a lot of poorly-written Christian books and lesson plans. After generations of unchallenged, unchallenging teaching, it’s the inevitable result. Paul called it, centuries ago.
Time will come when people won’t put up with solid teaching. Instead, those with this infection will collect teachers to listen to which suit their own prejudices, turn away from listening to truth, and chase after fabrications.
—Paul,
When our churches’ “education” never goes past memorization-level, it won’t ever get deep. People will never question, and only object when someone brings up an idea that challenges their personal values. Which just goes to show how far we’ve slid.
Jesus regularly challenged people’s personal values: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, his family, his closest students. But we assume we’re not challenged the same way, because all those folks in the bible were blind, yet we somehow see. We assume we have the Holy Spirit, and they didn’t. The reality is we avoid Jesus’s challenges just as much as they did.
Challenges are risky. Most Christians do not want their Statements of Faith challenged. (Usually ’cause they’re not up to the challenge!) They can’t take questions, for they have no answers; or their answers are too simplistic and fall apart easily. But everything, EVERYTHING, should be up for discussion. God isn’t so weak that he’ll fall apart under scrutiny. Entirely the opposite.