The Struggle of Christian Education
One of my good friends is a High School teacher, and sent me this email. I asked for permission to post this and got the okay. It says a lot about the struggle of Christian education.
On the recent test I gave my high school students on our “kingdom of God” unit (introduction to biblical theology), some students did a great job summarizing the purpose of Israel in the OT. But here are some findings that make me bang my head against the desk:
- 70% of students said it was true that “One difference between the Old and New Testaments is that Israel had to obey in order to receive God’s grace, but Christians have grace first and then obedience.”
- 43% of students said God chose Israel because they were a holy nation. [contrast this with Deut. 9:4-5]
- 61% of students said that Gen. 3:15 (the protoevangelium) directly stated that God would come to redeem humanity in the form of a Messiah. [Gen. 3:15 actually says, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”]
- 61% thought that Israel becoming a kingdom with a human king was not God’s original purpose, that it was only because of sin. [contrast this with Deut. 17:14-20]
One student said that after creation, fall and flood, the rest of Genesis was about Israel’s exile in Egypt. This same student said that the primary message in Gen 1-2 about creation was that “God is the Messiah; he will save you if you repent. He has an amazing kingdom coming.” She said the purpose of Israel was that they “were the people who were chosen to spread Jesus’ name.”
In talking about the purpose of Israel, one student said God chose Israel because they lived where Eden originally was. Another said, “Because Jesus was a light to the world, God wanted Israel to do the same.”
Most of the students got the idea about the temple pointing back to Eden and up to God’s heavenly dwelling and how it was a place of God’s special presence. But one kid said, “God wanted a small area holy enough for His presence. That is why He wanted a temple” (missing the idea of spreading God’s special presence around the globe).
Finally, here are some of the kids’ comments about kingdom of God theology: a mix of amusing and insightful comments.
- “The idea of the Bible as a kingdom story put an interesting, new perspective on it. I found it very helpful in linking different parts together. It also gave me a new idea of Jesus as a supreme king, not just a personal Savior.”
- “I find it interesting to emphasize kingdom. It makes sense, quite a bit more than the other two extremes: saying God is super merciful and never punishes anyone, or saying if you put a toe out of line you’ll burn for all eternity. Even when not taken to these extremes, viewpoints are rarely fresh and interesting. Kingdom really is a large, overarching part of the Bible, and it combines mercy and wrath in an understandable way. It really helps put things in perspective.”
- “I personally did not like the whole kingdom thing, because it made more stuff to know and it was just really confusing, because I thought it was pointless. I think that when we learn about God’s kingdom we should just study it, not add any extra information. It gets people off track.”
- “I never really thought about the story of the Bible as that, a story. I didn’t know much about kingdom before. Now I have a better understanding of what our mission as the church is.”
- “I’ve learned some things about the Christian faith in this class that I didn’t know before. But for a lot of this, I disagree, mainly because I struggle in believing all this stuff.”
- “I had never thought of it this way before, but it was helpful to picture the kingdom being restored to a perfect land in the second coming.”
- “I think it is helpful because, yes, God did want a kingdom, but not helpful because we are getting too caught up with royalty and stuff.”
