How Do We "Know" the Gospel? Toward a Christian Education

M. Todd Hall

A father teaching his daughter to ride a bike: an embodied education

[The incarnate Word] could never be learned if, at the same time, its meaning were not also grasped, and its meaning could not be grasped if it were not, also, incarnate in us.  This is the basic invitation that Christ made, and continues to make to us, that we come to know the truth of this message through practicing it, down to the most minute detail.…

To know the Gospels through seeking to practice them, within the limits imposed by my own finitude is … the best way I have of teaching them.  In this sense, only the practice of one who sees himself humbly as an eternal apprentice, a permanent learner of the Word, confers the authority, in the act of learning the Word, also to teach it.

-       Paulo Freire, “Know, Practice, and Teach the Gospels”

I recently read a story about a young man in high school who had been the target of severe (often physical) bullying. As is not uncommon anymore, the story had ended tragically with the victim taking his own life. The parents of the victim had, for years, spoken to the school district about the problem, but little had been done. In the wake of the tragedy (and no doubt in response to the very bad publicity), the school district had instituted a district-wide education program on the negative effects of bullying.

It seems to me that there are a few effective responses had I been the bully in this case—not least of which would have been the very practical “education” school administrators and my parents would have provided me upon finding out about my treatment of this other person. Sitting in a classroom hearing the “facts” and “statistics” (and even to some extent the “feelings”) involved would have been singularly ineffective, were they not included in a broader project meant to reform my behavior and, more deeply, my character.

“Education” has become our society’s solution to every problem. There is a kernel of truth in this idea, of course, but the education referred to, here, is a purely technical solution to what is essentially a human problem—that is, a dynamic, shifting problem that is far too complex for a technical fix. The problem of transforming someone’s behavior requires a holistic approach, and education must be much more than what has been practiced in the West since the Enlightenment.

This is often true of education in the church as well. The pragmatic culture around us, with its technical solutions to everything, is often blind to more humane questions and often ignores problems that don’t fit the narrative of technocratic mastery. This has become the oxygen in the cultural air that we Christians also breathe. As Christian educators, we should familiarize ourselves with ways in which we assume an anthropology and philosophy of education that may hinder our ability to facilitate transformation in the folks in our churches.

Modern?

For our purposes here, I’ll highlight two salient features of the “Modern” age on education:

1)    Progress:

It is difficult to pin down exactly when “Modernity” began, but many thinkers would place it around the so-called “Enlightenment” of the 18^th century. The seeds of Modernity can be seen at least as far back as the Reformation, and some have argued that the Italian Renaissance provides the soil out of which Modernity grew.

Regardless, though, one can see even in the title of the era of thought (“Modernity” is a self-given title) the idea of the progress of the human race. Darwinian theory was applied to thinking regarding human civilization, and earlier eras of thought were considered less advanced and even harmful for human flourishing.

Modernity corresponds neatly with the rise of the nation-state and its struggle against the Church’s authority. A part of the narrative of this myth of human progress, then, was the “throwing off” of the authority—found in traditions of thought—of, specifically, Christianity. Hence Christian thinking was marginalized as “unscientific,” and Christian experience as deep superstition. Both theology and religious experience were scapegoated responsible for the “religious” violence (which corresponds more closely to the rise of the modern nation-state than sectarian struggle) and ignorance of the “dark ages” prior to the “Enlightenment.”

Finally, then (the story went), mankind was able to stand on its own two feet, freed from traditions of the past to interact with the world and interpret it objectively. He could harness all of his rational abilities to master the world around him—think of the advent of antibiotics and the like—and secure his place in the universe in the midst of the terrifying winds of history.

In this environment, the ultimate human telos was envisioned as the autonomous individual exercising agency based on scientifically reasoned Truth, removed from superstition and tradition of the past.

2)    Technology as solution

Increasingly in Modernity, technology—applied science—was seen as the key to human flourishing. And while this certainly included what we usually envision as technology—everything from tractors to wristwatches to airplanes—it also included much more. Central to the ability of humans to control the world around them was the development of the technology of human control: bureaucracy, especially, but others drawn from the so-called human sciences of sociology, psychology, and education.

Technology, then—largely divorced from any moral and certainly religious reflection—came to be seen as a solution to much of humanity’s problems. Certainly one can see this in the development of, for instance, medical technology. But it is also evident in, for example, Weberian social theory’s attempt to replace human judgment with non-human technology (think: zero-tolerance policies) meant to provide standardization in bureaucratically controlled institutions. Human behavior could then be controlled through having the correct social infrastructure in place.

Modernity and Education

“What does all this have to do with education?” I can hear you asking! Well, though many thinkers have suggested we are in a “post-modern” world, as if we have moved beyond Modernity, the fact remains that these two elements of modernity are still operational in the way we view knowledge and the human person, and thus in the way we “do” education.

In this society—whether formal “Modernity” or now in “Postmodernity”—education has become instrumental, and a cog in the machine of social control. Rather than viewing education as a holistic endeavor, as a process in which a human being is formed toward a telos, a goal, contemporary society uses education merely as a tool to achieving social harmony (whether that includes believing the right things, or believing that whatever anyone believes is right for them). Insofar as it views the human person technically, as a machine that may be controlled through the proper application of technology, it deals (ineffectually, one might argue) with symptoms rather than disease. There is, I think, a genuine belief that if we as a society could just get the right social infrastructure in place and pass on the right information, we could solve the world’s problems.

A Christian Alternative

Christian education is not primarily technical. From its earliest expressions the church has encouraged education toward human transformation as a holistic endeavor—as a lifelong movement toward the de-centering of the self and the transformation of personal character (cf. Rom 12:2a). Christian thinkers have envisioned humans not as autonomous individuals, free of tradition and history (Modernity), nor as constantly in flux, re-creating themselves by free-choice agency moment-by-moment (Postmodernity). Rather, Christians (and Christ himself) understand humans to be the sum total of decisions they have made and actions they have taken. They are a product of, as Nietzsche himself (ironically) suggested, a “long obedience in the same direction.”

As such, we need to envision education in our churches (and in para-church organizations such as the Center for Christian Studies) with the goal of transformation rather than simple information. This will mean a recognition of the formative power of habits and practices, and especially their place in reinforcing the narrative and worldview of the culture around us (in the U.S., specifically our consumerist society). It will mean a consideration of ways that we teach and engage disciples in formative practices that specifically challenge the narrative of the society we’re living in with the vision of the gospel.

Imagine, for just one example, a study of Matthew tied with church members engaging in service at food pantries or the like during the week after studying through Jesus’ teachings on caring for the hungry and destitute in Matthew 25:31–46. This would then be followed by a debriefing over the next couple of Sunday meetings. This kind of holistic pedagogy will engage disciples in a multitude of ways and give their learning “legs” and “hands” in the real world, where faith meets discipleship.

In the process, we will come to know the gospel of Christ, not simply in word, but in truth—as Freire noted above, we will have experiential knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ first through obedience. We will learn the Word by doing it. If we do it correctly, we will instill in our students—and ourselves—the effective training habits to “run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

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