Last week, I used the image of building a snowman to help
understand discipleship particularly in the family. A well formed snowman has 3
sections. Those sections relate to areas we need to grow as a Christian: Head
(Know about God), Heart (Love God), and Feet(Service for God). Today, I want to talk about what it means to
make sure the head of our snowman is well-formed. How do we grow in our
knowledge of God?
One of the things we do from time to time as a family is to
watch Jeopardy. We like to watch to see how many of the answers we know. We
know that we will not be good enough to make it on the show but we want to see
what we know. We all have our strong subjects where we might now over half of
the answers in that category. Rarely do we know all of them in a column but it
does happen. Now, when I do know the answer, quite often, I struggle to explain
why that is the right answer or how I know that answer.
We use a term for that: trivia – interesting facts that are
not well-known. Most of the time, they
are unknown because they are also trivial – of little worth or importance.
Knowing who all the wives of Zeus is not going to impact how I live. Knowing the
different countries that Paul visited on his second missionary journey is not
really going to help me deal with problems that I have at work. Completing the
song line: “Sing us a song, you’re the piano man” does not help when I have an
argument with my wife.
While Jeopardy focuses on the trivial, we can have knowledge
of more important things and weightier topics. For example, we know the other
people in our family in a much deeper way than just the brute facts about them.
Our hobbies are another place where we can find this more robust knowledge.
Both of my boys are into Marvel movies. When we go to one, they can talk about
the backstory about this character and how the movie was different from the
comics. I sit there and all I have to say is that I liked the movie. Their
knowledge of that topic is significant. They do not just know the facts.
So what is my point? What kind of knowledge should we have
of the Bible, God, The Gospel, and Theology in general: trivial or robust?
Okay, that was an easy question. Obviously, we should have as robust knowledge
of God that we can. Great. Which is easier to teach: trivial or robust
knowledge? Unfortunately, trivial knowledge is fact based and is right or
wrong. It is easy to teach, correct, reproof, and train basic facts into people
as opposed to making them think. I am not saying that we should not teach kids
the names of the books of the Bible. I am not saying that we should not
encourage Bible Memorization. I am not saying that we should not push our kids
to work on their Awana workbooks. What I am say is that those things do not
translate to a deeper walk with God. We need to get kids out from thinking just
because they know the facts, they know what they need to know. I was that kid.
I knew the right answers. I knew God broadly but never knew him deeply.
The key to getting kids to know God deeper is to ask better
questions. A webcast from Truth78 said it this way: we need to ask questions that
lead to Biblical conclusions that are linked to practical applications in their lives. We need
to “blow their minds” with deep questions or push back on their pat answers so that
they can see their “trivial” answers just won’t cut it in the real world. We
need to make sure that we are teaching for the right kind of knowledge to make
it easier to connect with the heart. How is that done? We will talk about it
next time.
