When I teach someone about solving a problem on their computer, I put their hands on the mouse and keyboard. “Try clicking on this,” I’ll suggest. Or show a hidden menu.
I figure that a combination of muscle memory and thinking it through will help them remember. And figure out how to solve their next problem on their own.
Someone asked me once (or probably many times), “Why didn’t Jesus just make things simple and tell us flat out what he meant?”
Let me answer this way.
A scholar tested Jesus. “What is the greatest commandment?”
Jesus gave him the stock answer of a student, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength, and all your mind.” Then he added, “And the second is just as important–you shall love your neighbor.”
The scholar not willing to let this lie, pursued, “Who is my neighbor?”
<pause>
Now Jesus could have given a list of types of people who would be a neighbor. That would have been like a rule or law.
People respond to laws in one of three ways: they forget them because there are so many; they ignore or flaunt rebellion to them; or, they become “rule followers” with little imagination or heart.
Jesus was in a battle with the “rule followers (Pharisees)” of his day.
<end pause>
Rather than speaking plainly, he answered with a story.
What do you remember? A list? Or, the story of the Good Samaritan?
2,000 years later, even people who are not Christian know the story of the Good Samaritan. Whether we follow it or not, that’s our problem. But we know exactly how we should act if our heart is in the right place with God.
Ancient people knew that if you teach by story or by questioning (the Socratic Method, it’s called) then people will understand because they’ve thought it out for themselves.
Faith Venture 
January 30, 2019 at 9:41 am |
Excellent!
Sent from my iPhone