The Christian Church has often been hesitant in its advocation of education. Indeed, the very concept of Sunday School for children is only a little more than a hundred years old. Indoctrination rather than education was the modus operandi for most of our history...and, I would suggest, many still wish it were. Indoctrination is by no means an evil thing. There is an important and responsible role for it but it often differs from education by refusing to allow dissent.

An example:

"Billy, don't stand so close to the fire."

"Why?"

"Because it's dangerous."

"Why?"

"Because a spark may shoot out and burn you."

"Why?"

"Because the wood is dry and the fire is big?"

"Why?"

"Because I said so! Now get back!"

Indoctrination and education often exist side by side. There is a place for both but sometimes it is difficult to discern just exactly which is which.

I submit that for many Christians education is seen as a very dangerous thing indeed. Evidence of this fear is all around us. I could point to the reactionary forces currently at work in our political arena as one significant piece of evidence but I would rather look closer to home. I know a great many good and genuine people who call themselves Christians who haven't really studied the Bible or read a book on theology in their entire adult life. What we learned back in confirmation or Sunday School decades ago continues to be the extent of one's Biblical or theological scholarship. I would submit that if we ran our businesses like that we probably wouldn't be in business long. What other arena of our lives is so woefully neglected? We have made quantum leaps in the world of communication, science, engineering. In my lifetime, we have visited the moon, discovered a cure for polio, made computers accessible to common folk, and on and on and on and yet, for far too many of us, we remain in the dark ages of religion. So many of us claim to believe in God so why is it so few of us are really interested in getting to know God?

Fear.

It is because we are as afraid as a five year old on the first day of kindergarten. We are afraid of leaving the comfort and coziness of home. We are afraid of what we might discover in that big unknown world out there. So leave us alone, preacher, and continue to give us that old time religion. It was good enough for great great grandpa and it is good enough for me! That is essentially what the Pharisees sang to Jesus two thousand years ago. Jesus was radically re-interpreting scripture. He was generating a new kind of theology. He was advocating something out of the bondage of their ignorance and into the promised land of a whole new way of seeing things. We all remember what he got for his trouble.

Because the people were afraid.