Two 4th-grade students and their queries on Jesus make me proud of public education
When legislators and political activists talk trash about public schools, and they do that often now—as if the schools are intentionally tearing down students’ religious faith and promoting anarchy—it kindly gives me the headache, as we used to say out in the sticks.
Who do these critics think schoolteachers are — Bolshevists? At the church where I’m pastor, we’ve got a congregation full of current and retired teachers, all of them full of spiritual vinegar and zeal for the Lord. They carry their faith everywhere they go. They teach kids to read, write and think without turning them into heathens and commies.
OK, I’m climbing down off my soapbox now.
But what brought this to my mind, besides our latest session of the Kentucky legislature, was an email exchange I had recently with a 4th grade teacher in the Fayette County schools. She doesn’t attend my church, by the way.
She was working with her kids on a project in which the students formulate questions about some subject they’re personally interested in. Then they research the answers.
A couple of young men in her class, whose parents aren’t very religious, wanted to understand the life of Jesus. The teacher was familiar with my newspaper columns, and asked if I’d answer via email three questions the boys had posed.
I agreed. She forwarded me their questions, and I was impressed. What the boys had asked cut to the heart of the New Testament’s gospel stories (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and revealed a surprising maturity for kids so young.
Here are their questions, along with my answers:
What did people think about Jesus when he was alive? Did they think he was crazy?
Answer: In some ways, people thought about Jesus in the ways we still think today about those in the public eye. Their opinions were mixed. Some people loved him, some people hated him and some people thought he was nuts. Some people started in one camp and went to the other. For instance, Judas started as a disciple but ended up betraying Jesus to those who wanted to kill him. Jesus’ own family seemed to think he might be crazy—he’d gotten the idea he was the son of God Almighty! But later, two of his brothers became leaders in the church Jesus started. By then, their views of him clearly had changed for the better.
2. Why was Jesus so nice when people were mean to him?
Answer: He believed the world had been corrupted by violence, hatred and selfishness. God had created the world as a beautiful, peaceful place for everyone. Jesus wanted us to change our minds and start thinking and acting in the ways God does. He wanted us to replace violence with peacemaking, hatred with love and selfishness with generosity toward everybody—even our enemies.
3. What made people like and follow him? What were the most important things he did? What convinced people to believe him?
Answer: People liked him for his kindness and because he was a great teacher. He also performed many miracles, which he said were God’s way of proving that what Jesus said was true. The most important thing he did, though, was that he rose from the dead and people saw him alive even after he’d been buried. This turned a lot of people into believers.
I’ve been thinking about the teacher who contacted me and the two boys in her class. It seems to me this teacher’s approach is education as it ought to be, education that doesn’t seek to indoctrinate kids so much as to stimulate them to think for themselves about things that matter to them. And it trains them to pursue answers.
It’s education that’s brave. It trusts growing minds to eventually find their path. Maybe I’m partial here; if so, that’s because this is exactly the path I took on my own, 45 years ago now. It’s the path that eventually led me to faith in the Lord and even to the pulpit.
Most kids won’t end up there, of course. They might not be interested in the same questions I was. They might care more about medieval history or solar energy or macramé. That’s fine. Not everybody is supposed to be a preacher—thank God.
But this type of intellectual quest leads students to a measure of enlightenment in whatever their interest might be. It makes me proud of public education.
Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling, Ky. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.