RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23649, 5 November 1938, Page 28

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

By Amplius

"The teacher's task Is to give the pupils a conception of God, as the Lord and Father of mankind, challenging them to a great and glorious sonship and brotherhood; and a conception of Jesus as the glorious comrade and brother Who claims from them an allegiance and a loyalty which shall be expressed in lives of glad and adventurous service."

Objectives of Christian Education Objective is a military term. It means the point aimed at, the point to be taken, and therfore this word is a better term than object, because that savours of the abstract. .We are dealing with the concrete all the time; Religious education means the unit in the church's army which is endeavouring to capture the young people for the Kingdom of God. This objective is a very wide one. It covers a number of objects. For example, the young people are always growing older, and so religious education has to follow them up. People are always young from the point of view of religious education; they are always potentials. All the experts seem to agree upon this—that all education is religious; that what they want to teach is to live rather than to make a living. That is religion—learning to live. The trouble begins as soon as you begin to ask, "What is personality? what is the characteristically human thmg about us? What really makes us, forms us, integrates us into-a personality? " Some educationists would say it is the power of mind over matter. But that power is one which we share to a very large extent with the animals. The ants and the bees have not much to learn from us in that direction. Then if education means knowledge and culture, the failure of these is very obvious. Knowledge and culture do not in themselves enable their possessors to live up to what they know. A doctor knows all about the dangers to health of indulgence of the appetites, but he is not thereby saved from the possibility of becoming a drunkard. Religious education comes in as the crown and completion of the whole business, without which our education must remain a feeble beating of the air. Knowledge and experience both point to the fact that the characteristically human thing about us is the capacity we :possess for communion with God. If education leaves out that side of our nature it is stopping short of the main thing that is going to complete the task. As long as that capacity remains ignored or latent, we remain sub-human, however highly cultivated we may otherwise be. . The aim of religious education as the completion of education is to train the individual to use that spiritual power which forms his unique title to call himself a human being. All education is religious, but the definite teaching of religion is necessary to crown education. Personality is not a thing given; it is a thing to be achieved. Our main objective includes some other things. Religious education aims at nothing less than life-changing. You do not accomplish such an object by a syllabus, however carefully graded and adjusted. Your aim first is to place your young people within the influence of Christian personalities, in order that by friendship they may learn faith. Among the practical objectives which should figure in religious education none should be more prominent than the teaching of the Bible. In the Bible you get in a unique way people who drew near to God and to whom God drew near—religious geniuses. Religious education looks also to the changing of society. Said one little child to another: "The Bible does not end with Timothy: it ends with Revolution." We are educating for revolution The church suffers perhaps more from hardened saints than from hardened sinners. Religious education should aim at revolution, not by violence, but by planting Christian individuals as quiet, unconscious centres of influence in society, who, wherever they go, will cause disturbances just by being there. If you want to measure the success of a Sunday school statistically you can measure it only by the number of scholars who go on to church membership. But I do not think that is final. Certainly, joining the church ought to follow naturally out of the knowledge of being born again into the Kingdom of God, but we must beware of elevating church membership into the primary place of importance. Do our best young people feel that joining the church is the natural and final state in our religious life? ■ Does not joining the church very often seem a step down from the saving experience of God in Christ .which has come to them? To them, I gather, the church often seems to be irrelevant to

the living reality of God that has been revealed. You will find in any group of church people those who would argue for war to this day. Dare we then deny that we seem just grossly irrelevant? The biggest task facing religious education is the gigantic task of a complete restatement in word, thought, and deed of what contsitutes Christianity.—The Rev. G. M. Nicol. M.A. Hand in Hand With Christ Business men know the value of partnerships. Politicians know the value of committees. They understand that to each of such associations different men bring different abilities —one an organising talent, another an understanding of conditions, another tact, another perseverance, another enthusiasm, another an insight into the future, and so on. In our religious life the importance of partnerships is especially great. sin"e we can have for our associate in all our religious work no less than the Son of God Himself, no less than the Holy Spirit of the Infinite. To realise this is to get to the heart of Christianity. Our Lord came down to earth to make this heavenly partnership possible for each of us, to remove the barriers of sin preventing His comradeship, and to become our Comrade in very truth.