The Schooling Of The Soul

by Bishop Dr Robert Solomon

I do feel a special affinity with teachers for various reasons. Being a pastor and a bishop, I feel that teaching is a primary task of pastors and teachers. We are basically teachers and preachers of the Word. And so I do understand what it means to be a teacher, what it feels to be a teacher.

A Wonderful Tradition in Christianity

Teaching is a great vocation because we read in the Bible that God Himself is a teacher. In Job 36: 22, Elihu declares: “God is exalted in power. Who is a teacher like Him?” In Matthew 23:10, we read that Christ is also a teacher. In fact, He is called “The Teacher” in the Gospels. In John 14:26 and Luke 12:12, we read that the Holy Spirit is also a teacher because He teaches us and leads us into all truth. It is amazing how the Triune God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) is clearly described and identified as a teacher. This is certainly one profession where you can say: “We are in a very godly profession!” because we find that God Himself is a teacher. This is something we want to remember as we read Scripture.

Teaching is a wonderful ministry. It is something that is very close to God’s heart because He Himself is a teacher. In the history of the mission of the Church, it has been a mission of teaching. In Deuteronomy 6, you will notice that there is a great heritage and history of teaching. In this passage, Moses reminds the people of Israel, after God had delivered them from slavery and before they were going to the Promised Land: “These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.” Moses himself was not only a prophet but also a teacher. He was commanded by God to teach the people of Israel all the important things that they needed for this journey and for life in the Promised Land.

Having said that, Moses instructs the leaders to teach their children and their children’s children. I think this is important. The whole of Israel’s spiritual life depended on this important task of teaching – one generation passing on the faith to the next generation through the ministry of teaching. We are to teach the children how to love God with all their hearts, with all their souls.

Notice the methods employed in teaching these truths. We read on in verse 8, “Tie them as symbols on your hands, bind them on your foreheads, write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” And before that, in verse 7, Moses says, “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up”. Perhaps in this method of teaching, you already see a sort of developmental theory of how you teach different groups of children. There is a group of children who are best taught by impressing them – they are impressed easily and they look for models (and I am referring to very young children). They basically catch what is being shown, what has been modelled. So impress them.

The second method is talking with them when you sit at home or when you walk along the road. There comes another stage in the children’s development when besides impressing, it is more important to sit down and talk, to discuss, to reason out with them, and that is in reference to the older child. Then, there comes a time in verse 8 where impressions and discussions may not be so important – it is reminding that becomes critical. Teenagers do not like to be lectured; they do not like to be told what to do. But if we have laid the groundwork, then we can remind them. We can say: “Remember this or remember that”. So this is the reminding ministry – “tie them as symbols on your hands, bind them on your foreheads, write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates”. So it is very interesting how thorough Moses’ instructions are to the people of Israel.

In the New Testament, we find that Jesus too, when He started His ministry, says that He has been sent “to preach and to teach”. In fact, if you do a word search for “teach” or “teacher” in the Bible, there are two places where the word appears most. One is in the Wisdom Writings and the other, the Gospels. It is amazing that Jesus, in the description of His life and ministry, emphasised the aspect of teaching so much. Jesus Himself is often addressed as “The Teacher” or “The Rabbi”, the One who teaches Israel.

After His death and resurrection, before He ascended to heaven, He instructed His disciples to make other disciples, to go out to all the nations, make disciples, by baptising them and teaching them. Notice again the emphasis on teaching. Their mission is to go to the nations, to baptise them and to teach them all that Christ has commanded them to do. And so again, we find that teaching has become very important in the Gospels. It is central in Christ’s mission. Christian education has been greatly emphasised all through history because of this rich Biblical heritage of teaching, which is so central in the very life of the community and mission of the church as we hear from Christ our Lord Himself.

As teachers, you have a great mission. You have to carry forward this grand endeavour of educating the young and you are part of a mission that has lasted centuries and will move on to the future with greater challenges. Teaching is an important aspect of the mission of the Church, therefore you are an important part of it. That is really my first point - that there is a great tradition of teaching that starts in the Bible. In the mission of the Church, teaching has always been in the forefront, important as it is. The baton has been passed to your hands, because as teachers in schools, in the business of educating the young, you are part of this great heritage and great Biblical tradition, mission, and history. You are part of all of this as you continue in this wonderful vocation.

Holistic Teaching

My second point is that it must not be forgotten that teaching is primarily the teaching of the soul. Today, unfortunately, we have reduced teaching to the mere peddling of information. It is very unhelpful if we merely peddle information. In the age of information, I think the pressure is to just pass on facts and you may be familiar with the saying, “where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge and where is the knowledge we have lost in the facts”. It is something we need to remember.

Teaching has to be holistic. We are not only passing on facts but we are passing on knowledge. Knowledge is processed information; it comes with experience. Wisdom is processed knowledge; it is lived out knowledge. So wisdom is something that has to be passed on besides knowledge and facts. Holistic teaching or education is a particularly Christian emphasis. It has to do with our understanding of God’s creation and the demands of Christian discipleship and maturity. The teaching of the soul is very important in the ministry of teaching. If you can somehow, while you are also passing on facts, instruct not only the mind but also the heart and the soul, then I think you have covered what it means to be a holistic teacher.

Teaching all the more needs to recover the word “soul” because it is not just teaching of facts but it is the teaching of the soul of the children who have been sent to us and entrusted to us. I want to quote a 19th century art critic and thinker, John Ruskin, who said: “Education is the leading of human souls to what is best and making what is best out of that”.

John Wesley preached a sermon entitled “On the Education of Children”, which is a wonderful sermon for pastors, parents and especially, teachers to read. In that sermon, he quotes from the book “Called to the Devout Life” by one of his favourite writers, William Law. He quotes: “The disorders of our rational nature have introduced the necessity of education and tutors. The only end of education is to restore our rational nature to its proper state, and is it not reasonable to suppose that a Christian education should have no other end but to teach how to think, to judge, and to act according to the strictest rules of Christianity.”

Of course, it is difficult to use this definition in your secular schools, even in Christian schools, but you know what it means. The idea here is that we must remember the human condition, if we are to understand the process of teaching. This is very important because Wesley, in his sermon, said: “The purpose of education is to strengthen what is right in our nature and remove all diseases.” That is interesting. What has teaching got to do with diseases? That is the job of doctors, isn’t it? Are teachers doctors? My theory is that teaching is actually a healing art. That teaching is therapeutic. Teaching is transformational. That is something that maybe we need to recover because Wesley looks at it from that perspective.

It is clear that Wesley thought in terms of diseases of the soul, which required healing through conversion and through education. Wesley had a therapeutic perspective on the Christian life, on the human condition. We are not only suffering from guilt because we have sinned against God by breaking His laws, but we also suffer from a disease called “sin”, which needs to be healed and removed from our lives. That is why Wesley emphasised not only justification, which takes care of our guilt, but also sanctification, which takes care of the disease. Lawyers would immediately understand “justification”. It has to do with “guilty or not guilty”. But doctors would understand “sanctification” – “sick or not sick”.

And so Wesley brought both ideas together – he said, yes, we need to think like lawyers and ask the question “Guilty or not guilty?” but we also need to ask questions doctors would ask and say, “Sick or not sick?” And so Wesley said, there is a sickness of the soul that needs to be dealt with. Conversion and education are the means through which God takes care of this particular problem. And Wesley actually identified six particular diseases of the soul, which needed the healing touch of education:

First, atheism is a disease of the soul; you can have someone come to church and still live like a practical atheist, he makes all decisions, responds to crises, prioritises things in his life, and spends his money - as if there is no God.

Second, pride is a disease of the soul. It is so much a part of the human condition. Even when we are having religious experiences, and we are following Christ, pride creeps in. Definitely it is very subversive in our Christian lives.

The third disease is the love of the world. There is an attraction to ungodliness and worldliness. The fourth disease is anger, and the fifth disease is deviation from the truth. And the sixth, the last one, is injustice.

And so, Wesley says, “the grand end of education is to cure them. Not to increase, not to feed any of these diseases, but to heal them.” And I think that is an important perspective that perhaps, you can take with you and think about and see that your task and role is to be feeders of the soul. That teaching is the healing of the soul.

Watching Your Own Soul

My third point is watching your own soul. Or to put it another way, you cannot teach another soul unless you teach with the soul. You must take care of your own soul if you are to do this – if you are to fulfill God’s standards of teaching. Paul, in Romans 2: 21, asked the Jews who mistakenly saw themselves as privileged: “You who teach others, do you not teach yourself?” So, we must remember that the best teachers are also the best students, the best learners who continue to be humbly taught by God and by other godly people, so that they too can teach others. Teachers are not excused from learning because they too are students.

Notice in Deuteronomy 6:6, Moses says: “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts” – you see, before the impressing, before the discussions, before the reminders, before the process of teaching begins, Moses says these things must be upon your hearts first before you can teach effectively. We are not like waiters who serve food; we are like nursing mothers – a wonderful illustration which Paul uses.

In 1 Thessalonians 2 – a pastor, a teacher is like a nursing mother who takes the difficult-to-digest food first; it goes to her system first and her system after experiencing it and processing it, turns it into digestible food fit for the infant. There is a personal involvement in teaching. Whatever we teach must go through us first, then it has the power. So we are not servers, we are not employed waiters who dish out information and wisdom and knowledge. We are more personally like a nursing mother. In that sense, much more intimately involved in the process of teaching and education. We must remember that it must first of all be upon our own heart. Truth – the kind that touches and transforms souls – cannot be passed on second-hand. So, it has to touch our own lives.

What does it mean then, to watch your soul? It really means to care for the core parts of your life that give you identity and meaning. It has to do with relationships, values, love, God. These are the things that have to do with the soul. I think the problem is that in our modern busyness, it is easy to neglect the core of our lives because we are pressured to take care of the circumference of our lives. We forget the core and there is a meltdown. The soul can be drained out of one’s life. That is where Christian disciplines still come in. The way that we can take care of our souls is often through the Christian disciplines we have often neglected in our lives, for example, Scripture reading, reading the Bible, prayer - finding time to pray, finding time to reflect on what we observe, what we read and what we experience, worship and fasting.

Aim for a thriving soul. We are living very hurried lives today, rushing from one place to another. Even if you consciously try to slow down, it is difficult if you are driving on the fast lane. If you slow down, someone will honk at you and you create an accident. So you have to flow with the fast lane, as it were. Sometimes, it is difficult to change lanes because it can cause an accident too. And what if there is not just one fast lane but there are four other lanes? Life becomes very terrifying, isn’t it? The only way is to crash into a bush and that is the end, and some people do that, unfortunately.

But in the age of life in the fast lane – how can we as Christians watch our souls? I think this is important. In my own life, I try to find times to be alone – solitude is very important. We live in crowds and in crowded places. Sometimes in solitude, we find that a lot of the time, we are looking for attention, applause and affirmation from people. It is in the times of solitude that God is allowed to speak in our hearts; we hear His voice.

The other thing is fasting from speech. We teachers by nature are always talking – we are trained to talk and we develop all these throat problems. Maybe, this is our occupational hazard and perhaps what is therapeutic for us, what transforms us, is to fast from speech from time to time. We will discover many things – how God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness – when we do things like that.

The third thing is fasting from activities. You fast from running around in a frenzy. And you book yourself a few days where you have nothing else to do – no agenda, no meetings, switch off your handphones, do not carry your laptops, throw away your PDAs. You just fast from activities. You learn to be still in the presence of God. I believe that these are important disciplines that we need to keep so that God can continue to work on our souls so that our souls can continue to thrive. I think we tend to specialise in the outer world but not the inner world.

I believe that we need to touch base with our inner lives from time to time. That is where God is at work too. When we moved to a brand new office, the first thing I told my staff was, “This is our workplace. We come here by car or by bus. We work here. But you know something? God also works here. This is also God’s workplace. And so, to realise that God is at work in our lives too, in our hearts.

I encourage you to remember this truth. God wants to make you a teacher with a soul, with a Christian soul, and then you will have power in your ministry of teaching, because you will then be able to impart truth. You will then be able to teach other souls, you will be an educator of the soul, a healer of the soul, because you are a teacher of the soul.

The difference between teaching as mere processing of information and teaching as the schooling of the soul perhaps is well articulated by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats. He says: “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” Imagine that. May that be your inspiration. You are not just filling pails; you are lighting fires in people’s souls. That is a wonderful ministry – the ministry of teaching.

Let me conclude with this statement - Teaching is a mission. The foundation of education is the schooling of the soul. The schooling of the soul will fail without teachers who can teach with the soul. That is my thesis, my few points that I want to share with you today. Your grand endeavour, as teachers, as Christian teachers, is to light the fires of the souls of your young students. I pray that God will bless you and I want to end with a Scripture verse, a part of Moses’ song, from Deuteronomy 32:2: “Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.”

May this be your theme in your life as a teacher. What a wonderful thing to say about teaching! May your teaching be like abundant rain on tender plants.

This message was given at the 1st Asian Christian Teachers’ Conference jointly organised by the Teachers’ Christian Fellowship (Singapore and Malaysia) and the Girls’ Brigade Singapore on 28 November 2003.