Back in 1971, when experiments in educational theory were just becoming all the rage, my fellow seventh-graders and I were pulled out of what used to be called a “junior high” and packed off to a newly built experiment in education called Eisenhower Middle School. It was the latest thing: a school without walls, a great wheel-shaped building comprised of various “learning areas,” where education would miraculously unfold as the natural instinct for learning that swells in the breast of every child was watered and nourished by a whole panoply of audio-visual materials, media resources, and the free exchange of ideas among the different-aged children. The idea was that, left to ourselves, we young skulls full of mush naturally ached to unlock the mysteries of the Stamp Act, the Hanseatic League, pre-algebra, and sentence diagramming.
It turned out we didn’t even want to read Lord of the Flies, which our experiment in learning soon came to resemble. We ate weary teachers alive. We found the verdant wood surrounding the school grounds an excellent hideout for skipping class and learning to smoke. I strongly suspect we brought on the early death (from sheer exhaustion and frustration) of at least one of our aging math teachers. We wasted lots of time making “video productions” that basically consisted of shooting each other making faces.
Undoubtedly there were some students out at the end of the bell curve who, like Lisa Simpson, wanted to slake their burning thirst for knowledge. But for most of us, given the choice between actual education and what the young folk today call “hanging out with our friends,” the choice was easy: Cracking jokes with your buddies about how stupid everybody (especially your teacher) was turned out to be highly preferable to studying things we didn’t know about. Ignorance truly was bliss.
This experience more or less sums up the problem facing anybody who attempts to live out the first of the spiritual works of mercy, instruct the ignorant. For it turns out that ignorance and arrogance are virtually always twins. The less you know, the more likely you are to be cocky about it. And so C.S. Lewis remarks that the main task in attempting the project of education is not cutting down jungles but irrigating deserts. The person who really knows what he or she is talking about, who has seen a bit of the world and knows (either by personal experience or by a deep and appreciative reading) something of the beauties and horrors it offers—such can be stymied by the sheer bullish indifference of the ignoramus brimming with the insolence of youth. It can be a trial to coax such cold indifference out of its cramped world of video games and comic books to feel the slightest spark of interest in the heartbreaking vision of Pickett’s troops marching straight into a Union fusillade at Gettysburg, or the structure of reality that fascinated Einstein, or the musical architecture of Bach, or the compact brilliance of Dante, or the bottomless genius of Shakespeare—or the densely layered revelations of Scripture.
This correlation between ignorance and arrogance did not, of course, arise merely with that peculiarly arrogant form of ignorance called modern atheism. The curse of ignorance predates the modern ripple of atheism by centuries, and no culture or religious tradition has been exempt from it. It was into a deeply religious world that Christianity was born, and it was this world that Christ instructed. Humanly speaking, he did not inaugurate the practice of instructing the ignorant (though, of course, his Holy Spirit has been behind the whole project from the start). Again and again the Hebrew Scriptures called Israel to, as we moderns say, “get a clue.” Moses made it simple: Obedience to God’s law brings good results, and disobedience brings bad ones:
For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?” But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you this day, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land which you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you this day, that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land which you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice, and clinging to him; for that means life to you and length of days, that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them. (Deuteronomy 30:11–20)
This habit of the Hebraic tradition to append very clear threats and promises to the terms of the covenant irritates sophisticated moderns. But it’s not really such a riddle. As Flannery O’Connor pointed out, “To the hard of hearing, you shout.” So the prophets continually shout to Israel (and to us) that “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10), because Old Testament Israel was, as her history attests, deaf with the deafness of the muleheaded—the most profound kind of deafness. So Isaiah must open his great book with the cry of frustration:
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth;/for the LORD has spoken:
“Sons have I reared and brought up,/ but they have rebelled against me./ The ox knows its owner,/ and the ass its master’s crib;/ but Israel does not know,/ my people does not understand.” (Isaiah 1:2–3)
(This cry, by the way, is echoed in the tradition of Christian nativity iconography. There is always an ox and an ass pictured in the stable because the “welcome” given to Christ on his arrival on earth is foreshadowed in this passage—and still lived out today in our failure to welcome the poor.)
Isaiah’s pedagogy of the ignorant was emphatically directed at a people who were ignorant not because of lack of information but because of a willed and deliberate choice to be ignorant:
To whom then will you liken God,/ or what likeness compare with him?/ The idol! a workman casts it,/ and a goldsmith overlays it with gold,/ and casts for it silver chains./ He who is impoverished chooses for an offering/ wood that will not rot;/ he seeks out a skilful craftsman/ to set up an image that will not move./ Have you not known? Have you not heard?/ Has it not been told you from the beginning?/ Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? (Isaiah 40:18–21)
Indeed, one of the marks of the prophets was their curious note of gentleness toward the Gentiles, who, while often unbelievably brutal and blind, were cut more slack than Israel because their ignorance was due precisely to the fact that they had not enjoyed Israel’s privileges.
As Paul noted:
First Moses says, “I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation;/with a foolish nation I will make you angry.”
Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, “I have been found by those who did not seek me;/I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.”
But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” (Romans 10:19–21)
Some people are inclined to read this as though Paul were sucking up to the Gentiles and kicking Israel down the stairs. On the contrary, for Paul, Israel was the custodian of the “oracles of God” (Romans 3:2), while the Gentile pagans lived in stygian darkness. Following Jesus, Paul thought that “every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required” (Luke 12:48). Israel should not only have known better; she should have been a light to the Gentiles. Instead, she failed more seriously than the Gentiles, by rejecting her own Messiah. So God, in his wisdom, would make the foolish Gentiles the provocation for Israel to return to God. For Paul, the truth was that, in Christ, each depends on all. So while Israel was instructed and provoked to faith in Christ by the conversion of the Gentiles, the Gentiles received their instruction for their salvation from the oracles of Israel as fulfilled in Christ. As Isaiah says:
Arise, shine; for your light has come,/ and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you./ For behold, darkness shall cover the earth,/ and thick darkness the peoples;/ but the LORD will arise upon you,/ and his glory will be seen upon you./ And nations shall walk by your light,/ and kings in the brightness of your rising. (Isaiah 60:1–3)
Of which more next time.
(For more information, see my book THE WORK OF MERCY: BEING THE HANDS AND HEART OF CHRIST (available here, signed by me, or in Kindle format here, or as an audiobook here).
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One Response
What modern educators usually forget is discipline. Without it, there is little learning. When I went to high school in the 1960’s, it was to a school run by the LaSallian Christian Brothers. We had a Prefect of Discipline, Brother Walter, who resembled a NFL offensive tackle, with the disposition of a rattlesnake. We wore neckties and changed classes in silence. Troublemakers were not tolerated. High school boys need discipline and we got it. Learning took place.
You cannot learn in chaos. There must be order. In the Marine Corps, when we were learning to handle explosives, you paid attention and did what you were told. No fooling around. Yes, discipline is key.