Do you teach? A school Scripture class? A youth group, a Sunday school class, a Bible study group? What about your own kids? How do you effectively communicate to them from scripture? Leviticus shows us how God communicated to the Israelites through visceral experiences and repeated rituals. Perhaps noticing the way God communicated with his children can help with the way we teach our children today.
Amazingly where I live in Australia we are able to teach a Scripture class in many of our schools, but it’s always uncertain how long the schools or the government will continue to allow us to do this. This uncertainty and the fact that Scripture classes have already been banned in some areas is what inspired me to write this article.
Throughout history governments have made rules to stop people talking about God. Whether it’s crucifying a man for claiming to be God, or trying to stop the teaching of Scripture in schools, it’s not a new phenomenon. And throughout history, people have come up with creative ways of getting around the rules.
In 1606, around the time that Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, the English Parliament made a law they called ‘The Act to Restrain Abuses of Players’. Basically it banned actors from saying the name God or Jesus on stage, with the threat of a 10 pound fine. Shakespeare wasn’t going to let this stop him, so instead of using the name ‘God’ he began to use other names like Jupiter or Jove as a sneaky way to get around the rules.
Perhaps a slightly less sneaky but equally clever example is C. S. Lewis. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is a story that millions of children and adults have read, and re-read. The book is basically the Gospel, and we all know that Aslan is a Jesus figure, but all this is cleverly communicated through story. Lewis himself says that in storytelling, suggestion is more effective than statement
In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the things you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us the thing is “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers “Please, will you do my job for me.”
Does Lewis’s advice on writing have any wisdom for how we ‘teach’ Scripture? Lewis is basically saying that showing is better than telling. Perhaps a good question to ask ourselves as we think about teaching Scripture in schools, Sunday school, youth groups or at home is ‘how can we show kids without telling them?’
Scripture itself is written mostly as ‘story’ or narrative. Scripture could have told us that David would be a good king and that Saul wasn’t a very good one. But instead we read a story about David who says he has rescued a sheep from the mouth of a lion with his bare hands. We then remember a few chapters earlier where we read about Saul who can’t even protect donkeys, because they have wandered off and he can’t find them.
This same David says “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our sins from us”.
How does David know this? Was he told? No, he was shown. He saw it happen every year! We can read about it ourselves in the part of Scripture the Jews call Torah. Torah means teaching, and one of the books in Torah is Leviticus. Let me share a story, or a ‘teaching’ from Leviticus.
Once a year, the entire Israelite nation would gather in front of the ‘Tent of Meeting’. They were waiting in anticipation for the high priest who had disappeared inside the tent. After a while the high priest would emerge, and place both hands on a goat and he would confess out loud all the sins, and the failures and the impurity of the entire nation of Israel and place the whole lot onto the head of the poor goat. Then a man would come, and lead the goat away, outside the camp and into the wilderness.
I can imagine David standing there hearing all his sins and failures being heaped on top of this goat. He watches as the man leads this goat, carrying all his sins and failures, and they slowly walk away into the distance. He watches the goat getting smaller and smaller as it is led further and further away until finally they’re lost from sight and his sin is gone. He takes a long deep breath. He feels a little bit lighter. Like a weight that he had been carrying all year has been removed.
I don’t know how many ancient Israelites could read. But I imagine it wasn’t that many. They couldn’t open a book and read about how God takes away their sin. They weren’t ‘told’ by a teacher in a classroom. No, they learned through experience. God gave them an annual visceral teaching experience.
Each offering and sacrifice described in Leviticus was there to teach the ancient Israelites something different. Take the ritual described in Leviticus 14. I won’t tell you what it’s called or what it does. I’ll see if I can show you rather than tell you. (A couple of things that may be helpful to know, hyssop is used for cleansing. Blood represents ‘life’ and is applied to cleanse and purify. Running water (from a stream or a spring, not from a well) was literally called ‘living water’.)
The high priest has arrived. He is making his inspection; good news, it has not spread! The priest announces his verdict; “clean!”. Now the priest begins the ritual. He takes two birds, some cedar wood, a piece of scarlet thread, and a branch of hyssop. Next he takes a bowl containing ‘living water’. He kills one of the birds over the bowl and collects the bird’s lifeblood in the bowl. Next he dips into the lifeblood and living water mixture, the cedar wood, the hyssop, the scarlet thread and the live bird. Using these implements he sprinkles around the blood and water mixture. The live bird is then released, to fly away outside the city over an open field.
Did you guess what was happening? Did you notice any similarity to the live goat that is sent away? It may be surprising that this was a ritual for cleansing a house that had a spot of mould! Here’s how verse 53 sums up the process “So he shall make atonement for the house, and it will be clean.”
Without even knowing what ‘atonement’ means - just by experiencing this ritual - having seen the sin-goat led away every year, this ritual with the birds and the blood would have had significant meaning. It would have been a visceral, sensory demonstration, to teach something spiritual. If it reminds you of actors in a play, that’s a helpful way to view what’s happening.
You know the expression ‘actions speak louder than words’, and I hope I’ve got you wondering how we could take a lesson from Leviticus, and use actions - showing - to teach our kids. Perhaps for us in Australia, our weekly Scripture lessons have even made us too comfortable (perhaps even too lazy) with a teaching style that tells rather than shows. What will we do if our ability to tell is taken away? How can we continue to teach without telling? How can we become more imaginative? More creative? More Leviticus-like?
I’m not suggesting merely disguising our words like Shakespeare. I’m not implying that we deceive our kids, and pretend we’re not talking about Jesus by calling Him Jake or something. We can do better than that. I am suggesting that there is another way of teaching that we have largely forgotten about in the West.
Let me contradict myself for a moment and tell you some facts. Apparently 41% of people are left-brained, which means they learn cognitively. They can learn from being told something or reading it. However, 27% of people are right-brained which means they learn through experience. The other 32% need both cognition and experience together to learn something well.
When you’re anxious can you read a Bible verse to calm down? Or do you need to make yourself a hot cup of tea and eat chocolate?
Have you ever dismissed a song solely because the lyrics didn’t make sense? That’s your left brain winning.
Can you watch a movie without understanding the plot? If not, your left brain might be preventing you from enjoying the scenery, the colours, the symmetry, the music.
How do you know your parents loved you? Because you read about it? Or because you experienced it? You may not be able to cognitively explain why you know they loved you. But you know because you experienced it.
I’m naturally left brained, so I tend to be convinced by reading something or by a good argument. This is not the case at all for my daughter Lucy. She is very right-brained. She is also very black and white. Something either is, or it isn’t. It’s either true or it’s not. And because of her right brain tendency, Lucy needs to experience things before she can know something is true. Unless she has experienced something, no amount of brilliant argument or persuasive facts will convince her. Of anything. Ever. I can tell her I’m sorry. But it’s not true for her until we’ve hugged.
I know that for Lucy, telling her facts about God in a left-brained way, or reading her a verse from Scripture will never convince her that God loves her and has forgiven her. So it’s personal for me. I’ve been asking myself the question: how can I teach Lucy about God without telling her? How can I show her Jesus in a way that she can experience Him?
Maybe you don’t have a Scripture class. What about your own children? Your Sunday school class? Your Bible study group? Scripture still needs to be communicated in effective ways. Just because we can’t or don’t ‘teach’ Scripture in schools, I’m hoping we can be prepared, having already thought about ways to show rather than tell. In the classroom, in your home, in your study group or at your church, why not start imagining what a Leviticus-like lesson might look like?
Stay with me for a minute while I suggest something crazy. I’m just spitballing here - there are no bad ideas… What if we took a lesson from Leviticus and slaughtered a lamb and burned it in a bonfire in the middle of the playground? Have your Scripture kids ever forgotten the scripture lesson you taught them? I guarantee they would never forget that experience. Ok, perhaps that actually was a bad idea. Perhaps we tone it back a bit. What about if we keep the bonfire but we get the kids to write on pieces of paper all of their guilt and their shame and their sins and toss them into the fire and watch them disappear in smoke up to God.
Leviticus teaches us that the Israelites celebrated a year of Jubilee every 50 years. On this special day (that coincided with Day of Atonement) along with releasing the sin-goat, they would also release all slaves and release all debts. Is there a way we could use Leviticus principles to show God’s heart? Could we release debt from our school? What about offering to pay the school fees for the entire class for a year. Why? Because Jesus cancels our debts and teaches us to forgive others their debts and we’re hoping that our actions speak louder than words.
I’m still spitballing here - why not become the coach of your school's soccer team? You may have heard of Tom Allen - the coach of the Indiana Hoosiers football team. All over their locker room are the letters LEO, which means “Love Each Other.” Tom Allen says he coaches based on Biblical principles. He tries to dive into his players' lives and help them become the men God has created them to be. To love each other is more important, he believes and will be a lesson they remember longer than any wins or losses.
No bad ideas, remember!? What’s one thing every school needs? Parents to become part of the committee. In Australia it’s called a P&C committee (Parent & Citizens). In other areas it might be a Parent Representative Body, or a Family and Community Engagement Team. Imagine if every school had Christians on their P&C committees making decisions, advocating, organising events, loving their community…
I know I haven't given you a silver bullet but I actually believe that teaching kids in a Leviticus-like way will impact their lives in a more memorable way than merely ‘telling’ them Scripture in a classroom. I’m hoping that Levitucs might ignite your imagination, and prompt discussion that comes up with some really ‘out of the box’ ideas. Maybe I’ll see smoke coming from my local primary school oval, and I’ll think with a smile 'they're having a bonfire’.
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