Teaching 7: Teaching Obedience

There are means of teaching information to the head that are very effective and probably should be used for all secular information. One of them is Classical Education, grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The difficulty with these methods, all of them, is that they can be used to teach misinformation, falsehood.

The methods are so effective that the person taught cannot discern any falsehood. It is fairly harmless in secular education. If false, the next generation will discover it but not the generation that was taught.

In Christian teaching, this method is more deadly. A catechism is a use of the grammar method. In young children this repetition is used. Most of the questions are good questions and good answers. There may be a bad question and a bad answer. It is memorized along with all of the true ones. To check this out, look at the different catechisms you know and compare them with the Bible you know.

Catechisms are not limited to one generation. If there is a falsehood in the catechism, the second generation may not catch it. Although the catechism is not considered inspired Scripture, it is considered an authoritative interpretation of Scripture. Consequently the next generation interprets the Scripture in the light of the catechism instead of interpreting the catechism in the light of scripture.

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