February 4, 2019
My hands (and shirt and lungs) got covered with chalk dust today. It’s been awhile – eight months to be exact. This time, I wasn’t demonstrating formation of Greek letters, diagramming compound-complex sentences, or creating a timeline of Restoration Age English literature. I was drawing circles and lines.
Our class worksheets involved no translation, parsing, or analysis of sentence components. We were circling pictures that looked the same. (See the cup on the left? Look to the right. What’s that? A pencil. Good. Is that the same as the cup? Nope. Okay, skip it. What’s next? A pot. Also not the same. The last picture in the row? Yes! That’s a cup! Circle it! Good work!)
Providing feedback to students involved no editing or morpheme cuts. Just… finding the students whose pages were upside down and helping them get to rights. Then, identifying that someone matched a fish with a plane. (Nope. Sorry. Those are not the same thing.)
Why all the struggle? It’s not because my students today are children. Most of them are adults with children of their own. It’s not because they lack intelligence. They know how to survive in a harsh place. They can wrangle food out of the ground on the sides of mountains that I just fall down. They can build houses with no power tools. They know how to use everything in their world to provide for their families, and they’ve been doing that for generations. Oh, and they also know how to speak and understand a language that has a dizzyingly complex verbal system with seemingly endless affixes.
So why the challenge with these worksheets? As I look out the window, I see why. There are no billboards in view. No street signs (not even any streets). No newspaper stands. No bookstores.
No words for the eyes.
They live in a society that doesn’t require literacy for people to function. Many of these adults have never in their lives needed to read or write. Paper, pens, letters, written words – what are those for?
So as we gather for the first day of literacy school, the first steps are discriminating marks on a page, starting from the left and top of a page, and holding a pencil. If you’ve never needed a piece of paper before, wouldn’t you wonder how to hold it and what the marks meant? Would you understand how lines in different shapes correspond to reality?
This bears the question “Why learn to read?” What will you read? Where will you get a book? What has changed in this society now so that forty-two people crowd into a room, looking nervous and happy and worried all at the same time? Of course, the kids need to learn to read so they have a better chance for school. But why these adults?
We started class with that question. I asked, “How will it help you to learn to read?”
Leften and Imai, two of the fathers in the class, answered immediately, in surround sound: “So we can read the Bible.”
You see, fifteen years ago, the gospel came to the Kamea. God moved, people believed, and a church was born. And the church is nourished by a book. For these believers, learning to read became a need precisely because they started following Jesus.
Amon is a deacon. His wife, Margaret, learned to read a couple years ago. Amon wants to lead his family in worship. He sits in class next to his son, Leden, helping him as they learn to read together.
Leften runs a store. He is a sharp guy. He and his wife, Sedina, have three children whom they need to train in the gospel. They sit in the same class now, across the aisle from each other (since men and women don’t sit together).
Imai attends Bible school on Mondays and Fridays. It’s hard to study, write notes, or take tests if you haven’t learned to read. Imai’s wife doesn’t always come to church faithfully. Imai needs to know the Word so he can shepherd his wife well.
As we gather, we are about a bigger work than sounding out letters and sentences. This class is not about reading for its own sake. This is about family and personal discipleship. These brothers and sisters can hold in their hands the revelation of God, but right now they can’t read it. This class exists so they can eventually see for themselves the glory of God in His Word. In this room, we are about the work of expanding eternal joy. What a weighty opportunity!
Have you ever considered the value of literacy? Think about it. What would your spiritual life look like if your only option for truth intake was a sermon several times a week? How would you be growing in discipleship if you could never feed on the Word of God for yourself? How would you discern truth from error in preaching if you could never check to see what God has spoken?
What does your spiritual life look like?
Is your only truth intake a sermon several times a week?
Is your discipleship stunted because you never feed on the Word of God for yourself?
Are you susceptible to shifting winds of doctrinal error, because you don’t cultivate the discipline of Biblical discernment?
Do you hold in your hands the revelation of God, possessing every ability to read it, but neglecting to see for yourself the glory of God in His Word?
Are you daily expanding your eternal joy in the God of the Book?
Or do you take for granted knowing how to read and possessing the Scriptures in your own language?
May we thank God for the gift of His Word and the literacy to read it. Then may we be faithful to do so, that we might know, and worship, and rejoice, and love, and serve.