“Why the heck do I have to learn … ?” I think every child, teen, and adult has said
that more than once in their lives.
Toddlers and preschoolers have a shorthand for that. They simply say, “Why?”
Will anyone who has had or dealt with children and who has never heard any form
of this please raise their hands?
We spend our lives learning. Newborns have to learn to
breathe and then to suck. The rest is progressive. Children want to know, so
they ask, “Why?” with seemingly every other breath. It’s their way of finding
out how the world works, something they’re going to need to know, and, I think,
they revel in learning about it.
Then comes school. “Why do I have to learn math? Why do I
have to learn geography? When am I ever going to have to use grammar?” My
particular “Why do I…” was math, especially algebra. I was no good with numbers,
even in elementary school, and the thought of having to prove that x=2y totally
bewildered me. I loved words, and the better I could spell and read them plus
learn what they meant and how to put them together to express my thoughts and
understandings, the more I enjoyed them. The combination of dissection, statistics,
and probability I learned in second-year Biology was much more appealing than
the various noxious smells from the Chemistry lab. A slide rule (we didn’t have
calculators then) was as incomprehensible as a text in Koine Greek.
Over the years, I’ve had to learn many things I really
didn’t want to know, like balancing a checkbook, changing washers in a faucet,
mixing vinegar and baking soda to clean out drains, and remove hard-water
deposits in the sink and bathroom fixtures. I didn’t want to learn to iron,
adjust a recipe to add or subtract servings, or read a map to get to a place I
needed to be but didn’t know how to get there. How many skeins of yarn do I
need, what size needles, and how many stitches do I have to have to make a
patterned square for an afghan I am knitting for a friend or a sweater for
myself? But you get the point.
In our lives as Christians, we have had to learn things
like praying, both personal and communal. We learn why we pray, whether it is
to thank God for something, ask for something, or in times of tension, fear,
illness, and disaster. We are taught who we need to pray for, what prayer can
do, and how to do it, whether we recite a blessing we’ve learned or are
struggling to put words together so God can understand what we need or believe
we need. We also learn stories that tell us what God expects of us. Sometimes
that is easy since we have stories to illustrate the lesson. At other times, we
have to stop and ponder what the story is trying to tell us, given that we are
reading them through eyes that are 2,000 years younger than the stories
themselves. Still, it’s part of being Christian.
Sometimes we learn a verse or group of verses that bring
us comfort or ease our fears. We use them like a mantra, reciting them repeatedly,
bringing them into our consciousness, and focussing our attention on something
other than unpleasantness, danger, or anxiety.
Being brought up in a church or denomination, we learn
the rituals and customs surrounding birth, baptism, marriage, and death. We realize
that Christmas and Easter are joyous times while Lent and especially Holy Week
are thoughtful and penitential. We are taught to understand what the Eucharist
is, what it means, and what it does for us. We observe practices like having
ashes on our forehead on Ash Wednesday and anointing with oil for healing and
comfort at other times. We stand for worship, kneel for prayer, and sit to
listen and learn. Christianity is a cradle-to-grave-and-beyond series of
lessons and practices. I wonder – did any of us ever ask why we needed to know
all this?
The things I learned about faith and how to use it,
though, are things I use every day, often without thinking about it. I have to
be very mindful of prayer and reading at times. In contrast, other times are
purely spontaneous when situations and people come to my attention. I
discovered how to think through things using various theological reflection
techniques and calm myself with centering prayer. I may never need to learn
about Soteriology or Eschatology, and that’s fine. I don’t need to know everything
there is to know about theology, doctrine, and the like. When it comes to having
faith, I’m still learning, but I know in whom I believe and why.
The question of “Why do I have to learn …” doesn’t come
up very often with faith. When it does, it usually becomes a welcome new
insight and understanding. I have a feeling even my last breath will be a new
revelation. Now that’s something that never appeared in a school curriculum!
God bless.
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