Questions Worth Asking
“Are you the teacher of Israel, and you do not understand these things?” John 3:10
Understand – The educational model of this world is not God’s model. This statement has nothing to do with the subject matter. It’s not about “creationism” versus “evolution.” It’s not about how to teach moral concepts (or how not to teach them). God’s method of education is found in the life-transformation school of hard knocks. In other words, while the Greek model operates on the idea that education is about transferring information from teacher to pupil, God’s model is about transforming the pupil by copying the teacher. Without transformation there is no education. In God’s world, you don’t know until you do.
Yeshua is the perfect example of this kind of teaching methodology. That’s why He asks so many questions. In fact, most of the time Yeshua doesn’t even answer the question that the pupil asks. Instead, He asks another question or answers a question that no one asked. This is the rabbinic way – to guide the student to find his own answer by not giving it to him.
In the Greek model, we are quick to supply information. We just want the facts as fast as possible. This kind of education even infects our evangelism when we attempt to communicate the good news in rapid-fire delivery so that we can transfer the “saving knowledge” to someone else. But notice Jesus’ approach. Three years of daily interaction with twelve select men. A patient, slow demonstration of a way of life that transforms. And even after all that, they didn’t get it! Jesus was not in a hurry. He knew that the goal was not correct facts but rather obedient lives, and that takes time. It took forty years in the wilderness. What makes us think that it can be accomplished in a forty minute sermon or a forty second testimony?
Jesus asks the crucial question of Nicodemus (He is especially good at asking the crucial question). The Greek word is ginosko, a verb that implies knowledge perceived, received or comprehended by accumulation of evidence or research. This is exactly the kind of knowledge that we would expect in the Greek model – gathering facts. But the gospel of John has a special use for ginosko. John uses this Greek verb to denote the personal relationship between the Father and the Son and between the believer and Yeshua (cf. John 10:14-15). So, in John, ginosko is not just about gathering the facts. It’s about relationships. Notice what Jesus says. “Are you the teacher of Israel, and you have not gathered, discovered or concluded these simple things about the relationship with the Father?” Something has gone wrong with Nicodemus’ information collecting. It is not accompanied by obedience to the truth. As a result, Nicodemus, for all of his prestige as a teacher, is ignorant. He hasn’t moved from intelligence to submission.
Jesus might ask us exactly the same question. “Are you the instructor of your children, your fellow believers, your neighbors and you do not understand the simple truth about the connection between hearing and obeying?” How ignorant we are in our self-glorifying intellect. We claim to know all the right doctrines, but we fail to understand. We think that knowing is the same as believing. We have adopted the Greek model where information is enough to pass the test. That is never the case in Scripture. Without behavioral transformation, we remain fools.
How’s your spiritual IQ today? Do you understand these things?
Topical Index: Education
