Question # 3
What have you to do with the LORD, the God of Israel? Joshua 22:24
What Have You To Do With – God understands education. Therefore, He supplies the perfect context for learning life’s most important lessons. That context is asking a question. Life-transforming education takes place only when the learner wants to know the answer. Cramming your head full of facts or being compelled to regurgitate information will never make a child educated. What brings true education is personal inquiry.
Since God knows this little jewel of motivation, He builds puzzles into life’s circumstances in order that He might prompt a question. This verse explains the significance of the questions of children. Each time, the question is a natural extension of some unusual circumstance. When the child asks, “What is this all about?”; adults are responsible to give the answer previously provided by God Himself. In this way, the real lessons of life are passed from father to son and mother to daughter. Breaking this pattern leads to tons of useless information without an ounce of transformation.
The three questions all involve a similar Hebrew phrase (mah la’ ben wa). You can see other occurrences in Exodus 13:14 and Joshua 4:6. Notice that each time the question arises because of something done by parents that is out of the ordinary. Notice that the parents do not prompt the question (God does that!). And notice that each time the parents are then given the opportunity to explain the historical actions of God. This is what it means to anchor the faith of a child. It is not an ethereal discussion about the God Who knows everything or how the world began or what heaven is all about. It is a recitation of God’s action in the world, commemorated in these stones, this bread, that altar or this meal. God is in the kitchen, at the river’s edge, on the road and in the festival. These are real, tangible, even digestible symbols of His past involvement with me, my parents and my parent’s parents. That is the answer.
Today we educate by dissection. Our view of knowledge is the collection of information about all the parts. Too often, this collection is not motivated by anything personally important to me. It is just things that I have to know. God doesn’t take that futile approach. He presents us with things we want to know, things that just don’t seem to make sense. And then, once the Spirit prompts inquiry, He turns over the response to those who have come before. It is chain-education. It mattered to me, so I can pass it on to my child.
What questions did you ask? What questions do you need to answer?
