Keeping Literacy Alive
“Write the laws on your doorpost” (Deut 6:9) may be the first call in recorded history for widespread literacy. From the start our faith has placed a great emphasis on the importance of the written word, and the need to equip men and women with the ability to read and interpret it. As Paul reminds Timothy, “study to show yourself approved to God, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim 2:15).
The problem is that we need a lot of focus to read well. Just to decode what we see on the page takes up a lot of cognitive energy. After the decoding process, after making sense of a linear jumble of symbols, we are left with just enough cognitive power to do everything else that needs to be done while reading: Make connections, hold onto important details, ask questions, activate background knowledge. We develop these background processes over a life-time of focused reading. It’s what the author Maryanne Wolf calls “the deep-reading circuit.”
We need time and focus to develop this circuitry. And that’s hard to come by. The focus needed to develop and maintain our reading brain is increasingly strained by an environment clamoring for our attention. We are inundated with messages that have been engineered by marketing teams for maximum digestibility. Advertisers know we don’t have time to ponder their message. Without substantive texts, and the time and environment to read them attentively, there is little to help to develop the circuitry needed for reading.
Call me quixotic, but I truly believe a biblical education stands as a fortress against this persistent cultural tide. It provides an environment where students are challenged to make sense of an ancient text from a different culture. In the process of learning, students are forced to slow down, make observations, and focus. We are called by God to spend focused time in his word every day (Psalm 1:2).
At the Institute for GOD, we take seriously the responsibility of training people to “rightly divide the word of truth.” It’s not easy. It would be easier to hand students a few theological mottos to memorize. It’s much more work to teach someone the skills needed to read the Bible for themselves. In classes like Biblical Interpretation and Analytic Approaches to Literature, we challenge students to slow down, pay attention, and read deeply. As they do this, they are developing processes of attention, memory, and focus that they would not otherwise have access to. It’s the precious flame of literacy and biblical knowledge, and God’s people get to carry it from one generation to another.
