The Purpose of Christian Education

A sense of the reality of God.

The first, main, very urgent and difficult task facing the Christian educator is to awaken in the child a sense of the reality of God. In other words, it is important to help the child know God, not just learn about God. It is this sense of the reality of God that is almost entirely absent in modern society. I remember a young student putting it this way: "It's not that I don't believe in God," he said, "but He seems so unreal." Many people, who are not principled atheists, personally simply do not feel God, His power,

His presence in their lives as a real Person with whom they have a certain relationship. For many Christians – Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant – church rites, moral values, ethnic and national traditions are more real than the simple fact that God exists, that His presence in our lives is palpable, that each of us is connected to God.

It seems to me that it was the reality of the divine presence that was vividly felt in those moments when Jesus Christ healed people. In the story of the healing of the blind man (John 9), Jesus asked: "Do you believe in the Son of God?" The man answered: "Who is He, Lord, that I should believe in Him?" Jesus said to him: "And you have seen Him, and He speaks to you." He said: "I believe, Lord!" Jesus did not demand a precise statement of faith, nor did he seek "the knowledge of God" but the invocation of the power that entered into the life of the blind man as the power of God.

For a person at any age, there are two possibilities: either life and thought, which know the reality of the divine presence, or outside of it. For a three-year-old child, who is surrounded by the living faith of his loved ones, the statement "God exists" is the same reality as a cat or a dog, darkness or light. At first, God can be identified with a physical object: an icon, a painting, the sky, Holy Communion. But this is not a rational idea of God, but a genuine knowledge of Him. Such a "sensual" idea of God for children is more real than any, even the simplest abstract definitions. Any thoughts about God that we try to convey to a child can be assimilated by him only at a certain level of thinking, deeply different from that of an adult. If we tell a three-year-old boy that "God created the flowers" and "God created the animals, and the sun, and me, and you...", the child may be imagining God as a big man who sits and creates these things one by one. There is no danger in such a conception of God. The child will grow up and forget this image. It is important that an adult whom he trusts helps to establish a connection between what the child knows, touches, smells, hears, and God. The physical expression of God's presence in the child's immediate environment (icons, paintings, gestures, words, sounds, taste) becomes part of the child's experience. And a small child has a strong and immediate sense of the reality of all that he learns. Later, it seems to me, such vivacity of perception and imagination disappears.

A good example of how vividly children feel the reality of God is a three-year-old boy I knew. Repeating his short evening prayer after his mother, he looked out of the window, waved his hand to the sky and said: "Good night, God!"

A child who is unaware of this sense of God's reality will perceive His absence just as easily. His world "without God" will be just as real and multicolored, he will also enjoy life, if only his parents surround him with love and create an atmosphere of safety. For him, "ideas" are of little importance, and the lack of religious education will be noticeable in the same way as, for example, in children from not very cultured families, the lack of the habit of reading is noticeable. However, the "absence of God" will deeply affect the child if it is expressed in the fact that there is little love in the family, that anxiety, worry, and fear reign in it.

To the extent that; As a child grows up, it is very important for him to separate the "real" from the "unreal". Any story told to a child of seven or eight years old always raises the question: "Is this true?" At the same time, it becomes much more difficult to instill in the child a sense of the reality of God. Children between the ages of seven and nine are rationalistic, albeit at a primitive level; they have strongly expressed cause-and-effect relationships, but abstract thinking is still poorly developed. An eight-year-old child won't believe that God is somewhere in the sky beyond the clouds, but the adults' explanation of what we mean by "heaven" remains unrealistic. It is doubly difficult to convey to children of this age a sense of the reality of God because of their tendency to moral rigorism, as well as because of a specific sense of humor that adults often cannot understand.

Religious education of children at this age is often complicated by the fact that we tend to present religious instructions without trying to link them with what the child learns and perceives in everyday life. This weakens the sense of the reality of God. Sunday school lessons remain an abstract set of ideas, knowledge and information; Another set, often more attractive and exciting, the child finds in the world of school, television and among friends. What, for example, is more realistic for a child: biblical stories about miraculous healings or his own experience – doctors, vaccinations, hospitals? If God is present in healings and absent in everyday medicine, the sense of God's reality is greatly weakened.

As a child reaches adolescence, the sense of the reality of God becomes more and more vague. The life of adolescents is full of interests and emotions that have nothing to do with what they understand as religion. Daily prayer is forgotten because parents no longer follow it (and indeed, prayer should not become the same habit as brushing your teeth!). Religion is often identified with going to church and observing external rules and habits. Teenagers believe, worst of all, that it's "not for them." It is when children begin to think for themselves, even if they are still very immature, when they begin to discover themselves as individuals, even if they are self-centered, that they are too often told about religion in an authoritarian style:

"The Bible says...", "Teach the Church?..", "The priest says..." No one tries to explain what all this means to them, how it agrees with their thinking, whether it needs their approval. And yet, it is among children of this age that we can for the first time count on a deep response, on a real understanding of what religion is, on the ability to feel and think religiously.

Helping a child to experience the reality of God is the goal of our entire life. Of course, no textbooks, no lessons and teachings in themselves can instill this feeling. And yet I am convinced that the teacher must always keep this goal in mind, that it must become the true criterion of all our teaching methods and lessons