“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
Deut. 6:6-9, NIV
The verbs that I’ve italicized above—impress, talk about, tie, bind, and write—reflect an intentionality that flows out of a heart for God. Many families put this intentionality into action through the use of catechesis—a word that for a variety of reasons is unknown or has fallen out of favor with many. My friend, Jay, recalled his first experience with the word: He went to play ball with his neighborhood buddy but found, unfortunately, his buddy wasn’t available. Why? He had to go to something called “catechism” first. And so Jay followed his buddy to the Catholic church and waited for him on the steps. Then, after “catechism” was finally out of the way, they got to play ball.
Like my friend as a young boy, many view catechesis as a foreign and unwelcome experience—a boring interruption in an otherwise fun day. Others see the practice as antiquated, irrelevant, or even potentially brainwashing. We’ll deal with some of the most common objections in the next couple of weeks, but first let’s define catechesis and look at some positives.
Despite the bad press, catechesis is a biblical practice related to one of the marks of the earliest Christians: devotion to the apostles’ teaching (Acts 2:42). The word comes from the Greek katechein and means to teach orally or to instruct by word of mouth. For example, here is how the apostle Paul used the term in Galatians 6:6: “The one who is catechized must share all good things with the one who catechizes.”
Broadly defined, catechesis is the practice of “grounding and growing God’s people in the Gospel and its implications for doctrine, devotion, duty, delight.”[1] Catechisms, then, are simply collections of questions and answers designed for memorization and recitation. Tim Keller in his introduction to the New City Catechism Devotional gives four reasons why catechisms are still relevant and important:[2]
- Classic catechisms “take students through the Apostle’s Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer—a perfect balance of biblical theology, practical ethics, and spiritual experience.”
- “The catechetical discipline of memorization drives concepts deeper into the heart and naturally holds students more accountable to master the material than do discipleship courses.”
- “The practice of question-answer recitations brings instructors and students into a naturally interactive, dialogical process of learning.”
- Catechetical instruction helps us be less individualistic and more communal. It reminds us that Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father,” rather than “My Father.”
Catechizing also gives a framework so that Christian words and phrases are understood in theologically accurate and historically-informed ways. To use an image from carpentry, think of a classic catechism as a solid “mental foundation on which… spiritual life will be built.”[3]
What happens when we don’t have a theologically robust and time-tested framework for healthy spirituality? In construction, when you don’t have a sound framework that’s to code, it affects everything: insulation, drywall, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc. Building codes specify “minimum standards” and their main purpose is “to protect public health, safety and general welfare as they relate to the construction and occupancy of buildings and structures.”[4] In a similar way, classic catechisms were painstakingly crafted to promote spiritual “health, safety, and general welfare.”
Without a strong framework or a knowledge of minimum standards– spiritual building codes if you will, we settle for chicken-houses, shanties, and cardboard boxes. To say it another way, without a solid foundation rooted in historic Christian teaching, it’s easy to become homeless spiritually or settle for an “abandominium.” Abandominium—that’s a word my ex-offender friend, who now works with other ex-offenders in Camden, taught me. It’s basically an old condominium that’s now abandoned. Many of the residents of his halfway house jokingly say, “I got me an abandominium.”
One emotionally unhealthy gentleman I knew—I’ll call him Jack—had a brilliant mind. With no strong catechetical framework, however, he was susceptible to spiritual leaders who played on his emotions and claimed supernatural experience (e.g. “God spoke to me…” or “God told me in a dream…”). Without a strong understanding of historic Christianity, Jack gravitated to teachers who tended to yell loud, have little training, and always interpret the Bible literally (when a great deal is manifestly poetry, and so on).[5]
Today, he’s tormented by inaccurate beliefs about hell, the unpardonable sin, suffering, and the silence of God. Fear and shame are his masters, not Christ. He clings to his spiritual abandominium and it’s difficult to get him to consider living anywhere else. In some ways, it would be better if he knew nothing about the Bible and Christianity. I’ve often wished there was some way to bulldoze his shack-like thinking so he could get a fresh start with a proper foundation and framework. Yet, we all know—even from experience with ourselves: it’s hard to teach old dogs new tricks. And as we get older, it becomes easier and easier to paint ourselves into a corner we can’t get out of.
That’s why catechesis is largely preventative work. We catechize our children so they don’t go through life vulnerable to “every wind of doctrine” like Jack.[6] Yet, even as adults with bad habits and various forms of “stinkin thinkin,” there’s hope: we can unlearn things. Scripture memory and catechesis help. As noted above, memorization drives messages deeper into the heart. It also drives out lies, replacing them with truth.
[1] J.I. Packer and Gary Parrett, Grounded in the Gospel: Building Believers the Old –Fashioned Way (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2010), 182.
[2] The New City Catechism Devotional (Wheaton, IL: Crossways, 2017), 8.
[3] The New City Catechism: 52 Questions for Our Hearts and Minds (Wheaton, IL: Crossways, 2017), 8.
[4] https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/c.php?g=3
[5] Always taking the Bible literally, especially when one simultaneously devalues theological education; mainstream science; a thorough knowledge of the Old Testament, ancient Near Eastern and first-century culture is a recipe for spiritual abuse and malpractice. As the late Bruce Metzger, one of the foremost NT scholars of the last century, said: “The Bible doesn’t always mean what it literally says but it always means what it literally means.”
[6] Ephesians 4:14.