What Abraham Teaches Us About Education
Meanwhile, in Abraham’s Classroom…
An ancient Midrash legend tells of Abraham in his early life, living in Ur of the Chaldees in Mesopotamia, “the land between two rivers” (i.e., Tigris & Euphrates).
Abraham was the son of Terah, a man who earned his living as an idol maker. Day in and day out, Terah worked diligently, crafting “gods” of stone and wood. The rich pantheon of the ancient Mesopotamian gods ensured that there would be no shortage of work for Terah. But his son did not share his worldview or his enthusiasm for idol worship, even at a young age.
It happened one day that Terah needed to set out on a journey. Understandably, he desired that his business not be interrupted during his absence, and so he left the shop in the capable hands of his son Abraham.
Abraham and the Idol Shop
Before long, a man entered the shop and began to peruse the vast multitude of idols on display. There were big gods, small gods, gods as big as your head… masculine gods, feminine goddesses, gods for the sun, the stars, the sea, war, fertility, fortune, fame. There was a god for every human interest, desire, and endeavor.
“How old are you?” came a question from the young boy running the shop.
“Fifty,” came the reply. Abraham smiled and shook his head.
“How sad indeed that a man of fifty years would so ardently desire to bow down to a one-day-old idol.”
Utterly shocked and embarrassed, the man promptly left the shop.
And so this continued for some time. Customers came in, and Abraham confronted them with the absurdity of their devotion. One day, a woman entered with a basket of bread. She presented it to Abraham, saying, “Take this and offer it to the gods.”
This time, the boy did something completely unexpected. Immediately, Abraham sprang to his feet, grabbed the nearest hammer, and—to the patron’s horror—he went about the shop vigorously shattering every idol but one to smithereens. Once he had finished the monumental demolition, he paced over to the remaining idol—the largest of them all. Placing the hammer firmly into its hand, he grinned and awaited his father’s return.
A Bold Lesson in Truth
Not surprisingly, Terah stood frozen in furious bewilderment the moment he shadowed the door of his beloved idol shop. Shattered fragments of stone and splintered wood lay in heaps over every square inch of the place. Everything was destroyed—everything but the largest idol of all. Next to it stood his son Abraham, looking unfazed and rather calm. Enraged, Terah lit into the boy.
“Who did this?” he shouted. “Was it you?!”
Abraham said in a cool and collected reply, “Father, how could I ever hide anything from you? Not long after you left, a woman entered the shop with bread for an offering to the gods. I, in turn, brought her a generous gift before all of them, yet each one said, ‘I shall eat first!’ Then, suddenly, the largest and mightiest one of all leaped forward, clutched the hammer in his hand, and set about shattering all of the others to pieces!”
“Are you out of your mind?!” Terah howled back. “Do they have minds? They’re made of stone and wood!”
Abraham smiled at his father as the point slowly sank in.
The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths but do not speak;
they have eyes but do not see;
They have ears but do not hear;
nor is there breath in their mouths.
Their makers will become like them,
and anyone who trusts in them.Psalm 135:15-18
The Danger of Unexamined Traditions
No matter how often I learn the lesson, it never ceases to amaze me how easy it is to adopt a habit, a custom, a tradition. Before long, we fall into that trap of doing something because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” But it isn’t true. We started doing that at some point for some reason. It’s not a bad practice to periodically reassess if that reason is a good one or one that still makes sense. Abraham’s culture was a polytheistic, human-sacrificing environment. But all we need to do is flip back a few pages in Genesis to see that, in the beginning, it was not so.
When “Second Things” Come First
As Catholics, we of course respect and embrace Sacred Tradition. If we are astute students of Salvation History, we will not soon forget that there are countless examples of great trial and tribulation that have often confronted humanity, even the People of God, as a result of clinging too closely to man-made “traditions” more than God’s deeper and eternally rooted Tradition and the natural law. It’s very easy for us to focus so much on what C.S. Lewis called “second things” that we put “first things” on the back burner. Here’s how Lewis put it in a letter to Bede Griffiths in 1951: “Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first & we lose both first and second things.”
When it comes to education, I think most of us know from experience that it is very easy indeed to put “second things” first. After teaching high school theology for more than a decade now, I’m increasingly dissatisfied with how much time I seem to spend on tasks and routines that, while perhaps useful or even necessary to some degree, should not occupy as much of my daily attention and, dare I say, devotion. I can easily get lost in the weeds of particular lesson plans, or I rely too heavily on particular assessments without making the time to at least occasionally press pause and ask questions like:
- “Why am I doing this?”
- “Does this really make sense?”
- “Is this actually necessary?”
- “Is this truly an adequate assessment of what we’ve been covering?”
- “Is this lesson/method/approach likely to instill wonder, awe, and a desire to learn/go deeper in my students?”
I oftentimes toil so laboriously to craft the perfect self-structured educational experience that it’s a constant temptation to forget who the REAL teacher is: namely, Our Lord! His words in Matthew 23:10-12 are worth considering:
Neither be called teachers, for you have one teacher, the Christ. He who is greatest among you shall be your servant; whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
Re-centering the Classroom on Christ
The longer I teach, the more inescapable this truth has become to me: FOLLOW THE HOLY SPIRIT. Yes, we should take advantage of the tools, resources, and “best practices” at our disposal, but God must always be in the driver’s seat in our classroom. If particular educational “traditions” are becoming the primary features of my teaching experience, i.e., idols, may God grant me the Abrahamic zeal to smash them to pieces and instead embrace a more authentically divine pedagogy!
Smashing Our Modern Idols
Abraham’s courage was not merely about rejecting false gods; it was about restoring right order. In our own homeschools, the idols may be subtler: routines, methods, or expectations that quietly take precedence over truth, wonder, and faith. The challenge before us is the same: to examine what we have come to rely on, and when necessary, to let it go. If we are willing to do that, then like Abraham, we make room for something greater—an education rooted not in habit, but in Truth.
What are your thoughts on this topic? What would you like to see me write about in future articles? I invite you to join other Catholic homeschooling parents in the Homeschool Connections Community or our Facebook group.
