Looking for sound guidance in how best to teach Christian Science to a Sunday School class, we turn naturally to the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy. Here our Leader requires (Art. XX, Sect. 2), "The Sabbath School children shall be taught the Scriptures, and they shall be instructed according to their understanding or ability to grasp the simpler meanings of the divine Principle that they are taught."
Not only does she make this stipulation but she repeats it. Farther along in the same article (Sect. 3) she specifies, "The next lessons consist of such questions and answers as are adapted to a juvenile class, and may be found in the Christian Science Quarterly Lessons, read in Church services."
We are instructed to teach not only "according to their understanding" but also so that even our use of the question-and-answer method is "adapted to a juvenile class."
The prosperity of the Sunday School—its effectiveness with the pupils—is closely linked to our observance of these directives. They demand that we ask: Am I really getting to my pupils? Am I using illustrations that speak directly to their experience? Do I myself know what the experiences of children and young people are today?
Let us consider what we can do to fulfill this demand.
In Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy we are told (p. 284), "The intercommunication is always from God to His idea, man." Divine ideas come to us from God. Divine ideas come to our pupils from God. As we teachers truly realize this liberating fact, we will not fear that personal differences, age differences, or any other erroneous belief can interrupt the "intercommunication" from God to His ideas. No suggestion of deficiency in our teaching ability or of unreadiness in our pupils can possibly interfere with this divine "intercommunication." And how comforting it is to know that, in actual spiritual fact, infinite understanding is reflected by both teacher and pupils.
To work for the Sunday School class along these lines, as well as in whatever other way presents itself to thought, is a regular activity of the conscientious teacher. This protective and supportive prayer is both a protection to our young people and a vital expression of our love for them.
Establishing our teaching on a sound metaphysical basis, we find ourselves consciously reflecting Mind's expressiveness, communicating with our pupils in a variety of ways and always according to their ability to grasp Mind's message. Here are a few examples.
[Prepared by the Sunday School Section, Department of Branches and Practitioners.]
Watching Vocabulary
The child of five may not understand the long words of Science, nor even some of its short words! A teacher writes, "Recognizing how limited the vocabulary of a five-year-old can be, I tested as I went along. When we spoke of Jesus as a carpenter, I asked, 'What is a carpenter?' The hopeful answer was, 'Did he make magic carpets?' And so I patiently explained about carpenters before I went on to teach more about Jesus."
Relating Bible Stories to Commandments, Beatitudes, Solutions
A teacher of four-year-olds wrote, "During the week while studying the Lesson-Sermon I select stories from the lesson that will be interesting to the little ones, and I make plain how the story illustrates one of the Ten Commandments, one of the Beatitudes, or perhaps both. I recognize that these little ones can learn to heal themselves and others; so each Sunday we discuss how to solve certain problems through healing, using some problem that a pupil has mentioned or just an example that we make up."
Listening to the Pupils
Sometimes by spiritual intuition, but also sometimes by listening to the way the members of our class talk among themselves, we learn what will reach their thought. One teacher, by the latter method, learned that his teen-age pupils were keenly interested in motorcycles. And he decided he would relate this topic to Christian Science. Recalling Mrs. Eddy's statement in the textbook (Science and Health, p. 269) "Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul," he opened the class that day by asking the pupils to name ten parts of a motorcycle. They did so, and he made of the answers a pattern for his teaching.
Together, he and the class discovered that the carburetor, for instance, regulationg the flow of air and fuel to the engine, ensures the engine's smooth operation; this could be compared to divine Principle, whose laws regulate our lives and result in productivity and progress. The brakes, they saw, enable the operator of the machine to control its speed; these illustrated to the class the spiritual self-government, the self-discipline, needed to check unwise, impulsive action. And so on. This class, which had been bored and inattentive, came alive in the desire to learn more of Truth's application to human affairs.
Questions That Startle
The ability of pupils who are between seventeen and twenty years old to understand what we would teach them may be more advanced than we realize. And their questions may startle us. "What is sin, according to Christian Science?" "Why does Mrs. Eddy give us seven synonyms for God? Isn't the one word 'God' enough?" "How can a Christian Scientist be a good athlete, when he knows that matter has no power?" "What should be our attitude toward abortion, living together without marriage, birth control?" "How should we regard capital punishment, enlisting in the armed forces of our country, amnesty for deserters?"
These are the times to be sincere and shockproof, to call upon the deep, complete resources of Christian Science. Such questions need to be asked, but they only appear in our classes when the pupil knows he will not be judged or condemned for sincerely questioning. Love, understanding, compassion, patience, and respect on the part of the teacher will help to keep the pupil receptive to good teaching.
One teacher wrote us, "I find it most helpful and humbling to remember Jesus' lifework. When you consider his deep comprehension of reality, it was the highest sense of love that impelled him to put his vision into words that his disciples and the multitude could grasp."
She went on, "After the resurrection, this loving Teacher stayed forty days longer, several times meeting with his disciples, taling with them and elucidating those spiritual truths they had failed to understand. What infinite patience it must have taken to do that! I find that as I translate the love he expressed into my own life I discover ways to meet my Sunday School pupils where they are—both collectively and individually."
How fortunate is the teacher of a class that freely asks questions! He will be repeatedly impelled to study Science more deeply so that he may be sure to find wise guidance for these questioning young people. And many a teacher can recall with gratitude the times when an answer he never realized he knew came to his thought through inspiration.
Solutions, Not Just Problems
A substitute teacher one day asked a class what they customarily did when their teacher was present. "We discuss—and discuss—and discuss," replied one boy in a dissatisfied tone of voice. The subjects taken up, it seems, were legitimate and of intense interest to the class. But the class had not been led beyond the discussion of the problem to the solution of it in Christian Science.
Here was a lesson which that substitute teacher turned to good use later when she had her own regular class. She made sure that the impression left with the pupils was of the solution, not of the problem. She kept in mind Mrs. Eddy's admonition on page 448 of the textbook, "Try to leave on every student's mind the strong impress of divine Science, a high sense of the moral and spiritual qualifications requisite for healing, well knowing it to be impossible for error, evil, and hate to accomplish the grand results of Truth and Love."
Grand results are possible to the willing, diligent, humble teacher in Sunday School. The light of Truth, strong and clear, will reveal itself to teacher and pupil alike; ignorance and evil will disappear into their own nothingness. And the Manual provision that the teaching be adapted to the pupils' learning ability will be fulfilled.
[This column appears quarterly in The Christian Science Journal.]
