Lessons of the AGES

This acronym has me rethinking how Jesus approached teaching.  Research into how the brain functioned has resulted in a clearer insight into how new content should be presented in order for learners to retain it. 

But since I spent the better part of Saturday drawing this out for you, I’ll let the illustration fill you in.  Take the time to read this.  It’s tremendously insightful.

Now for the Jesus part.  As I look at these four key elements for transforming new knowledge into a memory, I think about how Jesus may have used them.  Since he created the human brain, he would know best how it worked.

Attention.  Think of how choppy Jesus’s teaching seems to be in the gospels.  What’s the longest sequence?  The Sermon on the Mount?  How about his farewell teaching in John 14-16?  Neither is likely as lengthy a sermon as some in present-day, long-winded services.  He seems to have understood that short and powerful is best for remembering.

Generation.  The goal is to form connections between the new truth and one’s existing network of experiences and people. How much better could one use this idea than Jesus did?  The extended network of people was constantly pressing in.  He immediately applied truth through engagement.  This wasn’t hypothetical theory.  It was insight to be used that day, if not that very hour.

Emotion.  The consummate storyteller, Jesus knew how to hold the attention of an audience.  His listeners were often “astonished at his teaching.” (Matt. 7:28) He engaged them with questions.  The research I read also pointed out that anticipation is key for an audience to retain new knowledge.  After witnessing his miracles, the crowds were eager to hear what Jesus had to say.

Spacing.  Here’s where I am rethinking my assumptions.  I have always read the gospels as the recordings of the single occurrence of each particular teaching.  But might that be wrong?  Might Jesus have repeated instructions and stories over and over?  The Sermon on the Mount might also have been the Sharing on the Breezy Knoll and the Talk by the Winding Stream.

A road, like this one I took over a mountain the other day, is made by traversing the same ground many times.  I like the thought of Jesus making a road of his instruction to his disciples’ hippocampi.  Picture Peter and the others smiling in recognition as their Lord retold the familiar story of the Prodigal Son, quietly mouthing along with the words, “…for he was lost but now is found.”

This is all pure speculation.  But this I know: if anyone would have utilized how the brain works to make teaching stick, it would be Jesus.

He’d be a rock of AGES.

Lord, science reminds us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  Help us to use these insights to hide your word in our hearts, as well as help others to remember.  For you alone have “the words of eternal life.”

Reader – What in this research strikes you?