From the April-June 2007 Issue
Teaching essentials through Parables
Jan and Lucie Habl
Nove Mesto nad MetujiRecently I received an unusual invitation. A teacher of social sciences from a local high school called me and asked if I could come to some of her classes, to tell her students something about the churches and denominations in the Czech Republic. She had questions such as: What churches do we have here? Why are there so many of them (more than 20 denominations – in spite of the fact that we are such a small country)? What is church actually about, anyway?
The problem
She explained to me that religion and Christianity are part of the school curriculum, but her knowledge of them is limited. She thought it would be great to get someone who knows this area better, to come and speak to her students. “Incidentally”, two of her colleagues who share the staff-room with her are members of our congregation, and the lady “somehow” knew about it. When she asked them for their recommendation of some priest or reverend who would be willing to come and help her, they were more than willing to respond. So she called me. What could I do? I had to accept the invitation, didn’t I?
However, the preparation for these classes gave me quite a hard time. I had to think a lot about how to explain the church situation to someone who is not only completely ignorant of these things, but even worse, completely unconcerned about them. Eventually, it occurred to me to use a parable, since parables proved to be quite helpful in religious education in the past. I would like to tell you here what I told those students. I hope it will enable you to understand a bit of the church situation in our country.
The solution
The situation with Czech churches is like unto a Czech potato soup (which is our famous speciality). Quite naturally, every potato soup has certain essentials, like potatoes, water, mushrooms, etc, without which it is not a potato soup. Here I could not miss the opportunity to tell them about the essence of Christianity. Now each Czech family puts into the soup different non-essential additional ingredients, which make each family’s potato soup taste somewhat differently. Is it actually good that there is not only one soup with one taste in our world, I asked them? In the past we carefully protected our family recipes; we would not even allow anyone from another family to come to our kitchen while it was being made. In fact, if we had a chance we would kick down the other’s pot, or at least spit into it. Oh yes, that is what we did in the past; and sadly, it is still happening in some countries today, I told them.
We tend not to do it in our country anymore. It is not because we are somehow better or wiser, but circumstances have forced us to be this way. Not so long ago there came a self-appointed chief cook who said: There will be no cooking of potato soup here; it is not healthy for humankind! But we could not help ourselves; we could not imagine life without it. We loved it so much we kept cooking it anyway, often quite illegally. The chief cook was really upset, and sometimes he would come and take away our ingredients; sometimes our recipes; sometimes he would take us away from our kitchen, and sometimes he even forced us to cook together with others in one kitchen. That was tough.
We had to learn how to cook potato soup with others and survive it! It is true that sometimes the soup tasted funny, but it also enriched us quite a lot. It made us ask important questions like, why has our soup such a particular taste in comparison with others? What ingredients and spices does my mum put into it, and why? Yes, I have always liked my mum’s soup; I got used to it in my childhood, but I have never asked her about the recipe. Here suddenly we got a taste of something we had never known before. Sometimes it was interesting and sometimes it was hardly edible, but it helped us to understand at least two things: first, we realized why we like our own soup, and secondly, we learnt how to cohabit peacefully with those who use different spices. In other words, the common threat of losing the whole thing helped us to realize what is essential and what is not.
At the end of the lecture I encouraged the students to ask the same question: what is essential in your lives? After the lessons the teacher asked me many questions in the school hall and eventually released me with an invitation for the next term. Please pray with me for her and her students. Thank you.