Religion and Theology

To teach the word of God is like cleaning King Arthurs horse stable. Even Jesus Christ, the considered greatest teacher of all times, had experienced a lot of constraints and difficulties in spreading the good news about the promises and blessings of the Almighty Creator through the words of God.

In todays world, even we are at the peak of the highest level of modernity and advances wherein there are several modern equipments for teaching, the teachers of the word of God are still suffering from great dilemma in inculcating the gospel to the hearts and minds of the people.

Nevertheless, aside from the problem with regards to the people who are hearing the gospel, it is also said that different people who are spreading the word of God to the different places of the world have different reasons, goals and strategies in teaching.

Stanleys Three possibilities

Stanleys Three Possibilities offer diverse possible goals on communicating from the Scriptures to the target group of audience. The first goal is to teach the Bible to people. This style of teaching the word of God simply focuses only on the importance of the Bible itself for it only explains what the Bible means. In this method, the teacher is only concerned on the context of the Bible. The teachers main concern is only to tell and explain the bible to the people. Because of this, no creativity is required in order to achieve success in this style. No application, likewise, is needed so that the teacher will become successful in transferring the word of God to the target audience. Since the only concern is to merely explain the Bible, it is not really difficult for the teachers as such there would be no needed application and creativity to ensure that authentic learning takes place to the audience.

The second goal, on the other hand, is to teach people the Bible. If the first possibility barely lies on the importance of the Bible, the second type has the main focus on the people who are supposed to receive the message from the Bible. This is considered to be the most effective way to impart Biblical truth to the mind and heart of the people. Since the primary importance is given to the audience, this type of teaching needs creativity such as alliterations and multiple illustrations.  These techniques will eventually help the teacher to successfully transfer the information to the people. Since the success of this type of goal lies on the success of the information transfer, the teacher should be sensitive to the needs of the learners to assure the success of the learning process. With this, an outline would be very helpful on the part of the teachers.

Furthermore, the last goal among Stanleys Three Possibilities is to teach people how to live a life that reflects the values, principles, and truths of the bible. The last one is believed to be the integration of the first and second techniques. In here, the importance lies both on the Bible and the people. This type of teaching aims to create change to the people who will hear the gospel of God. This requires both the in-depth knowledge of the teacher to the Bible and the creativity to use applications so that learning will be achieved to its maximum level.

Looking critically to the three possibilities suggested by Stanley, it can be deducted that the third one has the edge among all the others. It is indeed true that the greatest aim of teaching the word of God to the people is to create change to the life of the people who will listen to the good news from the Bible. It would be futile if people will just have the knowledge on the word of God and there is no practical application to their everyday lives. The first goal can be just compared to eating without digesting. If the main concern of the teacher is just to teach the Bible, then it would just be a waste of time. The second one, on the other hand, though it can be said that ensuring the people to receive the words of God to their hearts and minds is a noble act, still, the greatest aim in teaching the Bible is not satisfied. Knowing the truth is not really enough. There should be change after the people had known the truth from the Bible. And through this, it can be considered that the third one is the best method to adopt when teaching the words of God to the people. Creating change not only to the knowledge of the people but also to the actions and attitudes would be the perfect goal when teaching them about the Bible.

Younts Learning Theory System
Younts Learning Theory System lies on the influences of the well-known theories B. F. Skinners Operant Conditioning and A. Banduras Social Learning Theory in which the teachers have several factors to consider in the learning system of the students.

In the Operant Conditioning theory, the use of rewards to alter classroom behavior is extremely used. This has something to do with the belief of Skinner about the effect of reinforcement to the attitudes of the learners. This means that if the students will be given rewards, there is a great tendency that learning will take place. On the other hand, punishment could also be a form of reinforcement to the students. This can be best explained through an illustration inside the classroom real life situation. For instance, if the teacher will give extra points or candies to the students who always answer the questions correctly, there will be a possibility that all the students will be motivated to answer and participate because of the reinforcement given by the teacher. The extra points or candies serve as the motivating factors that cause the distinct reaction of the students. Because of this reinforcement, the students are motivated to study, learn and participate in the class.

On the other hand, Social Learning Theory merely dwells on the effect of the environment to the learning attitudes of the students. This means that the perception of the learners with regards to learning merely depends on the influence of the environment. For instance, if a child grows in a religious family, the child has the tendency also to learn religious activities like reading the Bible, going to church and the like. Nevertheless, if a child grows in a place wherein religion is not given much importance, there is a probability that the child will not even learn how to read the Bible. Thus, this explains that environment plays an important role in the development of attitudes of the individuals with regards to learning system.

With regards to teaching the words of God, the said theories would be very much applicable and useful as such teaching the Bible needs a lot of motivation from the learners or the group of audience. For example, if the people are motivated by a reward or influenced by the environment, there is a great possibility that they will be reinforced to study the Bible.

Nevertheless, along with the advantages of using the said theories are likewise the disadvantages if not properly used. Using the operant conditioning, for instance, will just make the learners to become dependent on the rewards that they can get in order to study. This means that if there is no reward, there will be no learning that will take place. And this is not in accordance to the principle of learning the words of God.  The gospel of God should be learned voluntarily by the individuals so that it will be successfully imparted to the hearts and minds of the people. Likewise, on the concepts of Social Learning Theory, if the learners will be exposed to bad examples or influences, there is a great danger that they will never want to learn about the Scriptures. Therefore, the use of these learning theories should be carefully and critically examined as such they can make and unmake the attitude and perception of the learners to the studying of the words of God.