PART 1 – EXPLORE THE STORY
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Chapter 1 - BRAIN IN A JAR?​
Some years ago a friend sent me a (supposedly genuine) transcript of proceedings from a coroner’s court. One of my favourite excerpts went something like this:
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Lawyer: Are you sure the patient was dead before you performed the autopsy?
Pathologist: Yes, of course.
Lawyer: Did you listen for a heartbeat?
Pathologist: No.
Lawyer: Did you check for a pulse?
Pathologist: No.
Lawyer: Did you check for any vital signs?
Pathologist: No.
Lawyer: Then how could you be sure the patient was dead?
Pathologist: Because his brain was in a jar on my desk.
Lawyer: Nevertheless, will you please answer the question.
Are you sure the patient was dead before you performed the autopsy?
Pathologist: Well, I guess he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere!
Well, I started to realise about 15 years ago that I had been reading the Bible with at least half my brain in a jar (metaphorically speaking of course!). That was when my wife and I began studying principles for teaching oral learners, and discovered the relevance of Biblical story-telling. I am personally a very logical, analytical learner, and like many (or even most) western Christians I saw the Bible first and foremost as a source of Biblical doctrine and theology, and regarded the stories of the Bible as illustrations that supported the abstract theological principles.
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Some theologians, such as Dr. N.T.Wright (in The New Testament and the People of God) challenge that western analytical perception:
“Human life, then, can be seen as grounded in and constituted by the implicit or explicit stories which humans tell themselves and one another. This runs contrary to the popular belief that a story is there to “illustrate” some point or other which can in principle be stated without recourse to the clumsy vehicle of a narrative.”
Gerard Loughlin (Telling God’s story: Bible, Church and narrative theology) agrees that:
“…narrative is not an accidental form for the expression of Christian faith in Jesus Christ. For insofar as it is faith in the person of Jesus, his identity as God’s Christ is given in his life, death and resurrection, and that can be given to us only in story.”
I have personally come to appreciate the narratives of the Bible in a new way, based on interaction with oral learners who naturally ground their learning and their worldview system in story, and seeing how their oral perception of Biblical narrative throws up insights and spiritual truths which are often virtually invisible to logical, analytical study.
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Many storying practitioners see the difference between oral and print learners as a difference in the development of concrete/visual right brain vs. analytical left-brain processing skills. From a physiological perspective, the allocation of these processing skills to one or other side of the brain is far too simplistic, but I will stick to the right- vs. left-brain dichotomy as convenient shorthand for a bunch of characteristics that distinguish ways in which oral learners (as oppose to print learners) store, organise and recall information.
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There have been many attempts to characterise the differences between left-brain and right-brain processing, but here are some major characteristics of right-brain oral learners:
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​​Right-brain oral learners are strongly relational and communal, whereas left-brain print learners tend to focus on independence and originality
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Right-brain oral learners do not remember a script composed of words, but create a visual image in the mind and recall information by means of the visual image.
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Right-brain oral learners absorb information intuitively rather than systematically, and react with the heart rather than the head.
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Right-brain oral learners can handle abstract information, but it needs to be firmly anchored in the real world.
Last Easter I was preparing to preach on the resurrection story from John’s Gospel, and as I’ve learned to do through my experience with oral learners, I went through John’s account of the events on Easter Sunday morning, visualising the scene step by step. When I came to the point where Mary Magdalene looked into the tomb, I tried to imagine what she had seen – the slab of stone where Jesus had been laid to prepare him for burial, the folded grave clothes, and two angels, one sitting at the head and one at the foot of the stone slab where Jesus had been laid. Suddenly I realised the scene was a familiar one. The image in my mind fused with the image of the Ark of the Covenant, above it the Mercy Seat, and the two cherubim, one at either side, framing the empty space where God met with his people.
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My initial thought was, “Hey, you’re imagining things! If there’s a connection there why have I never heard anyone else point it out?” But then I asked myself, “Why were the two angels sitting in that particular position, one at the foot and one at the head?” There is only one conclusion – in order to focus our attention on the empty space between, where Jesus’ body had been. The empty space says, “He’s not here!” And that’s precisely the purpose of the Cherubim on either side of the atonement cover, to focus our attention on the empty space between. The empty space tells us, “God is not here! This is where he meets with His people, but God does not dwell in temples made with human hands. He’s not here!”
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​Once you make the initial connection, all kinds of amazing dramatic implication follow… not least that in the very centre of the Old Testament religious system is a foreshadowing of the empty space of the tomb and the resurrected Christ. But I will leave you to ponder and theologize.
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​After I shared these thoughts with some of my colleagues, one of them asked me, “How can I learn to read the Bible with the right side of the brain?” That’s the motivation for this book – to help others benefit from my own experience in seeing the Bible through the eyes of oral learners.
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During the past couple of decades, many Christian educators and communicators have realised that our traditional western style of preaching and teaching fails to communicate effectively with the large proportion of our population (estimated at between 40% and 50%) who have difficulty with analytical, problem-solving based learning, and need an approach which is more story oriented. Many commercial businesses have moved to a more story-based training style for their employees.
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Learning to understand how oral learners benefit from a story-based approach to the Bible may also help those of us who are more analytically-minded teach and preach the Bible in a way will reach the hearts and minds of that large minority of the population who are left cold by our traditional teaching style.
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​Some questions for thought or discussion
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A young man I met at a conference in Holland said to me, “I always had trouble handling the kind of lessons I faced in school. Then a couple of years ago I discovered why – I’m an oral learner.” Do the characteristics of oral learners listed above ring a bell with you?
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​Do you have problems coping with the abstract, logical learning style followed in our western education system – or in the majority of our western churches?
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Do you find yourself instinctively visualising stories and events in your mind, and using those visual images to recall what you learned?
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Think about the sermons or teaching programs that have made the greatest impact on your life, and remain the most clearly in your memory. What features of these sermons/teaching programs made the most impact on you?
If you are studying in a group, compare your thoughts with one another.
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