Dylan Kwok is a 22-year-old video game designer studying at Nanyang Technological University. He has been teaching Sunday school at Kampong Kapor Methodist Church to Upper Primary students for the last three years. / Illustration by Caitlin Low
Young Voices
Why aren’t our youth studying
the Bible like they study for exams? What I find curious, then, is that when it comes to spiritual training, some churchgoers do an about-face. Parents driven to get their children into top schools seem unconcerned about what their kids learn about the Bible. And youth driven to study esoteric topics like medieval Asian history and quantum mechanics so that they can secure places in prestigious tertiary institutions begin to question why they should study parts of the Bible they deem irrelevant to their daily lives, like the Old Testament kings and prophets. Why the stark contrast? I wonder if it is because churchgoers prioritise secular training and education over biblical training.
I
If so, this begs the question: why is this so? n spending part of my growing up years in
Why don’t we give biblical training the time
church in Singapore, and now as a university
and seriousness it deserves? After all, we are
student and Sunday school teacher, I’ve
talking about the Book that instructs us about
observed something curious.
the eternal consequences of our life choices.
At age three, Singaporean children start
From my observations, I believe there are two
learning two languages. At seven, they
main factors: the first seems to be a tendency
spend 30 hours a week in school, with tuition
to avoid teaching advanced biblical truths to
classes and CCAs pushing this nearer to 40.
the youth. Fearing perhaps that their charges
At age 12, they take a national exam that will
will not understand and thus lose interest, or
determine their future for at least the next
that they are already bogged down with school
four years. By age 16, they will have learnt
work, the youth are taught stripped down Bible
rocket science.
stories, with shortened narratives and simplistic lesson points.
While a lot of ink has been spilt over whether the student workload in Singapore is too heavy,
If we taught children math and science in the
rarely does the public debate the difficulty of
same way, they would never get past fractions.
the material itself. We seldom hear, “Is calculus too difficult for teenagers to learn?”
However, because this meagre spiritual training creates little impact in the lives of the youth,
Instead, there is a presumption that given
many end up perceiving biblical training as
enough time, students will master it.
being ineffective.
July 2022 Methodist Message 25
