In youth ministry, we have all cringed at one time or another when we thought of teaching the Torah, also known as the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Bible – to teens. To be honest, some of us cringe at the idea of teaching any parts of the Old Testament to students. We think about seemingly endless genealogies in Chronicles or portions of Genesis. We think of repetitive laws in Leviticus and Numbers. We might think of the list of David’s mighty warriors in II Samuel. Regardless of our own personal list of reasons why we cringe, the fact remains that we do. Sometimes we’re so busy cringing that we forget there are actually wonderful things the Old Testament can teach teens.
Perhaps one of the issues that makes us cringe when we think about teaching the Torah to students is we don’t expect them to have any interest in such things. Some of us have had bad experiences trying to work our way through the Torah. We’ve gotten bogged down in Leviticus, or we got bored in the latter part of Exodus with the repetitious passages about the gifts the various clans brought for the Tent of Meeting. The idea of teaching Leviticus 16 to students is, in our opinion, crazy. Yet students don’t always think the same way we do as ministers. It is true, trying to teach a lesson about one of the genealogies may prove unfruitful. But there are a variety of passages that are often glossed over or never talked about with students that can be very helpful to them in their spiritual journey.
Having taught the Torah to students on various occasions in my time working with teens, I can say without reservation these teaching times have been some of the most profitable and well-received that I’ve had. It can sometimes be easy to forget, in our rush to help teens deal with the veritable maelstrom of temptations and problems they face, that the Torah is where our story as God’s people begins. Within the Torah we have the creation account, the cycle of sin-judgment-hope that repeats throughout the first eleven chapters of Genesis, we have God’s choosing of a single family to bring about his purpose; we see that family become a great people, and eventually a nation with land and descendants.
Students need to hear the stories contained within the Torah. They need to be able to ask questions and search out what God is doing. The narrative portions of the Torah can become companions that students can relate to as they walk through life. Apart from becoming encouragement for students, the narratives of the Torah (and the entire Old Testament) help students to see how God has interacted with people in the past. It lets them see God as more than a deity to be prayed to and worshiped, but as One who is intensely involved with his creation. Obviously Jesus comes to mind as the best example of this, but the Torah contains a wealth of stories illustrating how God interacts with humans. The legal portions of the text can be a huge help in communicating theology to students.
A great illustration out of the legal portions of the text would be the theological concept of atonement.
The Day of Atonement is central to understanding a number of ideas and concepts within the Bible. First, it is one of the reasons the Temple was so important. Second, it plays a role in later biblical stories. Third, it helps to give perspective on why Jesus had to die when he came. Fourth, similar to number three, the writer of Hebrews presupposes a knowledge of the Day of Atonement. The list could go on. Even with these important reasons to teach the Day of Atonement to students, I have met very few youth ministers who do more than mention it. So, how could a youth minister manage to teach the Day of Atonement to students without putting them to sleep?
Speaking from my own experience, one of the most important aspects of teaching the Torah to keep in mind is we, as youth ministers, need to know the material. If we don’t really have a grasp on what happens in a particular story or passage of the Bible then we have no business teaching it. At first blush, Leviticus 16 seems a bit dull. However, when one examines the passage in the ESV or JPS things become a little more exciting, based on decisions the translators made in how to render some Hebrew words. For instance, the ESV renders the Hebrew la’azazel as “for Azazel” whereas the NIV renders the same Hebrew word as “scapegoat.” The ESV turns Azazel into an entity. Azazel is actually a desert demon in Ancient Near Eastern thought and mythology. The word literally means, in Hebrew, “angry god.” So, it is fascinating that God would choose to use this imagery in one of the most sacred rituals that he gave to Israel. How can any teen resist desert demons? Almost instantaneously the potential interest level of students has gone up! Certainly, we don’t want to teach the Bible as entertainment for students but bringing up something like Azazel could very quickly bring up some excellent questions. The backgrounds of the text are more than simply ways to generate questions as well, but for the sake of brevity let us continue. Some of the questions students have asked me include:
“Does this mean there are other gods?”
“Why would God want to send a goat to a demon?”
“Why did God send one goat away at all?”
“Does the goat get eaten!?”
By bringing up this bit of Ancient Near Eastern background to the text, students were immediately engaged in what the text said. This allowed discussion to take place, and hopefully a bit of learning as well.
Students really are more capable of digesting difficult information than youth ministers give them credit for.
The most important thing I have learned when it comes to teaching students the Torah is that we have to be good storytellers. As youth ministers, we love to tell stories. We tell stories about our lives, or we seek out illustrations from popular culture. At other times we may tell stories revolving around our community or our particular ministry in order to make a point. The Torah is really one big story. It covers thousands of years; there are breaks; and the cast changes from time to time, but the overall story is the same. Because of this, the best way to teach the Torah, in my opinion, is to start at
There is another reason we sometimes shy away from teaching the Torah to students. We may not like to admit it, but at times we don’t know the material well enough ourselves. We know the creation story like the back of our hand, and we can talk about Abraham and Isaac. We can certainly talk about Moses and the burning bush. We can talk about the twelve spies who went into the land and how God promised to save Rahab. We know the big stories, but what about the little ones that connect them? Stories like when Dinah was raped, or when Jacob makes a deal with God that he will make God his God if God protects him while he journeys to Haran. Stories like Balaam and his donkey, or the journey to Mt. Sinai. These stories are part of the narrative that comprises the Torah. They link together the disparate stories of the patriarchs and the Exodus into a cohesive whole. Without these stories the overall narrative breaks down and becomes extremely difficult for students to put together in their minds as the overarching metanarrative – God interacting with his people.
It is true that many students have learned the big stories of the Torah in Sunday school as they grew up. However, it is unlikely those same students could put together the story the Torah tells without large gaps. This is not to say that someone needs to know the Torah front and backwards to become a good Christian, but knowing the Torah well certainly will help one understand God more, and as such to strengthen one’s relationship with him. God himself comes to life in the pages of the Torah, and he comes to life even more so when students can see for themselves the story the Torah tells, from beginning to end. There certainly will be portions of the story that are less exciting than others, but there is still an importance to learning those portions of the story. Students need to understand we are not dealing with disjointed fairy tales but the story of God and his dealings with humanity.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate this is with another story. If anyone has ever read the Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, and then watched the movies directed by Peter Jackson, you know Jackson’s version leaves out many things. There are a variety of reasons for this, but the fact remains that Tom Bombadil is nowhere to be found in Jackson’s version, whereas several chapters are devoted to him in the original books. In the same way, other characters and backstories are condensed. The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is still excellent, but it pales in comparison to the books. In similar fashion, when we omit important stories from the Torah for any other reason, we create a condensed movie version of the Torah that does not attain to the heights of the original.
It is even worse when the Torah not only is taught without the obscure “connecting” stories, but when those more well-known stories are taught out of order to correspond with a topical format. To be sure, there is nothing wrong with topical teaching, but to teach portions of the Torah only every three months when one of the major stories fits well with a topic that is being covered reduces a student’s understanding of the Torah to little more than illustrations. Jumping around from story to story may suit a topical format, but it will not help students grasp the story the Torah presents. This story is full of people to whom students can relate. It follows God and his dealings with humanity from Creation to the death of Moses, his servant. The Torah shows us God never gives up on humans, even when they give up on him, and gives us the foundation for everything that comes later – the former and latter prophets, the gospels, Acts, and the epistles – and prepares us for the finale in Revelation. None of the rest makes sense without the Torah, and the Torah does not make complete sense as disjointed stories. Students need the stories in the Torah, and they need to hear them starting with Genesis.
Students also need youth ministers who know those stories, and not just as individual illustrations, but as one story that runs from Genesis to Deuteronomy – and beyond. The best way to learn these stories is to read them in the Bible. We need to read them again and again until we have a grasp on them – until we can pass along the stories as confidently as we might pass along ghost stories around a fire at our next summer retreat. For those who have the time and opportunity, taking a class on the Old Testament, or on the Pentateuch, at a local Bible college or seminary might be helpful. Reading some commentaries on the Torah dealing with its Ancient Near Eastern background could yield illustrations or ways to get students interested in the story, like the Azazel example above.
Already, as youth ministers, our time is stretched thin. We have sporting events to attend, lessons to prepare, retreats to plan, staff to train, meetings to attend, and the list goes on. How can what seems to be such an obscure area of the Bible warrant more of our already too limited time? Yet, students need to know the Torah as much as they need to hear our thoughts on sex, drugs, and dating. Students need the Torah, and as youth ministers, so do we.
So, we may cringe at the idea of having to read through the Torah in order to be able to teach its lessons, but the importance cannot be denied. Even a passage as obscure as
