A Scary Bible Study

A couple of days ago I accompanied my eight-year-old friend, Divine, to church.

In the past I’ve made it a priority not to get talked into the Saturday service, but this time I was the only one who could take her and she had a choir practice that she was very anxious to get to. It started out business as usual; bible verses read aloud in French, Kinyarwanda, and English, and a few songs sung by the attendees every once and awhile. Soon, however, the rain interrupted things and we had to divide into two groups, adults and children. Because my date was a part of the second group, I followed close behind her as we were lead into a classroom at the university to begin our bible study.

I was seated with the children in a single-person desk that was way too small for me, and for the first few minutes I felt like Buddy the elf—a grown-up ushered to the kid’s table by mistake. Each child in the room kept sneaking glances at me throughout the three-hour lesson, enchanted as usual by the presence of an ‘umuzungu’ in the room-how lucky that the new student was so interesting! Eventually I settled into my new role and tried my hardest to pay attention to the Kenyan Saturday-school teacher in front of me, who began speaking in English very quickly and forcefully to the students.

“You did not memorize your verses. Did you eat food this week? Because the word of God is more important than any food you eat. Did you sleep? The word of God is more important. Did you study? You should know your bible verses before science and English and French.”

There was fire in her eyes as she scanned the faces of each frightened child, searching for a contradiction. I shrunk down in my chair, hoping to disappear. The only thing I could concentrate on was the fear of being called on.

“If you do not study your bible verses—if you do not do the work I give you each week, I will not teach you. I cannot teach children such as you. It is impossible. I will go to the big people and you will have to sit here in this classroom doing nothing.”

After a seemingly endless silence, I can only assume she gave up trying to put the fear of God in the children. Instead, she began a different approach.

“You need to be able to pray correctly. You must pray enthusiastically, fervently,boldly.”

She wrote it all on the board—the word ‘enthusiastically’ was misspelled, but I didn’t dare comment.

“Mary, show us how to pray,” she commanded, pointing at a trembling, soft-spoken 5-year-old in the back. The girl stood up and bowed her head, mumbling a prayer to the floor.

“I cannot hear you. Divine cannot hear you. You need to be loud—be bold, so that God can hear you. If he cannot understand what you are saying, how do you expect him to help you?”

Mary repeated whatever it is she had said the first time at the same volume.

“Sit down. You do not do what I ask. I cannot teach children such as you. I will go to the big people next week.”

The lesson ended abruptly and then the choir practice began, with songs that included lyrics such as “Jesus is a winner man, Satan is a loser man”.

Ah, Rwanda.