I found your site thanks to Think Christian.net. Thanks for your article.

As for the TMS, excellent choice, in my opinion. It was a huge help to me in college.

You noted a challenge to scripture memory, and I have experienced that challenge as well. I would like to note an additional challenge: our societal conditioning. (whoa. fancy sounding, eh?)

That is to say, our culture, with its very high literacy rate and with its information capturing technology, removes the “burden” of memorizing anything. In fact, quite the opposite. An extremely important skill today is that of “skimming.” How often are people caught off guard because they didn’t really read that email, but rather skimmed it. Given the fact that 300-400 emails a day is normal for me and most of my co-workers, I can understand why it happens. (It is true that most of the emails I receive, I delete without opening, but just going through that many subject lines tends to numb the brain…)

Here’s an example of the conditioning against memorizing anything: someone starts to give me directions to their home. About half way through, I stop them and say “I’ll never remember all of that. Wait, I’ll write it down.” Actually, what I usually say is: don’t bother with directions, just give me your address and I’ll get a map off of http://www.mapquest.com.

Or how about this situation: when I am in a meeting, I am given a printout, there is typically a PowerPoint presentation to watch while the speaker speaks, and I know that if I miss anything during the meeting, I can always down load the notes and possibly even a video of the meeting later. So why remember anything from the meeting? I can always review its content later if I feel like it.

At church, if I like the message, I can pick up a CD of it on the way to my car. Or, I can sit at home at my PC and watch a streaming video of the entire sermon. So why memorize anything that was said?

I am told that in Jesus’ day the opportunity to write something down was very rare, compared to our society. What that means, I suspect, is that if a rabbi came to our region, and I left my trade for the day and walked for miles to hear him talk about “blessed are the poor” and “would you give him a snake?” and “the man who built his house on the sand” etc. and I had no ability to take notes (and no chance of buying the CD), I would instinctively be motivated to memorize at least some of what he said.

I am told that about 5% of the population could read in Jesus’ day. But even for those who could read, who learned perhaps through Beth Sader, memorization was still a highly valued part of their training. Children were taught to memorize Torah starting at age 4 or 5, according to Ray Vander Laan (http://www.followtherabbi.com/Brix?pageID=2753&article=3979)

Today, we never memorize anything. Memorization goes against our cultural conditioning.

All the more reason to memorize! For I suspect it will bring back a very important need for the human soul: meditation.

Thanks again for your article!