The previous professor, we were told, required the students in the final exam to list every King of Israel in order, starting with David up through the fall of Jerusalem.

We would not be asked to do this, he said, because he was against this sort of rote memorization. The important thing was that we know where to find it.

Welcome to education in the 21st century.

Now, to be honest, at the time I appreciated my professor’s enlightened view of examination requirements, and still do when it comes to the Kings of Israel (Zimri? Jehoahaz? Jehoash?). But this singular move in pedagogy is not so singular. It is a function of the world in which we know it: pulsating with so much information that the task of actually knowing any significant measure of it is so impossible that simply knowing where to find it seems much more reasonable.

Why take the time to commit anything to memory when everything you could ever want to know is a Google search away? Bill Keller of the NYT wrote last week in a nice line that we are slowly “outsourcing our brains to the cloud.”

But hiding in the shift from “knowing” to “knowing where to find” is a test in judgment and values. When we are forced to choose what we would like to really know and what we are okay with just knowing where to find, we learn a lot about ourselves and what we think is important.

Thus the unfortunate erosion of biblical literacy over the past 50-odd years.

In many congregations memorizing Scripture has become a thing of the past, or is even viewed as a calling-card for a type of theological position they are trying to distance themselves from. Sadly, Christian education practices in many churches have acknowledged that when it comes to the Bible it is, in fact, enough to know where to find it.

But can we even do that? I teach a good bit of adult Sunday school and I have my doubts.

Which is why I am so excited that Wilshire is about to re-start it’s Bible Drill program for elementary students. I’m told there is a whole history of why we stopped the program some years ago, but Bible Drill will soon once again be a part of children’s Wednesday night programming. Now, this is a great place to start–but I’ve got bigger ideas…

What about an adult Sunday school Bible Drill tournament? Start at the class level, then complete class vs. class until a champion is named. Maybe even have the adults go up against the children, possibly setting “father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother…”

There are a few kinks to work out, such as perhaps having age divisions due to the fact that the senior adults would mop the floor with the rest of us (ministerial staff included?…especially?) And then there is the issue of medium: do we have a separate iPhone app division? What about Droid? iPad? The wheels could easily come off.

Now, of course, there is certainly a difference between reciting a verse or passage from scripture and truly knowing it. But it’s not a bad place to start.

Anne Lamott tells a story about a Hasidic rabbi who encouraged his people to study Torah because it would put Scripture on their hearts. When one of them asked why on their hearts and not in their hearts, the rabbi answered, “Only God can put Scripture inside. Reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.”

I’m okay with outsourcing some things to the cloud. But other things we need to keep a little closer to home.