Tag Archives: Kingdom of Heaven

You are God’s Instruments

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st. francis

To my Class 8 Graduates this year:

Tomorrow is your day.  There will be much pomp and circumstance surrounding your achievements, and all ten of you certainly deserve this honor.  Soak it up and enjoy it.

But as you walk out the doors of our school for one last time tomorrow, remember that this celebration is not just a festive acknowledgement of the end of your time here in middle school, but also–much more so–an acknowledgement of the genesis of a very new stage of your life elsewhere.

Your impact for God’s kingdom has only just begun.

As one last challenge to you–if you happen to read this post–would you commit to saying the following prayer (attributed to St. Francis of Assisi) in the weeks leading up to the beginning of high school?  I think the words it contains will help remind you of the most important work that lies ahead.  (This is a truncated, slightly-modernized version–feel free to look up the original):

Lord, make me an instrument of peace.
Where there is hate, let me sow love.
Where there is hurt, let me bring your healing.
Where there is fear, let faith arise.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
And where there is darkness, let me be your light.
For it is in the giving that we receive.
It is in the loving that we find love.
It is in the dying that we are found.

I’m so proud of all of you.  See you tomorrow morning!

“Good Teaching”

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student

Good teaching is neither efficient nor can it be manufactured by methods and techniques. “To educate” literally means e ducere, or “to draw out,” and good teachers are–with God’s help–drawing their students toward Truth and wholeness.  This is by nature a gradual process, a process which involves a persevering relationship between real, fallen people–teacher and student alike.  Relationships are complex and messy, and life-giving ones require the inworking of the Holy Spirit.

If you want to learn how to teach a kid algebra, there’s a pretty clean, efficient method for that.  There’s even a standardized test that can give you immediate feedback on how you did.  But if you want to use math to lead God’s image bearers toward Truth and a life of wholeness and virtue, then roll up your sleeves and prepare for a long, inconvenient, and humbling journey, the end results of which you may never see.  But be encouraged; this is Kingdom work we’re talking about in the latter case, and if we are faithful in this work, we will enter into the joy of our Master.  If we are faithful in this work, our students will know good teaching.

Notice I said faithful, not successful.  “So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. (1 Corinthians 3:7)”  But that’s another post altogether . . .

The Kingdom of Heaven is NOT like . . .

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desks1

At what seemed like a teachable moment in math class earlier this week:

Me: “If you had to be completely honest, would you say that you are concerned about how well your classmates are doing in math, or are you just focused on yourself–your own understanding and performance?  Be honest.”

Several students (under their breath): “Ourselves.”

Me: “Okay, good.  Thank you for being honest.  Now, let’s compare this to our Christian community.  Should it be our concern if our fellow brother or sister is faltering in his or her faith or just generally needs some support in life at the moment?  What about someone we know but whose faith we don’t know about?  If they are struggling somehow in life, should we care?”

Several students: “Yes, of course.”

Me: “So how is that perspective different from how we view our learning in school?”

One student: “Actually it’s the exact opposite.”

Me: “Does it have to be that way?”

I got mostly blank looks after this question.  I think a couple of students may have mumbled, “I don’t think so,” but not because they were convinced; rather I think they probably felt like that was the appropriate Sunday School response.  One thing became very painfully clear, though: no one in the room had spent a lot of time, if any, imagining that the academic part of school might could (or should?) look more like true Christian community.  No one had spent a lot of time worrying about how his or her classmates were doing in school.

If Jamie Smith is right when he says that “all habits and practices are ultimately trying to make us into a certain kind of person1,” then what kinds of persons are the academic climates in our schools making?  In particular, what kinds of persons are the academic climates in our Christian schools making?  If the answers to these last two questions are not really that different from each other, then we have a big problem (or, I guess I should say “opportunity”) in our Christian schools.

If chapel and Bible class and prayer are the only ways in which our Christian schools look different from secular schools, then I think we are completely missing the point.  If we are not looking different–radically different–on the level at which the students live–in their daily reality, their economy, where they are told by the world (and us teachers) that things matter, where they are working day in and day out (and this reality in school is academics, where the currency is grades)–then we are making no difference, and actually we may be doing more harm than a secular school because we have set up a dualism that is more despicable than paganism.

Now one could make the argument that our students’ reality is actually at the level of relationships and acceptance and “likes,” and there is much truth to this and much work to be done in this arena as well.  But I want to focus on the reality that our Christian schools and us teachers have most direct control over, and with which we too easily acquiesce to the modern secular culture of individualism and competition–and that is the reality of academics.

Before this tirade gets out of hand (and please know that I’m implicating myself here as well), I’ll end with a quote from Alfie Kohn:

“Lending an even more noxious twist to the habit of seeing education in purely economic terms is the use of the word “competitiveness,” which implies that our goals should be framed in terms of beating others rather than doing well. When the topic is globalization, it’s commonly assumed that competition is unavoidable: For one enterprise (or country) to succeed, another must fail. But even if this were true–and economists Paul Krugman and the late David Gordon have separately argued it probably isn’t–why in the world would we accept the same zero­sum mentality with respect to learning?”2

– – – – – – – – –

1  Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, Jamie Smith, 2009

2  Against “Competitiveness”: Why Good Teachers Aren’t Thinking about the Global Economy, Alfie Kohn, 2007.

A Sheep, a Coin, and a Scoundrel

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sheepandtree

I used to think that classical Christian education was all about rigor and challenge – a “time tested” method by which to best develop intelligent, logical minds.  The “Christian” part came in I guess either when I gave an especially difficult test and students needed an “I can do all things through Christ” kind of prayer or when I needed to remind students that we, of course, do our best on this test to “bring glory to God.”  (Oh, and I made the occasional reference to “the revelation of God’s character in the order and beauty of math and science,” but I’ve only really begun to “get” the significance of that integration in the last few years.)

So students who had a natural aptitude for math and science loved me, particularly those who enjoyed a challenge.  Their parents loved me too.

Those students who worked really hard but just never quite “got it” became acquainted with a new level of frustration in my classes.  I felt bad for them; but hey, hard work in life doesn’t guarantee success (just ask a farmer).  Although I admired their hard work, my attitude towards them could best be described as pity.  My job was to keep the brightest students challenged.  As for those working feverishly in their shadows, well, “I hope they find a tutor who can bring them along.”

And then there were the students who lacked above average aptitude and either didn’t bother working hard or exhibited very poor work habits (granted those cases were the extreme exception).  Well, I just wrote those students off completely.  That was the “just response,” I thought, for not taking my class seriously.  I guess I kind of took their laziness personally.  “They’ll get the grade they deserve.”

Fortunately, not too long into my teaching career, God convicted me through the help of some very wise parents and the Gospel.  If the Kingdom of Heaven is like a shepherd leaving 99 sheep behind to go search after the one that is lost, or like a woman with 10 coins who turns her house upside down when she loses just one of them . . . well, if I am going to reflect the Gospel in my classroom, then I need to be willing to go after those students who aren’t the best, who aren’t staying up with the rest of the flock.

So I resolved to do just that.  Well, sort of.  As it turns out, I fell short of what I think Christ intended by these parables.  I started to pursue fervently those students in the second group above – that is, those who lacked the above average aptitude but worked their butts off.  I adopted the credo: if you’ll give me all you’ve got, I’ll run along side you all the way.  My new class mantra became, “All I want is your best.  As long as you’re giving me your best, I am pleased.”

In other words, I went to bat for that second group of students because I came to value their hard work in lieu of aptitude.  And boy did I come to love working with those students, mostly because doing so made me feel good about myself.  “Give me a hard working student over a really bright lazy one any day,” I would say, with noble affect.

You see, a lost sheep is still a sheep.  And sheep are fluffy and cute.  And, to a shepherd, each one has tremendous value.  Just like a coin.

Jesus’ parables made sense for the hard working student, but that student who refused to work hard or that student who just couldn’t ever get organized enough to be prepared for class – I still dismissed them both.  They weren’t lost sheep or lost coins, they were just lost.  Sure, I “loved them,” but pitiably so.

Last year God began a new work in me.  Okay, that’s too euphemistic.  He hit me in the face with a baseball bat.  He basically said three things to me:

1) Every child bears my Image.

2) You are only as good a teacher as your “worst” student thinks you are.

3) You need to learn to love grace as much as you love the truth.

So this year I set forth to pursue even the lazy student, even the flippant student, even the student who refused to get organized or refused to work hard or refused to assume responsibility for his or her academics.  But because these descriptions only apply to less than 1% of my students, I found that my “new plan” was actually more difficult – not less – to put into consistent action.  After all, it is much easier to serve the overwhelming majority and ignore those on the fringe.  Especially when your job is to “challenge and prepare academically able minds.”

In fact, a couple weeks ago I caught myself acting dismissively towards a student who not only failed to turn in a major assignment but also refused to come talk to me about it.  I finally had to confront the student a few days later.  When I offered an extension on the assignment, I received no gratitude in return.  “Not even an appreciation of my grace!  Why do I bother extending it?”  Yes, that was my actual thought.  Although I would never say it, I once again dismissed this student as feckless and “unworthy of my valuable time.”

So God took the opportunity this past Sunday morning to clarify for me the true meaning of Jesus’ parables of the lost sheep and lost coin.  Enter the story of Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus may have been a “wee little man,” but that is where any potentiality for endearment ends.  A chief tax collector in Jericho, Zacchaeus got rich by taking his own cut of the oppressive taxes levied by the Roman government.  Unlike the sheep and coin, which had practical value to both the shepherd and coin owner, Zacchaeus would have been considered a hated scoundrel by everyone who walked with Jesus that day, and perhaps justifiably so.

So we might expect Jesus, who always advocates for those who are given the short end of the stick, to take the side of the crowd when he encounters the immorally wealthy Zacchaeus peering down from the sycamore tree.  I can imagine someone in the crowd saying to Jesus, “Hey, this is our chance!  Tell Zacchaeus how wrong he is!  Put him in his place!!”  Or even, “Ignore that guy, Jesus, he has gotten rich off of our hard-earned money!”

But that of course is not what happens.  Jesus not only invites Zacchaeus down from the tree, but invites himself to be a guest in Zacchaeus’ house.

“So the people began to mutter, ‘He has gone to be the guest of a sinner!’

The crowd could not believe that Jesus didn’t choose someone “more worthy” to spend the evening with.  Jesus’ decision made no sense in their economy.  So Jesus has to remind them of Zacchaeus’ true identity: that he, too, is a son of Abraham.

Do we judge our students by their true identity (the Imago Dei), or by their academic efforts?

And then the story ends with the real kicker.  Jesus says:

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”

Those words ran through my heart like a bullet.  The “lost” aren’t just cuddly sheep and valuable coins; the lost are scoundrels.

And, when I thought about it, this is very good news for those of us who are scoundrels.  And, if we’re honest, isn’t that all of us?

The very next day I looked at my “problem student” a lot differently.  I pray that my actions towards this student follow suit.  Holy Spirit help me.  I must tirelessly pursue this student, because God has never stopped pursuing me.

So what does it mean to be a “Christian school”?  The longer that I’m on this journey, the more strongly I believe that if we are going to reclaim the integrity of true Christian education, we must aim to reflect the gospel in all aspects of our teaching.  For me that means I have to chase after not only the sheep, but the scoundrels as well.  In other words, I have to chase after the students who are just like me.