Feb 6, 2020 | Teachers Talking
In our culture adrift on a storm-tossed sea of moral and spiritual confusion, our young people are looking for meaning and significance. Last year, a news report shocked many. A young pharmacist lost her life when she took drugs at a music festival. How could a person who has expert knowledge regarding the effects of drugs succumb to their usage? As teachers we are heart-broken when we hear of highly intelligent students who have achieved excellent exam results making unwise choices. Our students may learn about sex education but have they lost the capacity for true love?
Well, may they ask as TS Elliot did, “Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
Clearly the lack of wisdom is not at its heart intellectual but spiritual and moral. Someone once said “The longest journey is from the head to the heart.” Just providing students with knowledge and information about the consequences of choices, though necessary, does not address the needs of their hearts. The happiness that this generation sees as the goal of life is transcendent in origin and nature. St Augustine understood that all human longings are on a quest for God. In our fallenness these longings are disordered loves as we substitute created things for the Creator. The Bible calls this idolatry.
James KA Smith rightly notes that ordering human desire is essentially an issue of worship – “our ultimate love is what we worship.” [1] and this is rooted in an imagined picture of human flourishing that governs how we act, think, choose and love.
So how do we help our students walk in wisdom and rightly order their loves for things around the universal reign of God? The Lord Jesus – the Logos – embodied true wisdom. He lived in a relationship of perfect love and submission to the Heavenly Father. As his people, the goal of Christian education must be to assist our students to gain a biblical picture of human flourishing, rightly ordering their longings for significance, meaning, worship, pleasure and achievement around the universal reign of God.
Christian teachers are called to the noble task of helping students to live in two kingdoms, to be in God’s Kingdom, displaying God’s wisdom but without being of the world that is shaped by the Spirit of the Age.
When we embrace education to raise students who live wisely, we do so in the knowledge that we are not subservient to the dominant narrative of our culture, but as citizens of the Kingdom of God’s Beloved Son. By God’s grace, through our forgiveness and redemption, we have been set free to re-imagine our educational task.
• How do we help students to see the damage and brokenness of having ‘god-substitutes’ to centre their lives on? What are the idols of this age?
• How do we structure our teaching and learning in ways that will touch their hearts? Do we pray and ask the Holy Spirit to work in the lives of our students in specific ways?
Psalm 119: 103-104 – “ How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path.”
Grace and Peace
The Team
The Excellence Centre
[1] J Smith. Desiring the Kingdom
Feb 6, 2020 | Teachers Talking
As the story goes two Aussie sailors went on shore leave when their Navy vessel docked in London. They headed for a hotel where they proceeded to become inebriated. By the time they were heading back to their ship, it was a dark, foggy London night. In their drunken state, they had no idea which direction to go. One sailor said to the other, “Do you know where to go?” In front of them appeared a Brigadier General dressed in full uniform. A sailor said to him “Hey mate, do you know where the dock is?” Aggravated by their lack of respect, the General said “Do you know who I am?” The sailors looked at one another and said, “Boy are we in trouble, we don’t know where we are and he doesn’t know who he is.”
This story reflects the dilemma of our culture. Who imagined that in the 21st century we would be asking the most fundamental questions “what does it mean to be human? And how do we live well?”
When our first parents rejected their Creator’s right to rule in their lives, to become masters of their own destiny, they became less of themselves. The Bible says living as if the Creator, the Source of all life doesn’t exist, is foolishness (Psalm 14:1). Humans seek autonomy – (taken to its Greek root it is ‘rebellion’) a desire to act independently from authority. The essential nature of sin is personal autonomy. Modern education pushes for autonomous individuals – those who are free to pursue their own interests in service of their own definition of fulfilment.
Through their education, young people are encouraged to use their learning to construct their own personal world in areas such as identity and gender, from a smorgasbord of options that will give meaning to their lives and make them happy. A sign at one of our universities reflects this understanding. “Unlearn truth – We’ve reimagined the way we teach, so our students can re-imagine the world.”
The role of the Christian teacher is to assist students to orientate their lives to God Himself who is the Creator and Sustainer of all things and as His moral creatures are called to worship Him and depend upon Him (John 15:5) “The end-stage of this kind of learning is the opposite of autonomy. Rather it is the wisdom of weakness – utter dependence on God.” [1]
As we are made for relationship with others, community is core to the culture and learning of the school, where interdependence is fostered. Research shows that valuing relationship through loving and contributing to one’s neighbour is effective in fostering deeper learning. In order to raise our students to live wisely, consider:
1. How can we assist students to see the foolishness of “being wise in your own eyes?” (Proverbs 3:7)
2. In what ways can we encourage students to reject independence and grow in dependence upon God and independence with others?
3. How do we unfold the wisdom of God found in Christ in a way that impacts every area of our students’ lives and learning?
May the Lord give you wisdom as you seek to inspire your students to go to the Source of Life and listen to His Word.
“…ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding…” (Colossians 1:9)
Grace and Peace
The Team
The Excellence Centre
[1] K Goodlet, J Collier, T George “Better Learning” –Deep Learning in the Primary School(Rhonda Robson)
Feb 6, 2020 | Care Conversations
I want to encourage us to think of virtues before we consider values. It is right for us as community leaders, especially of young people, to be shaping character and therefore emphasising virtues. But why, how and for what purpose?
We need to appreciate the two necessary components of developing character.
Firstly, the grace of God and secondly, human action.
Peter firstly highlights God’s grace and initiative as follows:
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and *excellence (virtue/power), by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the Divine nature…
[1] (*note excellence can be translated virtue and power – His very character)
So, it’s clear our knowledge of God, our restoration to His likeness, our sharing in His Divine nature are a consequence of His grace and His promises. . . all by Him!
Peter follows this directly with a call to human action:
For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ…
[2]
Peter goes on to say that if we “practice these qualities, we will never fall.” It is important to note that faith informs virtue and all the other attributes listed here supplement or support virtue.
So, Peter makes it clear that there is an effort to be made; an earnest desire and striving to grow and to develop God-honouring character. We can conclude that Grace does not cause us to lie around simply waiting for God to develop our character but, in fact, Grace motivates us to desire, seek and work towards that character revealed in Christ.
Before we continue, we need to try to define what we mean by “virtue”.
“Virtues find their origin in God the Father, their expression in the person of Christ and their enabling by the Spirit.”
How does that help us? More next week.
Blessings
[1] 2 Peter 1:3-4
[2] 2 Peter 1:5-8
Feb 6, 2020 | Care Conversations
Biblical, Christian Schools have had more of an impact on educational development than most people realise.
Christian Schools have always been keen to express their purpose through Mission and Vision Statements – the majority of schools everywhere, faith based or not, now have some form of purpose statements.
Most Christian Schools have service learning programs – a growing number of schools everywhere have adopted this position.
The majority of Christian Schools have a defined set of values that help to shape the nature of their communities and a vast number of schools around the world now readily proclaim their key values.
Those who know me, will realise that my critical question is always “Why?”. So, why have a set of values? Why choose the values that we choose?
Greek philosophers talked frequently of the values of a good society. They disagreed concerning why these values were important and the origins of such values. Protagoras, for example, suggested that, when discussing Truth – “humans are the measure of all things” – so the understanding of values for him, and many people since, is relative.
Plato attempted to see things more objectively, insisting that some values were “constant”. He was however, never able to satisfactorily give a good argument for such a claim. He tended to suggest that God (or other gods) did not initiate good values and behaviours, but endorsed them when He (they) saw them!
More recently, world leaders such as Benjamin Franklin, compiled a list of values that he saw as important, and he made strong efforts to build them into his life. He identified thirteen examples which he thought would cause a person to live morally. We could conclude that he did the right thing, for the wrong reasons. It would be reasonable to say that self-imposed values, without clear origins and purposes, simply results in a moralism.
The Gospel writers, as well as Paul, in his letters, spend much time helping us to see that legalism is not a consequence of what we do, but more an outcome of why we do it. Legalism rears its head when we attempt to determine moral status, for ourselves or others, simply by conformity to rules.
In our school communities we need to be careful in the identification of our values and encouragement of their practice, that we are not simply developing a humanist moralism. Is there something we need to understand before we consider values? Let’s explore that next week.
Blessings
Feb 6, 2020 | Care Conversations
This week’s Care Conversation will continue on our discussion from last week. Some have criticised Augustine, and latterly people like Jamie Smith, for their emphasis on the importance of the heart. We need to clearly see that they are not discounting knowledge and wisdom, but simply stating the great power and influence of desire.
“To recognize the limits of knowledge is not to embrace ignorance. We don’t need less than knowledge; we need more. We need to recognize the power of habit”
[1]
We are strongly influenced by our habits which influence our hearts. Our hearts are major determinants as to how we understand an interpret things and then how we act.
Often our habits are those of assumption and default. Many of our desires are learned in response to the norms of the culture around us, or the traditions of the communities we belong to. Just as habits can be formed by these things, habits can be recalibrated through new practices and imitation of the right virtues. We can develop new habits.
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. [2]
Paul tells us that the virtue of love is foundational. His introductory “therefore” means, that first of all we are to take note of all that has been said about the person of Christ before this instruction to the community.
Our hearts, which guide our desires and lives, are to be hearts captured by Christ, and not hearts that indulge prevailing self-interest.
It seems reasonable to conclude that our desires are a major driver of the way that we live life and that habits can influence our desires. It becomes vitally important that we, as educators, analyse our desires and habits so that they may better reflect the person of Christ. We are going to have a major influence on the environment for our young people and the habits that shape their desires.
Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
[3]
We remain thankful for the grace that shapes our desires in Christ.
[1] “You Are What You Love” by James K.A. Smith
[2] Colossians 3:12-14
[3] 1 Corinthians 11:1
