May 26, 2022 | Teachers Talking
At the dawn of a new century (1799), it seemed fitting that Beethoven composed his first symphony that was recognised as changing the concept of the symphony genre. This symphonic master created a musical score regarded as a masterpiece and was praised for its originality and its beauty and brilliance in design and performance.
A symphony is an elaborate composition for a full orchestra notated in a musical score. Orchestral musicians play from their part which contains the notated music for their own instrument. The Conductor serves as the messenger for the composer. It is their responsibility to understand the music and direct the musicians so they can transmit a unified performance of the score. Put simply, the Conductor keeps the musicians in time and together through a language of gestures that can sculpt the music line, tease out the nuances and re-imagine an old piece anew.
Our loving Creator has written the score that plays out in creation, in history and in community. In the Old Testament, the Hebrews believed that God made a good world. What Adam messed up, YAHWEH would sort out through Abraham. The themes of creation, judgement, and the hope of salvation play out through the intricate connections between Genesis and Malachi. The hope is that all creation will flourish “You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace, the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:2) “Knowing requires listening to the eloquence of this creation as it sings its praise or groans its painful cries to the Creator.” [1]
Like the music in the symphony, the Scriptures reach their crescendo in the revelation of God among us. As we read, ponder, study, and believe the Gospels, we find the entire score in focus before us in the inviting presence of Jesus. Only in the light of the person and Gospel work of the Messiah does our story make sense. Death, the ultimate tyrant, has been defeated and the resurrection has sent shockwaves through the cosmos. Hope has come rushing in as the new creation is ushered in. Jesus is the King, a ruler who brings rescue, renewal, and reconciliation. The whole creation has been re-awakened and is being put right. The ancient hope that the glory of God will fill the whole earth is coming true and our students are invited to be responsible players in this recreation project under the direction of the Holy Spirit, just as each individual musician plays his piece of the score in sync with the others under the direction of the Conductor. The Composer’s score is now implemented by the whole orchestra. Because Christ is making all things new, one day the whole creation, the new heavens and new earth, will be flooded with the Triune God’s presence. The central vision of creation history will be finally realised – as humans live in perfect communion with God and one another for eternity.
The Bible story engenders hope because it not only engages with events facing our students in the world today but with the long scale of cosmic history. “… hope is the new world a-coming, because this world is the next world a-building.” [2]
The ultimate goal of all Christian belief is that we live for the glory of God. So, the end is where we start, for we begin a journey by first deciding on a destination, otherwise like Alice in Wonderland, if we don’t know where we are going, any road will take us there. “In my end is my beginning”, said TS Elliot [3]. Now is the time to help our students walk in the tension of living in a broken world while embracing the hope that their lives are part of God’s great purpose. Our school acts as a signpost and a foretaste of life lived in the Kingdom of God.
“Nobody can change stories unless an alternative story is made richly available with great artistry, love and boldness.” [4]
We need to share stories of God’s people who in times of great need, embodied faith, hope and love that brought new life in Christ to communities amid pain and suffering and ask the deep questions about their desires to be what they were made for. This recognises that being faithful to the truth can be difficult and can make life even messier.
We will seek to develop in our students a love for and dependence on God and relationships of interdependence with others. Students need to see that their greatest need is God’s grace. Therefore, we will enter with our students into the exploration of what it means to be human in a culture where language is detached from meaning, truth is detached from reality and thinking is shaped by their desires and appetites. Teachers will help students to experience the presence of God in the curriculum as they trace the wonder and wisdom of His design in creation.
Locating students in God’s story is about knowing and embracing the Biblical story that reveals truth about the Fall and the Redemption and Restoration of Creation, through Christ. This will involve a wholistic view of reality – the history of ideas and their impact on civilization, philosophical beliefs that create culture, different world views, literature that feeds the imagination and engages with truth and in Science and Mathematics that reflect God’s creative design. We are to structure life-orientating teaching and learning both within and beyond the class that will engage their heads, hearts and hands in learning and lead to service that reflects love of neighbour.
Like Pilgrim’s companion Hopeful, who was with him when he fell into despair in the depths of Doubting Castle, we will remind our students who their God is and what He has promised. For our story is one of kept promises. May we tell our ancient story in ways that will captivate the imaginations and hearts of our students that together we can enter the plot of the story and carry it forward. “The story I had heard a thousand times turned out to be the story I had never heard at all.”[5]
“But in keeping with the promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and earth, the home of righteousness.” 2 Peter :13.
Grace and Peace
The TEC Team
[1] Brian Walsh, Education in Precarious Times: Postmodernity and a Christian Worldview, (The Christian Teacher’s Journal, 2002) 8.1, 10.
[2] Os Guinness, Unspeakable: Facing Up to the Challenge of Evil, (California: Harper Collins, 2006), 152.
[3] Thomas Stearns Elliot, The Complete Poems and Plays, (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co, 1952), 129.
[4] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2111), 35.
[5] P Kingsnorth, The Cross & the Machine, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2021/06/the-cross-and-the-machine
May 25, 2022 | Teachers Talking
Excarnation, known as defleshing, commonly referred to the ancient practice of removing the flesh and bones of a dead person, leaving only the skeleton. In medieval Europe, this practice was carried out on deceased kings and military commanders, so their bones could be transported hygienically from distant lands to their home, where they could be buried and revered. “Practising excarnation on the dead gives meaning; practicing excarnation among the living is destructive, violent, death bringing.” [1]
There is no doubt that contemporary society has defleshed the human experience using digital technology, particularly through social media. It is part of the air we breathe and is woven into the fabric of everyday life. It is the ‘campfire’ around which we tell our stories and has become a lens through which we see the big picture of life.
A student, in my office for continually misusing his phone, was highly distressed when I took it from him and said that his parents could collect it from the office. Underlying his distress was his desperation to stay connected online with his friends and he was willing to sacrifice his learning to keep checking in with them. This was “the fear of missing out”. He reflected what is true of many in our culture, that the device has become an idol that leads to dependency.
Erwin Lutzer (2013) warns:
“We are raising a generation of young people obsessed with
mobile devices and enamoured by triviality. Many teenagers
send more than a hundred texts a day and carefully craft an
exaggerated image of themselves on Facebook. From there
they often go to dark places online that feed their basest
desires, leading them to forsake healthy peer and family
relationships.” [2]
In Babel they used a new technology (Genesis 11: 3) to build a tower to create a name for themselves by concentrating their power, rather than to obey the creation mandate to fill the earth. In this case, technology became a means for people to act independently from God and seek to be masters of their own destiny. It is easy for our students (just like us!) to become self-focused and self-promoting through online platforms designed this way. Students are often trying to construct their own virtual
identity in cyberspace and this means they can increasingly live a disembodied existence. They are defining themselves by comparing themselves to others. The change in the way people communicate is having a significant impact on relationships. The normal boundaries of face-to-face communication can be easily violated and the power of evil and brokenness intensified. Many of our young people are subject to a virtual world culture where you can be cancelled or de-friended by the press of a button.
It is vitally important that students are trained to live faithfully in a technology-saturated world. Schools run cyber-safety courses for students and parents. But just having information and skills about how to be safe online does not address the heart issue. Students who have suffered online bullying often refuse to tell anyone because they cannot bear not to be connected through their devices.
Learning needs to encourage students to be shaped by a vision of the Kingdom of God. God designed people to live in community and so teachers need to focus continually on building their classes as places where grace, truth, forgiveness and generous self-giving love are demonstrated. In this context, students can be encouraged in their learning to accept and appreciate their unique identity as image-bearers of God as a gift. Rather than having the terrible responsibility to construct their own identity online, Christ frees them to explore the purpose which He has called them.
Several years ago, when I took a team of students to Uganda to work in three schools in very poor areas of Kampala, they were not allowed to take their own mobiles. Each one could ring home on the school phone every three days. The students who were actively engaged in serving the children and demonstrating God’s love to them, commented later that they did not miss their phones at all. They were living out what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus in the real world.
Teachers also have the responsibility to plan curriculum that supports a deep examination of the big ideas within a framework of the Biblical story.
For example, students can critique the following statements:
- Friendship on social media has been reduced to data connection.
- Human wellbeing has been withered to individual satisfaction.
- What do friendship and human wellbeing look like when shaped by the Kingdom of God?
Teachers can assist students to re-imagine a world where digital technology is used wisely to bless others. This means developing through learning an appreciation of the role it can play in humans exercising dominion over creation, so that people can experience the goodness of God and flourish. There is a need to provide opportunities for students to use digital technology to express their creativity in the service of others. Teachers and students are to be God’s people, living under the rule of King Jesus, in the place where we are planted and being agents of His new creation. Let us help our students to live God-glorifying lives in their bodies.
“ I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God- this is your spiritual act of worship.” (Romans 12:1)
Grace and Peace
TEC Team
[1] Michael Frost, Incarnate: The Body of Christ in an Age of Disengagement, (USA: Inter-Varsity Press, 2014), 11.
[2] Erwin Lutzer, Beware it could be destroying your Soul,
https://www.moodymedia.org/articles/beware-it-could-be-destroying-your-soul/ , 2013
May 25, 2022 | Care Conversations
Last week we reflected upon the amazing grace of God achieved through the actions of Jesus that we can see spelt out in Romans 5:1-2. But there is more…
Romans 5:3-5 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Paul outlines another amazing truth: that our suffering has a positive purpose.
We are called to see, and believe, this Godly connection between rejoicing, suffering, endurance, character, hope and love.
“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.”[1]
When the Bible talks about “Tribulation” we tend to interpret that word negatively. We do this because we see all things from the basis of how things affect us. So, our perspective becomes “how am I affected?” rather than what we believe about God and the Bible.
The word “Tribulation” arises from a farming tool that was used in Biblical times. A Tribulum was a heavy piece of wood that had sharp metal and stones embedded in its base. The farmer sat on top of the Tribulum, and it was pulled over crops that had been cut down, in order to separate the grain from the chaff. Its purpose was to separate the good and useful from the unnecessary. The Tribulum had a positive purpose. Paul is suggesting that our tribulation, or suffering, also has purpose.
Let’s expand upon that next week.
Blessings
Brian
[1] Quoted by Dr Joseph R Nally, Jr., Third Millennium Ministries (Thirdmill).
https://thirdmill.org/answers/answer.asp?file=48971
May 25, 2022 | Wens Pen
Hello Everyone
God doesn’t need us, but He wants us. CS Lewis noted that “God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them.” Acts 17:24-25. When we contemplate God who is so magnificent, ultimately, we realise it is impossible for us to fully comprehend the magnitude of our breathtaking God and the depths of His heart of love. His creation is so majestic that to take a moment to contemplate just one aspect of God’s handiwork would take us on a million detours as we explore the elaborate details that God has shaped into creation and into making us. We as human beings are exquisitely crafted and are not the result of some random cosmic experiment on the part of God. We are the dream and expression of God who authored us; each of us unique. We are the centrepiece of His creation, intricately and marvellously made. Amazing! So, what is rather curious is the fact that God did not need any of what he created. Yet look at the brilliance of His artistry and creativity. The very fact that God doesn’t need us, but He wants us is a humbling experience for us as His creatures.
It is quite confronting that God doesn’t need us, but He wants us because it shows His true heart for us. As the great architect of every living thing, God had such a grand vision for the created world and particularly human beings that He imagined us, designed us, and formed us to enjoy Him and all He made. Only God could have thought up our creaturehood and personhood to be made in His image. Ha, so, can you imagine the imagination of God? In my finite mind I envisage God in His creative gallery; a room that has multi-dimensional design spaces because one room could not contain His master plans for all He envisioned to make. And then God spoke and formed the whole universe out of nothing; all of creation fashioned by His mighty hands including human beings who He breathed His very breath into, and who He put on display as the jewel of His creative work. This is the magnificent work of God. Yet He created something He never needed. Why? God doesn’t need us, but He wants us, and His unfathomable, unimaginable, uncontainable, love compelled Him to make us so He can love us and know us. He bears us in His heart. How extraordinary is that?
It is even more significant that God doesn’t need us, but He wants us, when we realise that God knew all along what this act of love would cost Him. He knew people would reject Him and spoil His good creation. God could have looked upon His broken artwork and simply pressed His destruct button and in an instant, we would be obliterated. Yet He made us anyway, never needing us or the world. He loved us before we broke everything, and He loved us after. That is the expression of supreme love, and it was outworked as a supreme gift when He gave His only son Jesus who paid with His life to perfect us rather than destroy us. As you read this today, know that you have life not because God needs you, but He wants you and loves you.
So, friends, get your “God wants you” on today.
Best days to come.
Wen
May 17, 2022 | Hope_Tina
My grandchildren play a game called Bugs Building. It is a form of Jenga where all various coloured blocks (bugs) are stacked on top of each other and built into a tall tower. The goal is to remove the blocks without causing the tower to crumble. The more blocks that are removed, the weaker the structure becomes. One by one the blocks come out of the tower and the hope of it continuing to stand becomes less and less, until eventually, the inevitable happens and it crumbles to the ground.
The postmodern philosophy that has shaped the 21st century has grown out of the large philosophical sweeps of thinking that have evolved and progressively removed the building blocks of faith and belief in God. A world devoid of God becomes a desolate place as it cracks and shakes life to the core. In speaking of the western cultural elites who have disregarded God for more than two centuries, Dr Os Guinness notes “in the early twenty-first century, their movement from disregard to desecration to decadence is going mainstream.”[1] The end result of disregard, desecration and decadence that shifts the focus from God to humanity is finally a deep sense of hopelessness that runs through the veins of western culture as the structure crumbles, taking hope down with it.\
The world is collapsing like a set of dominoes under the weight of a globe that no longer believes in absolute truth and has either merged God into a blur, sidelined Him or killed Him off. The God-shape ponds of hope have become polluted with a murky philosophical alga that floats on the waters of life and blurs God’s revelation of truth and reality. As God’s foundations and structures of truth are progressively removed, (like the Jenga blocks in the kid’s game), the knock-on effect is the diminishing capacity for human flourishing and the erosion of hope.
Yet “God is sovereign over the course of history and the rise and fall of powers.”[2] God remains King and ultimately rules and with God on the throne, there is an enduring hope. Hebrews 2:18-20 tells us how we can all have real hope with belief. “We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go. It’s an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God where Jesus, running on ahead of us, has taken up his permanent post as high priest for us, in the order of Melchizedek.”[3]
To seek to kill God is to kill hope. God is the only hope for His world. Humanity is not capable of generating this type of hope. Our own corruption can only be redeemed by Jesus as He sets us firmly upon His rock of hope when we believe in Him as the way, the truth, and the life. John 14:6. This hope is external to us and flows directly from God. It rests on God’s solid foundations and makes hope possible as Christians live life according to God’s design.
God has entrusted this hope to His people who outwork the belief of the Christian faith. “It is genuine Christ-shaped love, . . . embodied in our . . . callings and spoken as a fresh word into our culture, that provides the ultimate answer to the follies and the false trails of our day.”[4] The presence of God in the world through authentic Christians who incarnate truth and love will be God’s way of pointing people to back Jesus and restoring hope to a lost world.
The world may think that God is irrelevant, redundant or dead and will live with the consequences of confusion, disorientation, and hopelessness of a godless culture, but the good news of belief in God, where God’s people live tethered to Him is a powerful expression of hope that beckons humanity back to build their lives on God’s solid foundations.
Friends, we live with the richness of hope with belief in God and must keep stirring up the Spirit of Truth in an age that needs Jesus more than ever.
Blessings
Tina
References
Guinness, Os. Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014.
Wright, Tom. Creation, Power, and Truth: The Gospel in a World of Cultural Confusion. London, UK: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2013.
[1] Os Guinness, Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 12-13.
[2] Ibid., 26.
[3] Hebrews 2:18-20, The Message.
[4] Tom Wright, Creation, Power, and Truth: The Gospel in a World of Cultural Confusion, (London, UK: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2013), 98.
