Since this is a summer for reflection, redirection, and assessment, I'm sitting here thinking about what areas of weakness I really should pay more attention to. 

You know me.... so what do you think?

What skills or areas of interest do you think I should concentrate on this summer to make myself a better person all-round and more productive in general? 

Note that I'm not asking for a discussion of favorite hobbies; I'm looking for an assessment of my weaknesses with recommendations.

So....if Coart & I were to write a book, like something targeted at the iBooks Author market (textbooks, manuals, how-to, non-fiction, etc) ....

what do you think we should write about?

So, it took me longer to get back to the Schools And Rules series than I'd anticipated, but teaching has a way of eating your life when you aren't looking. Plus I needed to let that pot simmer on the back of the mental stove for a few weeks (months?) to collect my thinking more clearly on the issue of rebellion.

First, a recap:

Schools and Rules -- Intro -- a case in Vermont of a Christian school kid who was suspended partly for questioning his school's dress code rules and other policies got me thinking about how Grace-in-Education might force some differences in the way we educators think about school rules

Schools and Rules (1)  -- Here, we discussed the idea that obedience to a human authority should not be equated with obedience to God's Law. If we teach kids that their consciences are bound by human legislation as if God Himself were speaking, we're inviting serious trouble once those kids learn to think for themselves about God's ethics and ours.

Schools and Rules (2) -- Disagreement isn't just "part of life"; it's healthy. When we refuse to discuss what students want to know -- even if they're being jerks about it -- we telegraph several really negative messages, including "adults don't have answers, they just talk" or "faith is too fragile for tough questions."

 If you're new here, I recommend reading those posts above or we run the risk of misunderstanding each other. And in the words of the inestimable Dr Michael P V Barrett, "I hate to be misunderstood."

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Any discussion of rule-keeping must raise the question, What about legitimate rebellion? Isn't that a sin? Or how about disobedience?

It's a hallmark theme in Scripture that we need to obey God's law (go search biblegateway.org for uses of the word "obedience" or "obey" .... go ahead, I'll wait .... huge list! Especially in Deuteronomy and then the historical books of the OT). And lest you think this is just an Old Testament thing (you don't really disparage the OT, do you? please don't do that), the NT has its big share of commands and exhortations to obey.

Disobedience (Scripturally) carries heavy penalties. For the nation Israel when they were in the Land, disobedience cost them everything. Failure to heed divine Law leads us into despair, ruin, and deep sin. Thankfully the Gospel is bigger than our abject failure -- more on that in a minute. But you can soak on verses like Nehemiah 9:17 for a while.

Rebellion is an even deeper sin, scripturally speaking. The province of men like King Saul or Pharaoh or Israel in the wilderness, rebellion is marked by stubbornness, an unwillingness to change, challenging God's authority with a stiff neck and upraised arm. It's a straight shot of disobedience with an arrogance chaser. (The biblical data for both of these words is abundant and easy to find -- run a biblegateway.org search on the terms and read up).

I want to draw a couple distinctions, limiting our discussion to the realm of school (parenting advice is above my pay grade), and suggest some Gracious ways for responding to disobedience and rebellion in the classroom.

 

DISOBEDIENCE

Rebellion is purposeful, measured, intentional. You might accidentally disobey a rule but you can't rebel against it without some forethought.

On the other hand, a student may disobey out of forgetfulness, inattention, laziness, or ignorance. Punishing students harshly for disobedience probably isn't a good idea until you've gotten some idea of what the situation is. God offers multiple examples of responding in mercy to our faltering attempts to walk in His ways. He didn't get out the big guns until Israel was in full rebellion.

And remember that natural consequences are a powerful teacher.... I don't need to bash my students for not doing their homework. The 13% they got on the reading quiz, along with the ire of their parents, will be corrective enough.

Disobedience when defined as "ignoring or contradicting a rule" isn't even wrong in all circumstances. Let's say there's a rule that says pedestrians should not be crossing an interstate highway. Fair enough. Good law. I hate having to dodge those crrrrazy pedestrians when I'm motoring up I-85. Now let's say I pull over because there's been a horrible accident in the median, and I need to cross 6 lanes of traffic to get to someone who's injured.  If the person bleeds out before I get there, I doubt "well, I didn't want to cross the road; I knew the State Highway Patrol enforces that law really tightly, Officer, so I wasn't able to get over to help that guy" will hold up as a legitimate defense. 

Coart likes to say "Every good rule will at some point become stupid." Why? Because rules are for stupid, foolish, sinful people. That's why we have them. Rules tend to be written for the lowest common denominator of stupidity.  Therefore, you will always find times when rules need to bend or break in order to achieve honest justice in a particular situation. If I don't cross the highway, I'm endangering a life. The rule needs to lose. 

(By the way -- the fact that rules tend to be written for LCD of stupidity suggests that maybe we shouldn't make so many new rules and policies based on a particular incident. Exceptional failure to exercise good judgment -- on the part of one student -- doesn't mean the rules are inadequate. It just means that kid was exceptionally foolish and probably needs to be treated as an exception.) 

Most of the time, classroom disobedience demands a timely yet gracious response from the teacher.  But not anger, insinuations of sinfulness, or condemnation.  

And we must always differentiate between "my rules" and God's Law.  If a student punches another student in the face, it's God's Law that undergirds the trip to the principal's office. Sure, schools have rules about physical interaction but the point is that punching your classmate in the face seriously violates the injunction to love one another. Unless the punchee was an attacker headed into the classroom to harm the students -- then the puncher is a hero. See? All rules must exist within a deeper biblical framework of ethics and we have to know the particular situation before we can decide whether "disobedience" has occurred.

More realistically:  I generally don't appreciate students talking while I'm teaching. So if someone is Chatty Cathy on the back wall, I will usually insist on silence for the sake of the other students. But what if I'm teaching Latin and the talker is actually trying to help her classmate understand how this new grammar about the genitive connects to the previous lesson on the accusative case endings? Yes, there's an issue of "time and place" to discuss -- and younger students especially don't have a good natural sense of what's appropriate and when. But for me to punish the student who's trying to be helpful to a fellow classmate and assist them in learning? Totally inappropriate. 

In fact, in most cases, disobedience works itself out especially in older students once calm correction is applied to the situation. If I have to pull a kid into the hallway for a brief talk, that usually ends the problem.  My investment in the life of the student carries significant weight, and their role in my classroom community matters as well. We both have a lot of stake in the classroom, so we both (usually) want peace. It can get hairy, yes, but patience and consistency and calmness (rather than labeling a kid as "disobedient") will bear good fruit over the course of the year. 

Oh wait -- you wanted a quick and easy route to the harvest of obedience? Sorry. 

REBELLION

But what about Rebellion? (It just needs a capital R.)

Good teachers and administrators intervene quickly when they sense rebellion, rather than disobedience, at the heart of a matter. And you can smell it.... really. The intentionality of rebellion, the arrogance -- hard to hide. And it's dangerous to the student himself and to the community of learners (who can catch his disease).

We should always take cues from God in His dealings with His people. God carefully disciplined Israel and her kings toward obedience for their own good. When people insisted, stubbornly, on rebelling against His authority, God brought in the big guns. Grace has a steel backbone. 

I've observed a few cases of rebellion during my years at NCS and both of our headmasters were patient, godly men who knew how to love a student enough to sit back and take questions (even when the kid was a jerk) in order to push through to find the core reason for the rebellion.  Occasionally, it didn't work out, and we lost the student. Some kids are so reckless and disobedient that they're dangerous to the rest of the school. Those kids gotta go if they refuse to change. (I guess that would be like Israel's exile?) But most kids start to calm down once they realize adults are actually LISTENING.  Once the questions get answered, once the alpha male (principal) lets the kid go a few rounds and get tired of fighting, things calm down. 

Thing is, you can't "control" rebellion any more than you can "control" or force a kid to obey. I realize that small children give parents the illusion that the parents can be in control of their kids' behavior....but it really is an illusion. And that illusion shatters as the children become teenagers.

Behavior is always a heart issue, and the only tool that works on a person's heart is self-sacrificial love. (But that's another post.)

 

~~~~~
I wish the Vermont school administrators had dealt graciously with the troublesome kid who refused to stop asking questions about school rules.

I get it -- I quickly tired of kids whining about the dress code.  BUT we always should be willing to engage in discussion about WHY the rules are what they are, and schools need to be willing to change outmoded rules or ones that aren't working. Some battles aren't worth fighting. NCS slowly tweaked its dress code over about 5 years' time, and I've heard fewer and fewer complaints.  

I'd like to wrap up with a shotgun list of applications and one recommended reading:

 

From Compliant Kids to Ethical Thinkers (John T. Spencer)

What an incredible blog. I don't know this guy but I think we're cut from the same cloth. Read his post -- it's short. Good fodder for today's discussion, and a great example from a public school classroom.

And my applications -- 

• Differentiate between disobedience and rebellion. They are not the same thing, and they should not be handled the same way when disciplining.
• Most disobedience is unintentional and needs to be corrected, not punished. Punishment is punitive; it's damage in return for damage. Correction is helpful and empowers a student to make better choices next time. 
• Rebellion is actually pretty rare in a functional community. It's probably a red flag too -- there's more going on in that student than a sudden desire to impale the rulebook. Dig deeper and you'll start finding upheaval, brokenness, abuse, fear, or anger.
• Don't confuse human authority with God's Law. Don't punish infractions of human rules as if they were breaking God's laws. That is a dangerous conflation and you will pay for it dearly as soon as a kid learns to think for herself.
• Natural consequencesof one's actions will always teach more powerful lessons than anything we can construct as a "punishment."  Stop sheltering kids from the natural consequences of their actions. It's God's built-in correctional facility for this planet and it works pretty darn well when we let it. That doesn't mean you throw a kid to the wolves or let him hurt himself, but it does mean that we all need to experience the reality that we create because of our choices. And that's a far more powerful tool for sanctification than demerit slips, long lectures, or detention. 

 

To wrap up this series, I think I'll offer a fictional case study of how I would have liked the Vermont teen to be treated.....

I guess nothing is more terrifying for a teacher than the realization that 99% of what you say will be forgotten (but much of what you DO makes a deep impression, and mistakes you make -- along with how you handle them and whether you're willing to apologize and repair the relationship -- make the deepest marks). 

Here I raise my Ebenezer (my "stone of help," the pile of rocks referred to in the OT as a reminder for something to be remembered).  I hope that, regardless of all the literature you forget and authors you ignore and grammar concepts you massacre in future papers, these ideas will stick:

A good kid isn't the kid who stays out of trouble. A good kid is the one who DOES good. 

Christian schools easily breed Pharisees and hypocrisy and judgmentalism apart from the daily reminder of the Gospel. The kids who stay out of trouble but add nothing to the life of the community --- these are not the "good kids."  In my experience, it's been the broken, screwed up kids who "get" the Gospel. They are the ones who learn that Grace always costs the giver, deeply. When you find yourself sitting back on your laurels and judging your fellow students for their stupidity, hypocrisy, sin, or failures.... remember that Goodness is active, not passive.  Avoiding trouble doesn't earn you any medals in God's economy.

 

Your job in this life is to leave this world better than how you found it, by the power of the Holy Spirit and the hope of the Gospel and for the sake of the Kingdom.

Want to find a career that'll feed your soul more than your wallet? Find the intersection of your talents and some gigantic problem in the world. Then find a way to make it better. THAT will be a fulfilling, meaningful career. Anything less -- especially a paycheck -- will suck the life out of you.  Your life is wound into the Kingdom. Live it. Love it. Throw yourself into it with reckless abandon.

 

God didn't screw up when He made you. So stop doubting your gifts, talents, interests, and abilities.

I can't explain why God creates dyslexic hyperactive photographers, moody musicians, happy-go-lucky carpenters, generous poor people, intellectual poets, or pensive filmmakers. But I've taught all of those and more.  See the point above. Your gifts will lead you to your fulfillment. Trust that your heavenly Father isn't a jerk. 

 

Never be afraid to ask the Truth the really hard questions. If it's really the Truth, it can stand up to any question you ask it.

I worked to make my classroom a haven for hard questions, difficult problems, the ideas that no one really wants to speak out loud. I know my students have faced failure, pain, suicide, depression, hatred, temptation, isolation, despair, rejection.  I know that some of you cry out to God in anger or hate or confusion because The Problem of Evil isn't just a theological textbook exercise to you. You've lived it... or you've watched a friend live the paradox of a loving God and a world full of pain.

Jesus Christ IS the Truth. He is so big and gracious, He can handle the questions. Go read the Psalms. David beats down the door of heaven with his cries at times. Take your deepest, darkest problems to the Throne of Grace and shut up and listen....until you find answers. 

And for the love of God (really), please don't dump pat answers on the head of someone else when they're hurting. 

 

The only definition of Sin that matters is the biblical one.

Culture and Christianity both offer lists of taboo actions and thoughts. Those lists don't matter unless they're biblical. The South may say, "A good man doesn't drink or chew, or run with those who do," but that's not actually a Scriptural definition of righteousness.  It's not OK to put man's laws in place of God's, or add to God's boundaries by redefining them more "safely," or try to sanctify yourself by laying on a thick layer of rules. 

You are the worst person you've ever met. If I lock you in a room by yourself, I've locked you in with the worst sinner you know.  Don't you dare blame your actions on your friends or the bad kids who smoke behind the school building. You're a sinner. You. 

Parents, don't play that game either.  A Christian school isn't "safe."  Stop making your school choice based on the people you'll let your kid hang out with. Instead, make your family life centered on biblical definitions of sin and a love that's so solid, it can handle the worst of people's sin without falling apart or tearing those people to pieces with your judgments. Live before your children the love of Christ, and they'll be a force for good, wherever they go to school. 

 

Love God as hard as you can with everything you are all the time.  Love your neighbor like you love yourself. These are the great commandments, and they encompass everything else.

Want NCS to remain awesome? Love others. Want to deal with the kid who annoys the snot out of you? Love them. Got a problem with someone? No doubt the problem is with you. So get over it and start loving ... because you are confident in God's love for you.

We used to say that NCS ought to limit its rulebook to 50 rules. As soon someone comes up with a 51st, then one of the old ones needs to be thrown out.  Rules cannot replace the positive demands of God's Great Commandments. You can't wiggle out of them.  I don't care who started it. 

 

Stop imposing your ideas onto the text. Let the words speak for themselves. 

One last dictum for my English students.   It's the biggest weakness of every student of literature -- they jump to unfounded conclusions, they quickly form opinions that aren't warranted, they skip the little details that make all the difference, they arrogantly run rough-shod over the authors WORDS.  Trust the WORDS.  Slow down.  Take time to think.  Don't tell me what you think it says. Tell me what it says. 

That is the foundation for all interpretation.  

 

Go forth, and LIVE.  

I realize it would be cliche to open this post with, "Wow, the years go by so fast!"

But they do. 

A mere 14 years ago, I stood on a scarlet & white church platform and pledged my troth to Coart Ramey. I had no idea what that meant.  I mean, I thought I did. But what did I know, what did I know of Love's austere and lonely offices? ("Those Winter Sundays," Robert Hayden)

[OK, you can call me on that one. Too melodramatic. LOL.  I don't get to claim Hayden's line.... haven't lived that kind of sacrifice yet. But I really DO love that poem. Anyway.....]

God is so good to us, to sweetly shove us into close proximity with other people and knock off the rough edges. Young love stands against the world, optimistic and passionate. It stretches for a marathon but has the experience only for sprinting. 

I'm going to unabashedly steal this from Coart. It's how he explains real love when someone asks:  

Every day I wake up and I have to decide if I'm going to love Coart more than I did yesterday. If I'm going to love him more than I love myself.

Every moment is a choice. It's not really about sparks, wild circumstances, crazy parties, sexy lingerie, or teeth-gritted endurance. Perhaps the frills are lacy and racy, and there are seasons where love is more about grinding, angry determination than a fluttering heart and the rich smell of a familiar cologne. 

But usually, love simply means that I have to decide to set aside what *I* want for the sake of another.  It's a beautiful, delightful sacrifice. 

God has indeed been good to me. He provided a friend-husband who loves deeply, thinks deeply, feels deeply, ministers with almost reckless abandon at times (you didn't think Coart had "reckless abandon" in him, did you?), goes out of his way to help people, and opens the Word of God to preach it with more clarity and authority than almost anyone else I know. (And I wish he had the chance to do it more often.) 

This photo absolutely cracks me up.  

 

 

We Americans don't have a good mechanism for memorializing and remembering big moments. The Israelites had their Ebenezers -- the "stones of help," a literal pile of rocks that would serve as a string-around-the-finger of one's mind, a trigger for the memory of what God has done that's good.

I have a lot of those that I could build from my decade at NCS, and hopefully I'll find the words for them here from time to time. 

Tonight, I'm pensive. Bittersweet.  Joey's imminent departure and Jack's leave of absence remind me that I'm winding down my own career at a school I've loved and labored at for so long. 

I think it's impossible to envision NCS apart from the men who have led it. Not that a headmaster can pull the cart by himself; the faculty do the day to day lifting for sure. But the headmaster sets the pace and tone of the staff, and his enthusiasm (or lack of it) plays a huge role.

NCS opened its doors about 13 years ago under the direction of Mr Maurice Lopez.  If I had to rank human beings in order from least to greatest, Maurice falls only a couple spots below the top. He's gracious, humble, wise, experienced, patient, even-keeled, calm.  Everything you want in a headmaster.  Later, he slid seamlessly out of the headmaster job and right into the math classroom, where he was able to teach ANYBODY math.  It was amazing.  And he had one of the most effective differentiated classrooms I've ever seen. Whiz kids sat in the corner and worked on a totally different advanced book while the class learned a different idea and struggling kids got all the extra help they needed. Incredible.

After about 18 months, Maurice handed off the lead job to Dennis Bills, who came to NCS with both pastoral and Christian school experience. His previous Christian school, The School Which Shall Not Be Named, had baptized him into administration through fire and hell. I'm not really sure why he was even willing to do the job again, but I'm so thankful he did.

Dennis was the headmaster who recruited us to be teachers, recognizing that a classical school needed teachers with strong humanities backgrounds and broad educational experience. He was the first person to introduce me to a school without demerits. I imagine my jaw hung open when he tried to explain that he didn't need to hand kids little pieces of paper with quantified levels of sin.... try talking to them. Correct them. Find the underlying issue and address the cause rather than the system.  My first-year inexperience tempted me to lust after the easy road of demerit slips, but I can't imagine going back. Once you've tasted the power of Grace in your classroom, you can't go back.

Dennis had such a presence in parent meetings. I would come into a meeting sheepish that I'd bungled a situation, making it worse due to inexperience or just bad decisions on my part. That never showed on his face.  He had our backs, and we knew it.  But he was also the consummate diplomat, finding a via media in thorny situations so that both parties left the room satisfied. 

Dennis stuck with us even when he wasn't sure we were right. Huge changes began to take root in 2005 and 2006; those were the infant steps in the direction of relational teaching, teaching redemptively, or Grace-based discipline. On paper, Grace-based education looks like a naive fool's errand.  "What? Make friends with your students? That's stupid. Unwise. Dangerous. Teachers don't do that."  Well, that's where the Holy Spirit was dragging us.... and it was uncomfortable for everyone.  Now I can look back and marvel that Dennis had the patience and forbearance to walk with his faculty down a road he wasn't even sure of, because he trusted that God was at work through his co-laborers. (And it was cool, on our end, to see God take Dennis on his own journey into Grace-based education once Dennis left for WV....but that's his story and he should tell it.)

It was hard to see Dennis go in 2006.  I mean, we'd been living next door to them our entire time in Anderson to that point! We'd shared suppers, Halo games, cheesy horror movies, and anti-cat rampages. (I refused to participate in the cat hunts.) To lose a man with so much stability and experience.... well, it was frightening.

The headmaster search committee of 2006 returned with the name Joey Thames and a photo from the CPC church directory of a half-Koren, all-redneck youngster toting a shotgun. I kid you not. 

It's hard to meet Joey and not like him instantly.  His laugh infects a room with joy and optimism. He tackles work with both hands, digging in and forcing everyone around him to join him in believing, "This is good!" 

I admire Joey for taking his entire first year at NCS just to listen. How many organizational problems could be solved through simply hearing what people are saying?! He listened, he learned, he watched, he supported. 

And Joey "gets" Grace.  He instinctively understood that teaching must be relational, or it will be ineffective.  

I must admit, I nearly cried with joy in those early weeks when he didn't attack me for opening our home to students or building relationships that extended beyond the classroom. (I was battered and bruised and bloody by 2006, after a veritable mob of angry people with pitchforks had attacked my motives, reputation, methods, and "wisdom.") To hear him say, "Well, duh. Of course you will build relationships with students and families outside the classroom! That's exactly where those relationships belong" meant that NCS would be able to fully embrace a direction God had set before us. I think it's THE central distinctive of NCS, the aspect that students mention at every exit interview and every feedback session. "We want a school where we know our teachers, where we know they care about us, where we get to hang out with them." How crazy -- and cool -- is that?

And wow. To hear students talk about Joey's influence on their lives is to see Grace in action. Troubled kid? Joey really does love them.  Frustrating child? Joey won't stop setting boundaries, calling out rebellion, correcting in love.  He and his friends (James Bendowsky, George Elder) brought with them a joyful masculinity that relished hard work, good poetry, cold beer, beautiful craftsmanship, and humble courage. 

NCS was badly in need of a school "culture" by the time Joey arrived in 2006, so that became one of his passions -- to provoke the students to love one another and to strive for all things good.  We saw the Holy Spirit answer prayer and slowly mend a broken and fractured student body into a cohesive upper school. The students now love their school with a fierce and joyful pride. They aren't perfect, but the unloved kids of this world, the castoffs of the public system, the weirdos who don't fit, the artists and musicians and nerds and jocks and hippies -- they're all able to come together in a building where God is glorified and people are loved. 

Today, in 2012, I see Joey's marks everywhere. And Maurice's and Dennis's as well, but Joey's is the most recent coat of paint. (Maurice is definitely the foundation. Dennis framed in the building so the sides would be true.)  

I freely glorify God for the good HE has done at school through His servants. And I am so thankful that God placed me at a school where I got to see Him grow the headmasters along with the school. 

On this last day of Joey's career at NCS, as he heads off to Clemson University where his ministry will be possibly more covert but no less important or effective, I am proud to call him my co-laborer in the Gospel and my friend.  

God bless. 

This is another post in a series.  We're thinking about how authority and rules (and challenges to those rules) should play out in a Grace-based classroom.  Earlier posts are right before this one if you want to catch up. 

 

2. If you refuse to allow criticism or challenge within your classroom/school, you're painting a huge target that says, "Faith is too fragile for everyday use." 

One aspect of classical education pedagogy that I really appreciate is an understanding that kids go through different stages in their interaction with facts (and with the people who inform them of that information).  Your sweet, cuddly elementary school kid will go through a horrific transformation around age 12 and become... DUN DUN DUN ... a teenager. (*insert terrifying music here*)  The rolled eyes, the sarcasm, the desire never to be seen within 100 feet of one's parents, the arguing.  

The arguing.  

I like middle schoolers because they do like to challenge. And they challenge everything: your sock preferences, the weather, your reason for assigning the rest of a grammar exercise on a Wednesday night because that's just how it worked out. ("But we never had Wednesday homework LAST YEAR!")

One of the hallmarks of NCS upper school life has been a consistent practice among the faculty of treating the upper school students with the respect one gives adults, but not expecting them to live up to that standard of maturity. Kids are kids. But they're becoming adults, and we need to move in that direction rapidly. They have questions, and most of the time at NCS, those questions reflect a legitimate desire to know and understand (rather than to rebel or undermine).

So we explain things a lot.  Nothing is off-limits in my theology, practice, rulebook, subject matter. I don't assign work without having a specific purpose for the task. While I might not always explain why I assign what I do, I always can (and do when asked). I know what I'm teaching, why I put it in the curriculum, and why it's beneficial.  The stuff that I couldn't justify, I changed. 

Sometimes that means my classroom rules are inconsistent with the policies of another teacher. That's a great opportunity to teach "Not all people want the same thing, and you need to find out what's expected of you by the person in charge" -- a wonderful life skill. So I don't particularly care for "answer in complete sentences" on my tests because I find it annoying to read a bunch of extra words that have nothing to do with the actual answer. I wrote the question; I don't need you to remind me what I asked. Other teachers want short answers written into complete sentences. Great. Knock yourselves out.  I don't need to change for their sake, and I certainly don't expect them to adopt my policy. And every student I've ever taught has rapidly picked up on the differences among classes. 

So what does this have to do with Faith?

When you aren't willing to rise to the challenge, many people will assume you are afraid to engage their criticisms or that you do not have a valid reason for your position.  

 

Think about it.  You stop by the local magistrate to pay your speeding ticket and the lady behind the desk says, "I'm sorry, we don't accept credit or debit cards. Did you bring cash or a check?" And we adults trudge back to our cars and drive down the road to find an ATM, cursing the local government using colorful adjectives. We assume the government policy makers are idiots. Who doesn't take a credit/debit card in 2012? The traffic court. Why? I don't know. South Carolina lawmakers have never impressed me with any sense of intelligence. There's no reason they CAN'T change their policy...but they don't.

Why do we expect kids to obey or believe without giving them justifiable cause? 

Now, if you've put in the hours necessary to build a relationship with that kid; if you know them -- really, truly know them -- and have acted graciously toward them; if you love them in actions rather than in words alone, then a lot of teens will take your words to heart. You don't have to offer a geometric or theological or philosophical proof for why you won't let the kids go walking down to the gas station by themselves.  If he knows you usually have good reasons for what you ask, the boy won't backtalk you when you yell "GET DOWN!" just before a football slams into his head on the playground.

But you have to build that trust.  

The Christian Faith is a reasonable, justifiable, warranted belief. (Thank you, Al Plantinga.) God doesn't strip us of our inquisitiveness and rational thought (part of the imago Dei IMHO). 

Look at the Psalms. David (and the other psalmists) hit God with some rough questions. Why are the bad guys winning? Why am I suffering if I didn't do anything wrong? Have You forgotten Your promises? Why do bad men abuse weak people? Don't you feel ashamed for letting me look bad, God, in front of my -- I mean, YOUR -- enemies? 

Instead of being afraid of challenges, questions, and hard topics, embrace them. 

If you don't know, say you don't know. Research it. Find an expert. Search the Scriptures. Get answers. 

If you can't justify your rule biblically, if it's a rule that makes life convenient for adults, or if it's not serving a clear, obvious purpose in your setting (one that extends from loving God or loving neighbor)-- maybe the rule should go? 

 

Up next -- what about true rebellion?

 

Cross-posted to Teaching Redemptively

Yesterday I mentioned the case of the kid in Vermont who was suspended for the remainder of the year by  his Christian school because of his essay challenging the school's rules for behavior and dress code. I used that as a jumping off point to think about how we should handle challenges to authority within a Grace-based school.

I certainly don't have it figured out.  Kids challenge authority all the time.  Adults challenge authority all the time. We sinners hate boundaries. 

But I can leverage a little experience and theology to offer a couple thoughts.... here's the first. 

 

1. Obedience to a human authority should not be equated with obedience to God's Law.

I've heard this syllogism a lot:  God must be obeyed as our ultimate authority; His Law is absolute and without question. God delegates authority to parents and pastors and governors and teachers (etc). Therefore, human authorities can demand the same level of obedience for their rules as God expects for His. 

First off, that's a terrible syllogism (from the standpoint of logical structure).

Secondly, it's not a biblical statement of obedience or authority. We can't add corollaries to God's Law and call them holy. Human rules are just....rules. 

Yes, Scripture commands obedience to church elders and to parents and to our government officials, even when we don't like them. But derived authority does not also endow us with the power to bind people's consciences to non-biblical rules. People with authority need to be careful of the limits they choose to set for behavior when dealing with the tender consciences of kids.

I realize that the kid who wrote the essay at Trinity probably just wanted to grind his ax about the rulebook. That can grate on the nerves of adults who see a bigger picture than "I don't like wearing khakis and a polo every day."   Cynical skeptics are a drudge -- they don't offer any constructive solutions to a problem, they just sit back and tear apart whatever's been built. 

But if we can't defend a rule from a biblical mandate ("modesty" doesn't demand a "school uniform"), then authorities need to take steps to unlink "following the dress code" from "keeping the Law of God." They're not the same thing.  Call it a policy, give students a voice in setting their communal rules, and work toward consensus.  

(Personally, I'm glad the "I-hate-the-dress-code" theme has toned down a lot at NCS during my 10 years there. The people who determined the dress code have made a lot of really good adjustments over the past several years, and I think that we've got a good balance of a functioning school uniform combined with dress-down Fridays -- and those dress-down days exist on purpose to reinforce the idea that our dress code rules are not God's rules for clothing. Students aren't thrilled about it, but they mostly just don't care. School clothes are just that -- school clothes.)

My classroom rules are mine. God's Law is far more difficult: Love God with everything you have as hard as you can all the time, and love your neighbor like yourself.  If I'm doing my job, I can tie my class "rules" back to the Great Commandments as illustrations of loving God or neighbor in a community of humans ... but I also need to be honest with kids that some of my rules are just idiosyncratic, and they deserve to be changed if kids point out legitimate problems with their implementation or function.

Note that a lot of student frustration arises out of adults shutting kids out of the process. By the time a student reaches adolescence (and definitely by the time they're in high school), he/she should be given a voice in the school structure for which s/he will be held responsible. It diffuses a lot of griping, and it's a much more respectful way to deal with students as human beings who are about to be "adults" and legally responsible for their decisions/actions.

This approach demands patience and work by adults to involve students, downplay immature suggestions, encourage half-baked good ones, and guide the whole mess toward a coherent and useful outcome. Welcome to education.  

 

more to come....

 

Cross-posted to Teaching Redemptively

 

 

A few weeks ago, a junior at a independent Baptist Christian high school in Vermont was suspended for the remainder of the school year because of an essay. His paper (which avoided topics on the teacher's "banned topics" list) challenged the school's dress code rules as ineffective and inconsistent. Citing a yearlong attitude of "rebellion," the school board chose to suspend him because this was a 'last straw' moment of bad attitude. 

The incident rapidly hit the blogosphere, especially among ex-Fundamentalists, and later caught the attention of the local FOX News affiliate in the school's town. Outraged supporters of the student founded a Facebook page calling for the school to "do right" and apologize. A few days ago, the church leadership surprised the school community by announcing that the school would close its high school at the end of the school year, naming low enrollment as the cause. 

Having taught for a decade, I can sympathize with beleaguered educators like the people at Trinity. I've encountered plenty of folks who don't comprehend the mission of NCS, leading them to badly misunderstand what we do or misrepresent us to others (sometimes with the best of intentions). To teach is to invite criticism and often condemnation.  

On the other hand, the student raises a major question for school life. What about the rules? Should schools arbitrarily set policies without input from students? Is is disrespectful to question or reject those rules? Can questioning become "rebellion"? 

 

I started thinking about how I'd handle a challenging student in my classroom at NCS. This is a good test case for Grace-based education. Our theology reveals itself most clearly when someone has the nerve to challenge it.

I've become a lot less defensive as I've grown in personal maturity Definseiveness i amark of insecurity, which ought to be a trait of immaturity. Scripture doesn't present Yahweh as a defensive authority figure. God doesn't "earn" credibility or respect from us; He deserves it by default. His dealings with humans are incomprehensibly gracious (the overwhelming theme of the Old Testament stories).  I'd like to suggest that godly authority is patient enough to allow for critique and challenge, even when the challenger cops a nasty attitude.

Truth is a Person -- Jesus Christ (Jn 14:6).  I'm not responsible to save people or convince them on an intellectual level of biblical truth. The Holy Spirit illuminates minds and the Father draws people to the salvation won by the Son through his vicarious sacrifice. That's a freeing set of principles, believe me. 

In Milton's great treatise against ineffectual censorship, the Areopagitica, he famously writes that Truth, on an open field, will always win the battle. I tell my students, "Never be afraid to ask hard questions. If what you believe is actually the Truth, it can handle any challenge you throw at it." (And a corollary for parents: Calm down. Smart kids question a lot of beliefs. Trust the Covenant promises and believe that God is at work in your kids, especially when they are skeptical.)

Why do so many adults react badly to being challenged? 

Is it because we have blindly bought into a system of thought without doing the intellectual or spiritual heavy-lifting to make it our own? 

Are we secretly afraid that our own faith, authority, or level of integrity is too weak to be challenged?

Are we too proud to appear ignorant in front of people younger than we are?

Have we found ourselves stuck in a system of rules that we can't agree with either, so we try to keep the subject from arising?

Grace-based education seeks to apply Gospel norms to the structure and methods of education. (IOW: you can talk about the Gospel all you want, but if your structure and rulebook and attitude toward your students undercuts the Gospel message at every turn, you're going to impress hypocrisy onto their minds more than anything else.) How can a committed Christian community of learners approach skepticism, questioning, and intellectual freedom with both strength and grace?

.... I'll take up that question tomorrow.  

 

Cross-posted to Teaching Redemptively

It's not been a good week for the Kony 2012 folks. 

I do think it's possible for very imperfect people to have a good idea.  Those ideas can be executed well or poorly. And snazzy promotions can offer up either great content or junk. So any combination is possible. I definitely don't think an idea has to be perfect before it's worth supporting. But I do think Invisible Children has had a rough few days. 

First, a charity decided to bless the folks of Northern Uganda with a free screening of the Kony2012 film. Instead of cheers, the crowd turned to violent protest.  (I think it's worth noting that the Kony film is *obviously* targeted marketing for Americans. It won't make much sense anywhere else or appeal to people who don't think like Americans. So I can see how the people most affected by the campaign could misunderstand "promotional" for "informative" ... but still, this bodes ill.)

In fact, the government of Uganda went so far as to activate a Twitter account and make a response video so they could publicize their own message about Uganda.  They don't want us thinking it's a war zone.  Great.  

Of course, everyone has heard by now that the chief filmmaker, the one taking most of the criticism for the film from those who see it as egotistical and hipster and self-centered, was arrested Friday for wandering around the city drunk and indecent. ....which is probably the best way possible to shoot yourself down if you're a charitable organization. 

 

I *do* hope that this entire Kony2012 campaign doesn't end disillusioning young adults to the point that they swear off helping in international causes. I think a lot of people feel like global issues are insurmountable. I.C. did a super job of marshaling the idea of "hope" and placing it before people's eyes.  

Without hope, none of us have any reason to try to change this world from the mess it's in.  And the Gospel gives that hope, but many Christians limit its power to effecting eternal salvation, not redeeming this world in any significant form.  

I wonder sometimes if we adults are most culpable for discouraging kids by 1) not doing much ourselves to love our neighbors in tangible ways (the "cup of cold water" in Christ's sermon) and 2) speaking so abstractly about the Gospel's effect on the world that we unintentionally lead people to believe that religion is for securing one's afterlife while NGOs and charities work on problems for "this" world. 

 

I also wish there were a more active conversation happening to answer the question, "Just how is America supposed to help developing nations?"  I honestly want to be sensitive to criticism here; I don't want us to be imperialist or colonialist or just plain insensitive. But .... what ARE we supposed to do? 

I'm pretty sure, when America stands in the "judgment of the nations," we can't just look at God, shrug our shoulders, and say, "Well, they didn't really want our help. So...we didn't worry about the hunger problems or lack or water or wars. We figured, hey, Africa's got its own back."  

I don't think that's going to fly....