Category: Discipleship

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Hurry Up and Fail

In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis suggests that one way for people to see how much they need Christ is to seriously attempt to rely on themselves. This is because

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.

Only when we confront our own inability to be good will we truly rely on Christ. This is where real faith begins.

There’s an analogous principle in academic work, especially in the process of writing something as large and unwieldy as a research paper. I like to tell my students, “Hurry up and fail.” What I mean is that they often won’t know what kind of work they really need to do on a project until they attempt it, no matter how messy it is. The problem is not the rough draft: the attempt to be good. The problem is waiting until the last possible minute to hand in a rough draft: the attempt to be good never led to a new sense of reliance.

Lewis lets us know that the serious attempt to be good on our own can lead to a significant spiritual insight: not that we are lost forever but that we can never be found until we have faith in God.

The point of emphasizing failure to students is this: we ALL need to revise. Go ahead and start writing now so you can ask for help in improving it. Do it sooner rather than later.

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Slow Down

I just finished assessing and sending back a group of student papers. I never feel like the assessment cycle is done, however, until the (unofficial) window where students might email me about the grade they received is closed.

Last week, I received just such an email from from a high-achieving student who had gotten a high B that wasn’t quite the A she had wanted. She wasn’t rude. She just wanted to meet and talk about the grade. Typically, conversations like this make me anxious because they invite me to get defensive.

But I knew what the problem was. Continue reading “Slow Down”

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Teaching Gulliver’s Travels: An Integration Diary Pt. 2

Gulliver has a problem by the time his travels end, and today I asked my students to consider that problem more closely.

I asked my students to imagine the most physically attractive person they could, and then to acknowledge that out of that same body routinely comes poop and urine, that this person would, if one single millimeter of skin was removed, resemble something out of a horror movie more than the object of sexual desire.

We are able to forget this, I told them, because we have a veil over our eyes.

Gulliver has had that veil removed, and in its absence, all he can see are disgusting, sin-filled creatures, or rather vice-filled, irrational creatures.

The problem is precisely that Gulliver doesn’t see what’s wrong with the Yahoos on the Houyhnhnm Island or back in England as sin. He’s been using some other standard. And in the absence of a standard that would start with the premise that all men are made in God’s image, Gulliver begins to hate. Continue reading “Teaching Gulliver’s Travels: An Integration Diary Pt. 2”

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The Great Cosmic Story

Literature helps us recognize and get a fuller grasp of the great cosmic story: God’s creation, our fall, and His redemption.

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The Best Class

On the first day of my Brit Lit I survey, I typically give my students the following writing prompt:

08.24 Best Class

The answers are remarkable. First, hardly anyone ever chooses something that applies to their major. Second, they always mention the teacher. Third, there’s a pattern of rewriting the script: they take a class they don’t think they will like and end up loving it.

Some of those classes include:

  • A college survey of the Old Testament
  • A high school course on children’s literature
  • An AP Us History course
  • A management/leadership course
  • A high school physics course
  • A senior AP Calculus course
  • A freshman writing-about-literature course

Here’s my takeaway. A Brit Lit course can make a difference in these students’ lives, even if they never take another English class.

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The Power of Teaching

In the preface to his On Christian Doctrine, St. Augustine answers objections to his intention to give rules for interpreting scripture. The objections are.

  1. People can’t understand his rules.
  2. People can understand his rules but can’t understand the scripture they apply them to.
  3. People can interpret scripture without his rules and thus say that no one needs rules.

St. Augustine says that the objectors in Camps 1 and 2 need to pray to God for sight. Their inability to see does not make St. Augustine’s project worthless. The objectors in Camp 3, however, get ST. Augustine’s sternest rebuke, mainly because their objection comes from pride. In answering their objection, St. Augustine makes clear the role that human teaching plays in our relationship to not only scripture, but the world. Here it is… Continue reading “The Power of Teaching”

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Taking Time to Listen

I had 10 minutes.

To make it to my next class that’s a seven minute walk across campus.

To collect this pile of papers on my teacher’s desk because I rely on handouts so much that it takes a flurry of shuffling and paper clips after class to get things into or the kind of order necessary to even fit inside my bag.

To erase the board that’s filled, edge-to-edge, with class comments about the play Hamlet.

To thank my colleague from kinesiology who not only sat in on today’s class but brought with him a medical company skull for our performance of Act 5 Scene 1 (“Alas, poor Yorick!”) and actually read lines as the gravedigger.

And there they were, standing in front of me, two students with real questions about the play. One wanted to know more about Ophelia. Why did we keep calling it a suicide? Wasn’t it an accidental death? One wanted to discuss the “To be or not to be” soliloquy in more detail. She had always read the speech as referring to two responses to internal struggles.

And despite the fact that I had talked on Tuesday about listening and responding…

I was short and curt with my students in my haste to get out the door.

In reality, I wanted to sit and talk with my colleague for as long as I could about what worked and didn’t work in the class. The questions my students asked demanded more from me and asked for answers I couldn’t provide in 30 seconds. So

I had the chance to apologize later, which I’m grateful for. I want students to want to talk with me after class, especially after a class like that one.

Maybe that means coming to my office and discussing the question there. Maybe it means admitting I don’t have answers to the questions they have.

I know that it definitely means I need to listen, to wait, to be patient.

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Listen and Respond

[S]uit the action to the word, the word to the action… – Hamlet

I once had a whole batch of School Certificate answers on the Nun’s Priest’s Tale by boys whose form-master was apparently a breeder of poultry. Everything that Chaucer had said in describing Chauntecleer and Pertelote was treated by them simply and solely as evidence about the precise breed of these two birds. And, I must admit, the result was very interesting. They proved beyond doubt that Chauntecleer was very different from our modern specialised strains and much closer to the Old English ‘barn-door fowl’. But I couldn’t help feeling that they had missed something. – CS Lewis

Paul admonishes the Roman church to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. There’s an aptness there, a symmetry, a decorum. Hamlet wants his actors to adopt a similar method. Match what you say with what you do. Respond accordingly. Reciprocate. Continue reading “Listen and Respond”