Tag: Teachiing

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My Fear: Teaching Reflection

I have been meditating on Psalm 139 this week. Psalm 139 shows the poet astounded by the depth and accuracy of God’s knowledge of him. In moments of doubt, surrounded by wickedness, the speaker knows that God is there and know his righteousness.

Two things have stood out to me.

First, I must always remain cognizant of God’s knowledge first and my knowledge second. I am prone to start with my own quest and only after I’ve discovered something reach out to position it regarding God’s truth. This passage reminds me that my knowledge of myself and the world pales in comparison to God. It is an encouragement to rely on this truth and a provocation to pray for this knowledge to be revealed to me as I follow God.

Second, I realized that my obsession with my own knowledge is rooted in fear.

I am so invested in knowing—things, others, myself—that admitting when I’m wrong is hard.

But I am wrong. A lot.

I am fearful. I don’t want to admit that I’m wrong because it might compromise my authority. But there’s another fear I have, one I rarely admit to myself. I’m am at times afraid to declare the truth because of who I might offend.

I pray that this year God will give me the boldness to declare the truth even when I know it might offend and the humility to admit when I am wrong.

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Verse of the Week: Psalm 139:23

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.

Psalm 139:23

I am anxious and am worried about many things. I am worried about my adequacy as a teacher and scholar. I am worried about my adequacy as a husband and father. I am worried about my adequacy as a child of God.

Yet the solution proposed in the Psalm is not intense self-analysis or reflection. Instead, the Psalmist asks God to search him and, through testing, to know my anxious thoughts.

This, indeed, is a radical kind of pedagogy!

If I am the student, the one who endures the test, then how am I learning if it is God who knows my heart and my anxious thoughts?  Wouldn’t it best for me to know them so as to, you know, give them over to God?

The root of a God-centered education might very well be letting go of that need to know our own hearts first.

This week when I feel anxiety, I want my first impulse to be prayer: that God would know my heart and my anxious thoughts and that the Holy Spirit would intercede for me in my ignorance. This semester when I feel anxiety, I want my first impulse to be prayer too so that this semester when my students are afflicted by anxieties, I can with confidence encourage them to turn to God and pray this Psalm as well.