Constantly Trying the New…Or Being in for the Long Haul June 30, 2009
Posted by bdennert in Education, Spirituality.trackback
This weekend, Beth and I hung out with some old friends, showing them our new place (as we have been doing over the past few weeks). They are both teachers so it is enjoyable talking with them because of a similar passion in education, developing persons, and just liking to laugh along with them. Part of what is interesting is that I see the major differences between public education and true Christian education/nurture. I constantly want to ask, “Why is that important to teach them?” when it comes to some issues (like discipline, ethics, behavior), as I constantly want to know what foundation others see for ethics and what is important. We had a conversation about the shift to evaluate students on skills instead of on rote knowledge and my friend mentioned that knowing who Robert E. Lee is is important. I believe so as well, but shouldn’t we ask the question, “Why?” Is it just to make good citizens of this country? Well, how do we define “good”? But that’s another issue than what lead me to think about the conversation.
They mentioned that educational institutions seem to constantly trying some new idea in terms of discipline, curriculum, evaluation, testing, etc. and then change it in two years. Kids never have consistency and we never really know if something is working or not. Instead of trying something for the long haul, we want the quick fix and the new magic formula. That’s true of us as leaders of the church (you can look at a pastor’s shelf and find so many, “Today” books and new ideas, espescially in youth ministry). We aren’t always in it for the long haul (and the congregation functions same way, this isn’t working, so we need a new leader). And this is true of the Christian life. How many books have I started and never finished? How many plans have I made for my daily time of connecting with God and then given up? We are looking for the quick fix and when something does not work after a few days (or it gets difficult), we give it up! I was very convicted of that myself. Instead of the quick fix, we need to apply good things to the long haul. The risk is we might “waste” a number of years of our life. But is it really wasted? And I think that consistency might be better than constant change.
(Side note: the movement away from memorization of knowledge seen in schools is also true in the church. For example, we often stress less and less about memorizing things from the Bible and having an overarching Bible knowledge. The past saw knowledge as a way to be more spiritual. Now it is almost a lack of knowledge is more spiritual. As my friend said, though, there are certain things that you need to know….but applying it to the Bible, you need to know it as it will help you understand and connect with God. It is not in the knowledge that the gain is found, it is in what you do with the knowledge).
Ouch. You hit a nerve there, Brian. And it reminds me of something I read somewhere else, that we have become greedy consumers of information just as we’re consumers of everything else (I wish I could track that down – I’ll post it here if I find it.) How do we refocus ourselves? I’ve been trying to turn off the computer a whole lot more of late, but it’s too much a part of everyday life to pitch altogether (I couldn’t work for one thing.)