Transformed Through Failure
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
I John 1:8
I’m haunted by all the things I said but shouldn’t have during my early years of teaching. I was young and brash. When students were wrong, I wasn’t very patient with them. I delighted in sarcasm and wasn’t significantly deterred by my wit wounding the students entrusted to my care. How do I even begin to make amends?
Such an enormous opportunity lost.
Of course, there are the many times I should have cared for my students better than I did, treated them with the profound dignity they deserve, shown radical patience, and leaned toward mercy rather than critique. I can’t even add up the times where I failed to do what I ought to have done as a teacher. But, there’s also the many times that I actively did or said something I shouldn’t have.
Sins of both omission and commission.
But that’s not entirely what I mean when I say that an opportunity was lost. Certainly, missing out on the chance to treat students as they should have been treated is a big failure. But the greater loss is that I didn’t seize the moment when recognizing that I had failed. Of course, there were times I crossed the line, and it didn’t immediately dawn on me what I’d done. But there were also several times where I paused and regretted what I’d said or done. Yet, I didn’t immediately say anything. I let it pass; I moved on. That’s the biggest opportunity lost.
Years ago, I listened to a prominent, megachurch pastor talking describing why he didn’t want to talk about sin in his church. Unlike his father who proceeded him as a “fire and brimstone” pastor who often sought to convict and even scare, this pastor said that didn’t want to turn people away. He didn’t want them to be uncomfortable. The secular interviewer and show host understood enough about Christianity to ask whether or not this pastor felt that talking about sin was an essential part of Christian sermons. To this, the pastor said that talking about sin causes people to be turned off by the church and that he wanted people to find welcome both in the Church and in God’s love.
I agree that many people have been turned off by the Church and its condemnation of sin and sinners, and I realize that many onlookers know Christians more by what they’re against than by what they’re for. However, we must understand that the Christian message (the gospel) only makes sense because of the reality of sin. Christians believe that sin is far more than an inconvenience; it’s a rebellion. And like our first parents, all people are guilty for their conscious violation against God and justly deserving His displeasure and punishment. But, that’s why Christianity offers good news - the gospel. Christians believe that Jesus came into the world, because sin is very real. He didn’t merely come to help us; he came to rescue us. In fact, that’s actually what Jesus’s name means: God rescues, or God saves. So, I can’t understand how a Christian preacher can talk about Jesus and the core of Christianity without talking about why we need Jesus.
Christianity is fundamentally about rescue. God is our Rescuer, not merely our great “Preventer in the sky” who steers us clear from harm’s way or the Genie of the Lamp who will grant us what we ask if we perform the correct ritual. He’s the infinite, personal, and triune God. Maker of all things visible and invisible. His name is Yahweh, and we have offended Him. As C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity, “the gospel doesn’t start with comfort; it starts with dismay.” It starts with a recognition that we’re in the wrong. But, it’s not incredibly comfortable to think of God as our Rescuer, because it concedes that there is something we need to be rescued from, or more accurately that we have done something from which we need to be rescued.
This formerly mentioned pastor understands enough about the human condition to recognize that people don’t like to admit when we’re wrong. That’s not news to anyone. I don’t like to admit it; I’ve never met a person who does. Some are better at admitting their errors than others, but nobody likes it. So, if the main goal is to diminish anything that would cause a person discomfort, I can understand this pastor’s methodology. Attract people by giving them pep-talks, helping them think positively because there’s a loving God, and encouraging them to live with purpose because God has a plan (Jeremiah 29:11). But, don’t say things that will force people to wrestle with the reality of their need and brokenness. I get it. But it’s miles away from the gospel; it’s not Christian.
My dad taught high school Bible class for forty-nine years, and he succinctly defines the gospel for his twelfth grade students as “I can’t; He can.” In other words, the gospel says we have a problem (sin) which we cannot possibly fix, and that’s why Jesus came. He came to live a perfect life, die in our place, and rise again so we can live. That’s the gospel: I can’t; He can. This is the driving force behind the story of Scripture, and we may not see it more clearly than the structure of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans. After building the case that none of us are righteous, he says “But now, a righteousness from God has been made known apart from the law…”(3:21) This is the gospel. What I most desperately need is given to me, not by what I do, but because of the work of the One who I have wronged.
As a result, this gospel is radically different from what the rest of the world has to offer, because in all of our relationships and experiences, a person’s merit (what he brings to the table) is what gives him some sort of worth. At the end of the day, it’s all about transactions. Yet, in the gospel, the only thing we bring to the table is the sin from which we’ve been saved.
This upends the way I view myself and my neediness. It affects the way I see the world and my place in it, the way I view others, and how I understand my rights, which seem to be central to the American ethos. It affects the way I view Jesus and what He has done. Ultimately, it drives me to have a really big view of God which results in dependence and gratitude. It also forces me to have a small view of myself, yet still see myself as immensely valuable.
The net result is a more tempered view of mankind and a higher view of God. We learn that all people have profound value and conspicuous deficiency. We have value because God made us and was moved to die on our behalf. We’re deficient because we needed someone to die on our behalf. It levels the playing field; Christians and non-Christians alike have violated the Greatest Commandment. None of us have moral supremacy … that’s why we need Jesus. Christian schools don’t exist to produce better people; they’re places where Jesus is met and where we learn that He is what’s better.
I doubt any believer would challenge the gospel being central to Christianity, but we have to be unwavering in this declaration. The gospel is what Christianity is about - not the rules, teachings, or practices which are often associated with it. It’s important to preach the gospel within our schools every day so we don’t forget what we’re fundamentally about. Otherwise, just be accurate and say our schools are affiliated with the heritage and ethic of a religious tradition, but let’s not call them Christian. If we can’t find the gospel in it, then we ought not call something Christian. Remember, other religions will point to very similar ethics and absolutes.
If the gospel is at the center of our mission and the gospel is unique, then, a Christian (or gospel-centered) school ought to look differently, even in how it introduces team sports into its curriculum. In John 17:14-16, Jesus twice says His disciples are not of this world, just like He is not of this world. And while the Bible says Christians are sojourners in a world which is not our home, we’ve allowed our schools to be very much of this world. If we are not of this world, shouldn’t Christian schools look significantly less like the world’s schools?
This presents a unique challenge to Christian Schools, because it forces us to see the deep difference between a Christian environment and a Christian education. Sadly, most of our schools are Christian environments. Donovan Graham speaks poignantly about the difference in his book, Teaching Redemptively. Similarly, Gordon Clark says that in those schools which merely focus on their environment, “the actual instruction is no more Christian than in a respectable secular school … the program is merely a pagan education with a chocolate covering of Christianity … the students are deceived into thinking that they have received a Christian education when as a matter of fact their training has been neither Christian nor an education.”
A distinctively Christian philosophy of education starts with this very different end in mind. Surprisingly, the goal of Christian education is no longer a traditional view of excellence (but a bi-product along the way). This can’t be our goal if we’re committed to the gospel because it’s man-centered in its faulty assumption about what man can accomplish. The goal of Christian education is to know and love God more. And, we then design the school program around the sort of learning which kindles knowledge and love for God.
Because the gospel is central to Christianity, the school which is committed to a Christian education will constantly ask what difference the gospel makes throughout its program. As the school does this, the reality of everyone’s condition can’t be avoided. We begin to see how much we need Jesus and eventually have fuller hearts toward Him, demonstrated in gratitude.
But if I want my students to become more thankful, then they have to see the greatness of the gospel. They’re only going to see how amazing God’s grace is if they understand why they need it and learn to respond in repentance and dependence. And, kids are most likely going to come to deeply see and understand that in the most tangible of ways when they see it modeled for them. Who better to model for it than the adults in their lives!
Those are the lost opportunities I’m still grieved over.
What would it have looked like if my students saw me pay significant attention in admitting my failures. It’s normal for people to surround their vague admission with statements like “nobody’s perfect.” I’m not talking about that. Don’t dismiss the failure. Name it. That’s what I should have done and call it the big deal that it is. My failures are an affront against the true God and against those who are made in His image. It’s a huge deal. So big of a deal that Jesus had to come and give Himself so I could be forgiven.
Every religion is going to tack sacred sayings onto their practices. So, many of the things we do in our Christian schools to apply Christian truths to our practice are merely doing what other religious forms of education might do, just with biblical themes rather than those from the Tripitaka, Qur'an, or the Vedas. What goes beyond being religious to being gospel-centered (and thus Christian) is that we embrace the realities of sin and God’s pursuing rescue mission.
Students need to be rescued. So does their teacher. Let’s not shy away from that. When Christian teachers make a mistake or say something the shouldn’t, we ought never dismiss it because this is a powerful opportunity talk about repentance, forgiveness, brokenness, and restoration It might be the most significant aspect that most distinguishes Christian education from all other forms of education – that we run toward dependence and need rather than away from it. We recognize that we aren’t trying to be perfect or good enough, that we aren’t setting before our students a standard they can’t possibly live up to, that we aren’t ushering them toward what we think will provide purpose and fulfillment on their own terms. Rather, we put before our students the real gospel and the mess that comes with it. Broken students, broken teachers, broken curricula, broken schools, broken policies and procedures, broken parents. The fall is cosmic. But, to the extent that the Fall marred all things away from their original intent, Jesus came into the world to make all sad things come untrue. It is in this gospel that students should see their teachers’ and coaches’ hopes find their grounding.
This sets students free to live their real selves in front of the real Jesus because their hope is in the real gospel. Teachers want the lessons learned to stick with students beyond the immediate need of the day, and this is most likely going to happen when students are set most free in their learning. When their real self becomes enlivened in connection to what they’re learning. This way of living in front of our students deepens their connections to the gospel and to their teachers, and those relational synapses even then allow their learning to become their own. Free to learn because they are free to live … really live, like the kind of living Jesus talks about when He claims to give us life. And, our students are most likely to see all of this seep beyond their heads into their hearts when their teachers live it out on a daily basis. It’s hard and messy, but telling students that we blew it and asking their forgiveness isn’t just about restoring the relationships between teachers and students, it’s about modeling and living out a belief that Jesus’s rescue mission is a real thing.
