A Beautiful Tension


“At the beginning of the year I tell my students that I am not there to convert them or to force them to believe anything in particular. It's True. I am essentially a systematic theologian which means I present everything in a logical and rational manner. I tell students that my goal is for them to leave the class understanding what Catholics believe and why they believe it. If they are a believer, my class bolsters their Faith. If they are not a believer, my class, at least, gives them some knowledge of the reasons and logic behind Catholicism. At the same time, I challenge my students to contemplate what it means to Love and to be Loved, perfectly, and to consider the idea that Jesus Christ is the best way for us to encounter that Love. I listen to their questions and I read their reflections without judgement, but I also guide them to logical conclusions that the Love they seek cannot be found in the material Truth around them. I actually works.”
I wrote this message to a woman in one of my online classes. She was struggling to find the balance between using the classroom to “preach” and being a “moral relativist”. This woman, herself, wanted desperately to share the “Good News” of Jesus Christ with her students. She knows that a relationship with Jesus Christ will help her students to know that they are Loved beyond all human measurement of Love. But she worried that if she was too aggressive with her language, she might “scare” her students off. Her instincts are correct.
The Knock Basilica in Knock, Co. Mayo, Ireland. There is a Beautiful tension between Jesus who is perfect and divine and Jesus who was Crucified. The Sacred Heart of Jesus shows us in that tension we find a God who returns to us, Resurrected and Forgiving. Perhaps we need to embrace tension in our classrooms, as well. (photo P. Smith)

There is Beauty in the tension. There is miracle in the struggle to synthesize Faith with human reason. A good teacher in Catholic schools creates a space where students can test their ideas and perceptions…where the teacher can help the students to enter into dialogue with ideas that are in apparent contrast with their own. We cannot stand in front of our students and say we are justified in shutting students down or quieting opinions or ideas that differ from what we “know” is right. When we do that, we effectively tell students that they do not matter. We may think we are helping students to know “Truth”, but what we are really doing is we are communicating that their worth only comes from agreeing with us. This is NOT the “Good News”.
I told this woman, who, by the way, was not a religion teacher, that when we practice listening to our students and when we practice helping them to listen to the “Good News” of Jesus Christ, they are more likely to actually hear what God is telling them… that they are Loved. I try to remember that every day in the classroom.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflective Teaching

Image
                My professional goal this year is to be more reflective. Reflective teaching, as most educators know, is really just the practice of taking a few moments at the end of the day to produce some sort of artifact demonstrating that you have thought about your lessons that day. Many teachers naturally think about what they have taught. For me, that is usually in the car on the way home while I metaphorically kick myself for not having the best comeback to a snarky comment I got from that one student. It isn’t a productive kind of reflection; you might just categorize it as a sort of “decompression” or “venting” exercise. But this year I have made a promise to myself that I would be more productive in my reflection. The result of my goal-setting, as it turns out, has become another tool for my students.                 At the...
Read more

Cristo Rey Atlanta Jesuit High School

Image
"Thanks for your response. It sounds like you have been reading a lot of Aquinas, in addition to your reference from Augustine! Indeed, human intellect can discern creation and free will to be gifts from God. By creating us and by giving us Free Will, God invites us into a relationship with Him. We must be given Faith in order for us to be able to freely respond to that invitation. If we accept that invitation we do it by our own Free Will...if we accept that we are Loved by God, it is an act of Faith. If we extend that invitation to Love and to be Loved, it is an act of Faith that we choose to make. As a teacher, I pay attention, especially, to those students who do not know they have been invited into a relationship with God...they do not know they are Loved. My primary goal is to extend that invitation to them. Regardless of what you teach or what your job is at a Catholic school (or any school, really) is to make sure our students know they are Loved. What a great mission we...
Read more

Our Students are More than Just their Grades

Image
“Thanks for your response. I like the points you make about some elements of Faith being given and some elements being chosen. Indeed, most theologians point to St. John when the make the claim that we are Loved first by God, regardless of anything we choose or desire. The quote I use with my students is "we are Loved into existence", simply because God is Love. In this way, we are created with a disposition to Faith as Faith is an invitation into a relationship with God. It is our response to the Faith God gives us that is Faith in action. It is my favorite concept to teach my students, and it is the blessing of any Catholic school teacher to help their students know they are called to be Loved and to Love.”             We are created with a disposition to Faith and a disposition toward the mystery of the transcendent. So why do we, as teachers, try to simplify Faith, religion, or theology as just a subject? Why would we limit ...
Read more