temple of artemis

Temple of Artemis (in Sardis).

Pedagogical Posture

How’s your posture?  This seems to be one of those perennial points of contention between parent and child.  Parents, it seems, love to pester their children with having correct posture: Sit up. Stand up straight.  Don’t scuff your feet.  Look me in the eye. Etc…

One’s posture, it is assumed, communicates a great deal about who one is and the attitude towards life that one has.  As a teacher who regularly stands in front of a classroom of “postured” students, I’m pretty sure this is true.  A student’s posture communicates a lot: Why on earth am I here?  Why on earth are you still droning on about this?  I really hope that girl sees me right now?  Why is she not looking at me?  I hope the teacher calls me!  I hope the teacher never calls on me in my life!  Check out this link from the NY Times on the “Hidden Meaning of Hand-Raising” to prove my point.

But if students’ posture speaks volumes, what about the teacher’s?  What does it communicate to the students when a teacher lectures with his arms crossed?  How about when a teacher sits?  What does it communicate when the teacher remains behind a lectern for the duration of the class?  What would it communicate if the teacher taught from behind the class?

I’m reflecting upon this because I recently went to hear James K.A. Smith and David Smith talk about their new book, Teaching and Christian Practices.  They talked about the need to have an embodied pedagogy.  Too often we envision education as simply an information dump: the teacher (the one with knowledge) opens the tabula rasa of the child’s mind and dumps in the data.  Instead, they suggest – rightly – that teaching should pay attention to our whole selves – minds as well as bodies.  Part of that embodied teaching is the teacher’s physical posture.

Just as the students’ posture communicates a great deal to the teacher, so the teacher’s physical posture communicates a great deal to the student.  What is my posture communicating?

 

Hygiene and teaching

Let’s talk about hygiene.  Not the awkward middle school conversation about the importance of showering, brushing teeth, and wearing deodorant – although that is a really important conversation, too!

No.  Let’s talk about hygienic teaching – the type of teaching that Paul encourages his student Timothy to pursue in 1 Timothy.  Paul instructs Timothy:

Teach and urge these duties. 3 Whoever teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that is in accordance with godliness, 4 is conceited, understanding nothing, and has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words.   1 Ti 6:2–4 (NRSV).

Paul tells Timothy to teach “sound words.”  The Greek for “sound” here is the same word from which we get hygiene.  Timothy, teach “healthy” words.  At first glance, it might seem like an odd thing to say – how can words be healthy or unhealthy?  Yet clearly in Paul’s mind, words or teachings can be healthy or ill.  Unhealthy words give birth to division; healthy words give birth to godliness.

Eugene Peterson reflects on these words from Paul in a chapter called “Timothy: Taking Over in Ephesus” in a book co-written with Marva Dawn: The Unnecessary Pastor.  This is what he says about healthy words:

…Timothy is given a mandate to teach in a way that brings health to people.  Words in Ephesus have gotten sick; the ‘godless chatter’ in Ephesus is infecting  the souls of people with disease.  It is important not to see Timothy as a defender of orthodoxy, as someone who argues for the truth of the gospel.  He is a teacher responsible for speaking in such a way that people get healthy again.

And later he writes,

Words are important.  Words and living are the heads and tails of the same coin.  When words are wrong – diseased – they cause illness; they infect the soul.  Sound, healthy words equal godly living.

As a teacher, these are important words to hear.  Matter of fact, they are important words for anyone who instructs, guides, preaches, or parents.  Or anyone else who might use words from time to time.

Are my words healthy?  Do they lead to wellness?  Do they lead to godliness?  Or do they lead to division, envy, malicious talk, strife, and constant friction?

Hopefully my teaching and my words in general will be healthy words so that you won’t have to pull me aside and have that awkward pre-teen conversation about good hygiene.

Hopeful conversations about the future of the church

Good conversations that stir the heart and tease the imagination.  That’s what Rachael and I got to have tonight along with a group of other students from Calvin Theological Seminary.  Thanks to Ryan and Rebekah Wallace and the newly formed Church Planting Club, a group of about 30 students and spouses gathered to hear from newly appointed seminary president Jul Medenblik as we shared food and drink together.  He told stories from his own ministry; stories of the gospel’s transforming and often surprising power in people’s lives.

The Christian Reformed Church has not always been known for its innovative missional church planting, but perhaps the fresh breeze of the Spirit is beginning to move.  If so, it is pretty exciting to be a part of the conversations.

Thoughts on the incarnation

Who says that Calvin couldn’t be poetic?

… it was also imperative that he who was to become our Redeemer be true God and true man.  It was his task to swallow up death.  Who but the Life could do this?  It was his task to conquer sin.  Who but very Righteousness could do this?  It was his task to rout the powers of world and air.  Who but a power higher than world and air could do this?  Now where does life or righteousness, or lordship and authority of heaven lie but with God alone?  Therefore our most merciful God, when he willed that we be redeemed, made himself our Redeemer in the person of his only-begotten Son.  (John Calvin, Institutes, 2.12.2)

Sphere Sovereignty…it’s not (just) about geometry

I never really liked math, but of all the subject areas of mathematics I guess I disliked geometry the least.  If nothing else, geometry gave me permission to doodle in class and call it “note-taking.” Needless to say, I am no expert on geometry or on another aspect of mathematics.

Thankfully, then, “sphere sovereignty” has (virtually) nothing to do with the sphere’s dominance over other geometric shapes such as hexagons or equilateral triangles.

Richard Mouw, in his recent book Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction, reflects on some of Abraham Kuyper’s key contributions to Christian theology and cultural engagement.  One of the most helpful concepts in terms of understanding Christianity’s interaction with culture is what Kuyper called “sphere sovereignty.”

The basic questions that Kuyper was seeking to answer is: “Who is in control over [insert any area (sphere) of life: family, church, politics, art, entertainment, education, etc.] and how does that person or thing exercise that control?

Mouw, in summarizing Kuyper’s thinking, identifies two traditional ways of answering that question.  The first is what Mouw calls a “church-controlled” answer.  The second is a “secularist” answer.  The church-controlled option says that God is in control of all areas (spheres) of life, but he exercises that control through the power of the church.  Thus all areas of life are governed or directed by the church.

The secularist objects, however.  The secularists asserts that God – if there is a God – may have his control over the church, but the other spheres of life (arts, politics, entertainment) are free from his control – and the churches!

In typical Mouwian style, he notes that both the church-controlled and the secularist answers got something right and got something wrong.  Mouw writes:

For Kuyper, each of these two models embodied both a positive insight and a fundamental error.  The medieval perspective [the church-controlled view] rightly saw that God’s rule must be acknowledged over all spheres of human activity.  Its mistake was investing the church with the power to mediate that rule. … The secularist perspective rightly wants to liberate these spheres from the church’s control.  Where it goes wrong is in its insistence that to do so is also to take them out from under the rule of God. (40-41)

The church-controlled approach is right in insisting that God is in control over all of life; the secularist is right in insisting that the church is not the right overseer of that control. A better way, suggests Kuyper, is that God directly exercise his authority over each sphere. “Every square inch” of the world – politics and sports, art and science, church and yes, even geometry – lives “coram deo, before the face of God.”

Using an illustration (as close to geometry as I get these days!), sphere sovereignty looks something like this:

Christ is Lord over all of creation and yet there is a “separation of powers.”  The church is to submit herself to the Lordship of Christ in a way appropriate to its sphere.  Likewise, an economist is to submit herself to the Lordship of Christ and do economics coram deo – before the face of God.  Yes, even a protester among the throngs of the Occupy Wall Street movement is to protest coram deo.

Kuyper’s doctrine of “sphere sovereignty” is a true gift to the church.  However, as Mouw notes, there are still some unanswered questions.  What happens when families fall apart?  Is it appropriate for another “sphere” to step in?  If so, which one?  What role, if any, does the church have of being a prophetic voice to those in politics to enact just laws or to economists to seek fairness and equity?  These are tough questions, but Kuyper gives us a helpful starting point to keep thinking about these issues.

“Father Abraham”

“Father Abraham…had many sons; many sons had father Abraham.”

This, of course, is true of Abram of Ur as the children’s song intends.  However, it is also true these days of Abraham Kuyper. Once a man relatively unknown outside of (Dutch) Reformed circles, Abraham Kuyper is now claimed by many people – from a whole range of theological persuasions – as their theological “father.”

There are certain “Kuyperian” phrases or emphases that have made their way into common evangelical parlance.  Words and ideas like worldview, creation-fall-redemption-consummation, cultural mandate, and sphere sovereignty – although not restricted to Kuyperianism – have a history in Abraham Kuyper.

I mention these things because I’ve begun a short little introduction to Kuyper written by Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Seminary.  The book, Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction, is a brief sketch of some of the main themes of Kuyper’s thought. (For an extended review of the book, check out the always thoughtful folks at “Hearts and Minds” books.)

In the next two weeks, I hope to give some thoughts and reflections on the book – largely because on October 15, Dr. Mouw will be in Grand Rapids and will be giving a book talk at Eerdmans bookstore.

To begin, then, here’s a quote from the book that I think is worth reflecting on:

It is important to note that the most widely quoted New Testament verse about the coming of Christ, John 3:16, isn’t just about God’s desire to save individual souls.  It certainly includes that, but there is more.  The Greek word translated as “world” is cosmos, which is properly understood as referring to the original created order: “For God so loved the cosmos that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  And this is immediately followed by a wonderful piece of assurance in verse 17:that “God did not send the Son into the cosmos to condemn the cosmos, but in order that the cosmos might be saved through him.” (12)

How might that understanding of John 3:16 affect how we understand salvation?  How might it affect our posture to the “world?”  How might it affect our call to be witnesses of Christ’s salvation in the world?

Maybe, just maybe, that guy who is always holding the John. 3:16 sign at the back of the endzone, is somehow testifying to the fact that God, through Christ, is redeeming even football.

What inspires you?

It’s that time of year again.  School is lurking on the other side of Labor Day weekend (or has even begun for some sad souls) which means it’s time for me to get idealistic.  Although I am not teaching full-time while I attend seminary, my heart is still in education; I still love the craft that is teaching.  Here are a few of my favorite inspirational (education) movies that keep loving and dreaming about teaching.  What films inspire you?

 

While there may be a bit of romanticism laden in some of these films, there is a beautiful common thread among them that weaves teaching together with love and compassion for the students and subjects being taught.

There was another great Teacher who once weaved those things together.  “When he [Jesus] went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.  And he began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34 ESV).

What inspires you?  For you teachers out there, how do you weave together teaching, compassion, and love?

Christ is Risen!

Here is one of the great Easter sermons of all time – dating all the way back to about 400 AD from John Chrysostom:

Is there anyone who is a devout lover of God?
Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!
Is there anyone who is a grateful servant?
Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Are there any weary with fasting?
Let them now receive their wages!
If any have toiled from the first hour,
let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour,
let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour,
let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.
And if any delayed until the ninth hour,
let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour,
as well as to him that toiled from the first.
To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.
He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor.
The deed He honors and the intention He commends.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!
First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!
Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he said,
“You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below.”

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/chrysostom-easter.html

Everybody loves a little history

You can never get too much history – especially when it is well written (and told or read)!

My sister recently let me borrow Susan Wise Bauer’s book (and audiobook) “The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child.” What a delight!  I’ve been listening to the book as I drive around town and the length of the chapters is great – each chapter only takes about 10 minutes to listen to.

Here are a few of the chapter heading for volume one (there are 4 volumes):

Chp. 1 – The Earliest People

Chp. 2 – Egyptians Lived on the Nile River

Chp. 3 – The first writing

Chp. 4 – The Old Kingdom of Egypt

Chp. 5 – The First Sumerian Dictator

I would recommend reading it (or listening to it, in my case) – young or old, history buffs or not.