Monday, August 27, 2012
302 - Do Teachers Have a Prayer?
Spirituality
Column #302
August 28, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville
August 28, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville
Do Teachers Have a Prayer?
By
Bob Walters
Do you ever wonder what God thinks
of education?
God, no doubt, is “for”
education.” In the Logos, the Word, the
Christ, we have God’s eternal assurance that truth resides with Him alone, and
that it is for God’s glory that we search and learn and grow and trust in God’s
truth with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. His is a big, big Creation. It reflects God’s glory, and we will never
run out of things to learn about it.
So what does American education do? It calls God controversial, expels Him from
school, and then insists that teachers teach “truth” after our system has
removed “truth” from the curriculum. We try
to teach children something, anything, that will stick; not understanding that
the first article of truth is faith, and we just sent faith home.
As Dr. Phil would say, “How’s that
working for you?”
In the educational dynamic, my hunch
is that God first sides with the children, and then sides with the
teachers. After that, God has to be as
baffled as the rest of us at the machinations of an American public educational
system and its peripheral “experts” who talk a loud game of achievement while
even more loudly denigrating faith.
It’s like playing baseball without
the ball. And as for publicly vociferous
non-teacher educational “experts,” I know this: having once been a student doesn’t
make one an expert on education any more than going to a Cubs game makes one
the starting shortstop.
I’m married to a just-retired 34-year
veteran teacher, and for the past four years I’ve been a full-time substitute
teacher. I love the kids, but moreover I’ve
learned to appreciate teachers. Here’s a
prayer for them and all school employees:
Father God, may you be present in the hearts
and minds of these servants dedicated to educating our young. May your Holy Spirit give them knowledge,
wisdom, energy, strength, and grace, and may they know the holy importance of
their task. May the fruits of the spirit
– peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control
– be strengthened in them; for Lord, they need these gifts.
And O Lord, we fervently pray that each of
their students would come closer to appreciating the immense gift of education,
and, somehow, of learning, knowing, and experiencing the immense gift of Your
eternal love. And let each of us pray
with determination that Your mighty name would one day be welcomed again in our
public schools, for Your glory, as it is in our hearts. In Christ Jesus we pray, Amen.
Pray for a
teacher. That’s something that will
work.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) was a good high school building
sub at Lawrence Central and McKenzie Center for Innovation and Technology (Lawrence Twp.).
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