1000 Blessings

I was inspired by a list of blessings started by my adopted daughter, Claire, and decided to start a list of my own. I tend to focus far too much on the negative things around me, and it seems like a good exercise, especially for someone like me, to look for blessings in my life. Perhaps I will see less wrong from day to day as I look for those things that are right. One thousand blessings seems like a lot, but as I look at Claire’s list I realize that blessings come in all shapes and sizes. Even things that start as difficulties can turn into blessings with the proper perspective. I have no idea how long it will take to get to one thousand, but in the back of my mind I am hoping that as I practice looking for blessings, I will find them more easily.

With that in mind, I am starting simply, with three blessings that are no-brainers and that I suspect will resurface continually in various forms.

1. My wife, Sandy, who loves me, regardless of my mood, my quirks, my odd and sometimes scary ideas, not to mention my many faults.
2. My son Colby whose passion for his faith is inspiring and challenging and makes me gush with pride and hopeful for the future.
3. My beautiful little girl Calli, (who will always be my little girl) who is not so little anymore, but is still beautiful, inside and out.

Consuming Students in Education Reform

I was recently  reading an article in the New York Times entitled Report Card on Education Reform, not with great expectation, but with a bit of curiosity. Three men were being interviewed about education reform - Arne Duncan, our Secretary of Education, Mitch Daniels, former Indiana Governor and now President of Purdue University and John Engler, former Governor of Michigan who now runs a corporate lobbying group called Business Roundtable. For most of the article there was the standard quoting of national and international statistics which always includes test scores of some sort, and graduation rates, which always leads to the same conclusion - that our education system is in dire need of fixing.

But within the article I found some telling quotes, like this one from John Engler:

“we are the consumer groups here at the table. All the products of K-12 system are either going to go to the university or they are going to the work force.”

Does that bother anyone besides me? As people in power, these men view our students  as products for their consumption! K-12 is nothing more than a factory for spitting out a product that the business world to consume. 

Later he says this:

“I think we need to keep data and academic performance the way we keep it on sports. I mean, we know everything about where we stand in football, but we could be last in the league in mathematics for a decade, and we’d never know it.”

Speaking as a consumer, I can see where that would be frustrating, although if you are really too dense to figure out the product you are consuming is horrible in an area you deem to be important, than I think the problem is in his own ability to evaluate the product, not in the information being provided for him. Speaking as a human, however, this comparison of education to keeping stats in a sporting event sounds like an appalling comparison. Maybe we should throw away teachers the same ways professional sports teams throw away coaches (if only we could do that in politics) - you know every three or four years we just fire all the teachers and hire new ones. All the teachers that got fired from one district can go to another district and start over again, until their is new ownership and they decide to bring in a whole new group and the musical teaching positions game can start all over again. That sounds like a great model for quality, stable education reform.

With all the constant talk of education reform, we (in the education world) are constantly inundated with data and statistics that tell us what a horrible job we are doing and how important it is for our country, that we get better, quickly. But it wasn’t until I read John Engler’s words that I realized what that really means. If you look at the roots of most reform it is driven by business (consumers) who want a product (students) who fit their need for the sake of making money... and more money. In the same article Mitch Daniels refers to other countries as the “competition” and Arne Duncan laments that. “If you look at any international comparison.. on no indicator are we anywhere near where we want to be.” Unfortunately there is no international measure of humanness. One of the most constant complaints about the “product” put out by “high achieving” countries, is the seeming loss of humanness. Awhile back I read an article about high achieving Asian countries exploring reforms to produce creativity that has all but disappeared in the midst of the insatiable pursuit of “academia.” But you don’t hear much about those kinds of stories.

I would be the first to say that there are problems with our education system, but neither the problems nor the solutions can be measured in test scores, data analysis, graduation rates, international competitions or the bottom lines of corporate america that is dissatisfied with the current product. Until our leaders stop looking at our students as facts and figures in a data table, or products spit out of an assembly line for the consumption of our ruling class, or pawns in a global competition of power and wealth, we will never see true, meaningful reform in our education system. When teachers are allowed to... no, EXPECTED to be compassionate, loving, caring, HUMAN, role models for our students, and EXPECTED to teach lessons beyond math, science, reading, writing and cut-throat consumerism, then there will be reform. When integrity is demanded from teachers and administrators alike and when positive relationships with students (beyond knowing their latest assessment score), becomes the norm, rather than the forgotten exception, then we will have reform. When teachers are given permission to be humans caring for humans to develop better humans, and even more, when that becomes the highest priority, then we will have true reform. 

The thought that I am seen as a tool to create a product out of a student, for manipulative utilization by the very people who believe our vary existence is dependent on increased consumption, does very little to motivate me to be a better teacher. But the thought of encouraging a student to be a person of integrity and honor is one of the few things that actually keeps me teaching (and right now I am grasping for anything I can find!)

Here Am I...

There is an often used passage in Isaiah 6 that is referred to as God’s commissioning of  the prophet Isaiah to his ministry. The previous five chapters outline many things that are wrong in the nation of Israel and it is obvious that they have no heart for God and and they have become a stiff-necked, disobedient people. The nation has always had prophets and now God is looking for another prophet to step up to tell the nation the err of their ways. So Isaiah tells the story of how he became God’s prophet. In chapter 6 Isaiah sees God seated on his throne with angels (seraphs) covering their faces. Isaiah realizes the incredible, overwhelming holiness of where he finds himself and cries out:

“Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man with unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord God Almighty.” (v. 5)

At this an angel flies to Isaiah with a hot coal held in tongs and touches it to the mouth of Isaiah to take away his guilt and to atone for his sins. It is a powerful, visual portrayal of God’s grace and mercy as well as the humility and repentance of a Godly man. It is a story that draws us in and captivates us while. So it has been used frequently by speakers get the attention of an audience and to build them up for the dramatic calling and response that comes next. 

After the coal has touched his lips, Isaiah records that he hears the voice of God saying:

“Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” (v. 8)

Then comes Isaiah’s response - the response that many speakers want you to hear and repeat for yourself. It is the response that is the climax of sermons, and rallies and many other events where the speaker wants us to make a bold proclamation of our undeniable loyalty to God. It is the moment that speakers want us to remember.

Isaiah responds to God’s voice by saying:

“Here am I. Send me!” (v.8)

Generally, by this point in a speaker’s message there is an emotional crescendo and, riding the wave of passion, we agree that we want to be used by God in the same way as Isaiah, so we repeat, “Here am I, send me!” But in responding based on an emotional appeal, we too easily neglect to count the cost of our eager response. In our enthusiasm we fail to read the rest of the story to see what God does with Isaiah’s response. It is well and good to emulate Isaiah, but we shouldn’t do so until we read the whole story. 

Based on the building passion of many speakers, we might be inclined to believe that Isaiah was destined to do great things for the nation of Israel and that God would bless Isaiah’s ministry by giving him repeated and continuous success, all the result of his humble submission. And we want to do great things for God as well, just like Isaiah. But we don’t need to read very far to realize that great success, at least by our human standards, is not exactly what God had in mind for Isaiah. God blesses Isaiah, but it is far from what we would expect and certainly not what we most often hope for when we plead to go God to, “send me.” 

If you take the time to read beyond verse 8, you quickly find that God never promises Isaiah success, or a bountiful ministry. In fact it is just the opposite. God promises that no one will listen. God asks Isaiah to preach to people whose hearts will be calloused, whose eyes will remained closed and whose hearts will never understand.  Read it for yourself:

He said, “Go and tell this people:

“Be ever hearing, but never understanding;

   be ever seeing, but never perceiving.

Make the heart of this people calloused;

   make their ears dull

   and close their eyes.

Otherwise they might see with their eyes;

   hear with their ears,

   understand with their hearts,

and turn and be healed.” (v. 9 & 10)

Wow...

Isaiah, at that point, is probably wondering what he just got himself into, so he asks, “For how long, oh Lord?” He gets very little comfort in God’s response. He doesn’t get, “maybe their hearts will be hardened for a few months or maybe a year.” Instead God answers Isaiah’s question with this:

“Until the cities lie ruined,

    and without inhabitant,

until the houses are left deserted

    and the fields ruined and ravaged,

until the Lord has sent everyone far away

    and the land is utterly forsaken.

And though a tenth remains in the land, 

    it will again be laid waste.

But as the terebinth and oak

    leave stumps when they are cut down, 

    so the holy seed will be the stump in the land."

Ya... not very comforting. If God were promising you the same thing as he promised Isaiah, would you still be to respond to those emotional appeals by saying, “Here am I, send me?”

Basically Isaiah’s entire ministry is to serve people who will never respond. God does not call Isaiah to be the difference maker, he calls Isaiah to a life of perseverance and faithfulness despite the constant lack of encouragement from those around him. He is called to a life that will seem like futility, but God will ask Isaiah to minister and proclaim His message anyway. And Isaiah does.

Matt Chandler, in the Explicit Gospel says it like this;

“The priority God charges him [Isaiah] with is not success, but integrity.”

It is easy for us to get excited about Isaiah 6:8, but can we still be as eager as Isaiah if we are called to Isaiah 6:9-13? Can we say, “Here am I. Send me,” even if we are promised no success? We are often so focussed on results, that we too often neglect the importance of faithful integrity, but God does not. 

I pray that I will someday be the man who can respond like Isaiah.