HT: The chief form of zealotry

Taken from Ray Ortlund's blog, 15 September:

“The state was the great gainer of the twentieth century, and the central failure.  Up to 1914, it was rare for the public sector to embrace more than 10 per cent of the economy; by the 1970s, even in liberal countries, the state took up to 45 per cent of the GNP. . . . The state had proved itself an insatiable spender, an unrivalled waster. . . . By the turn of the century politics was replacing religion as the chief form of zealotry.  To archetypes of the new class, . . . politics — by which they meant the engineering of society for lofty purposes — was the one legitimate form of moral activity, the only sure means of improving humanity.  This view, which would have struck an earlier age as fantastic, became to some extent the orthodoxy everywhere.”
Paul Johnson, A History of the Modern World from 1917 to the 1980s (London, 1983), page 729.

Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.  Psalm 146:3

calvin in my classroom: consequence

To quote D. A. Carson, "Both God's love and God's wrath are racheted up in the move from the Old Testament to the New." ("God's Love and God's Wrath," Bibliotheca Sacra, 1999)  In the Old Testament, God's wrath manifests in worldly ways; in the New Testament, God's wrath manifests itself in Christ's teachings on Hell.  If in the Old Testament God seems more wrathful to us, it's because we either don't believe in or don't understand Hell.

~ Dane Ortlund, 13.Aug.11

Economics teaches the idea of the "rational man," who weighs options and always chooses the one in his best interest.  I have never seen this man in my classroom.  He's not even on my roster.

Let me give you an example.  My students are not allowed to have their cell phones out during class; when I explain this, many students are shocked to discover that it is not simply an extension of their hand and mind.  As students invariably struggle to cope with their concept of the world being so flipped, testing to see if this is real life, they are given a harsh pinch to confirm: any cell phone that is out is to be given to  the principal, and only returned when a parent comes up to school to retrieve it.  Within this context, I often try to play "good cop" and give students a choice, "give me your phone now (solving the problem), or give it to the principal later (after written referral).  If you give it to me now, you can come get it at the end of the day."  Easy choice, right?  Except that having to give the phone to the teacher feels much more real because it's tangible and immediate, and many students will refuse because they have no concept of administrative referral/suspension.  

I fear that I often view God the same way that my students view our administration.  I have no concept of the wrathfulness of the New Testament - of the hell Christ preached - or I would not think that the Old Testament seemed so much more harsh.  It's all about tangibility.  See, the "rational man" concept assumes that man is governed by rationality; in reality, I'd suggest that man is actually governed by self.  Thus, instead of acting based on what makes the most sense, we act based on what we can conceive or imagine. We need Christ, in his grace, to take away the blindness that limits us to our own experience and imagination.  Only he can soften our hearts to the intervention he's provided so that we don't face the consequences of the system.

And this is not simply a spiritual problem.  Nicholas Nassim Taleb identifies the same problem in his work: we have great difficulty thinking outside our pre-existing categories (The Bed of Proscrustes) and therefore we are Fooled by Randomness.

spiritual neurosurgery

"For weeks, for months, I had been fighting to control my temper, figuring I could handle it myself.  Now, in that small, hot bathroom, I knew the truth.  I could not handle my temper alone ... Already heavy into psychology (I had been reading Psychology Today for a year), I knew that temper was a personality trait.  Standard thinking in the field pointed out the difficulty, if not the impossibility of modifying personality traits. Even today, some experts believe that the best we can do is accept our limitations and adjust to them.

Tears streamed between my fingers. "Lord, despite what the experts tell me, you can change me. You have to take this temper from me.  If you don't, I'll never be free from it. I'll do things a lot worse than trying to stab one of my best friends. You can free me forever from this destructive personality trait." 

Ben Carson, M.D. (with Cecil Murphey), Gifted Hands, Chapter 6

Read this in class today with the kids.  A neurosurgeon talking about changing our mental wiring! Thoughts:

1)  I had students predict what would happen to someone who tried to stab his friend: "jail, insane asylum, suicide, depression, reform school."  Actual result: surrender/dependence, change, freedom.  What a beautiful illustration of grace - and how radically foreign it is to our minds & culture..

2) We can't change ourselves.  Dr. Ben Carson, one of the most brilliant minds of our time, knows this is true - experientially, psychologically, spiritually. 

3)  There is hope that we'll never again have to fear what we're capable of.  "If you don't, I'll never be free from it.  I'll do things a lot worse.."  We know ourselves best, and at some level are ashamed of our negative potential.  But we are already in part - and someday fully - rescued from this worry. 

calvin in my classroom: choice

"No one thrives in an environment of rules; people thrive in an environment of leadership." ~ Ray Ortlund, 25.July.2010

The first two weeks of school each year are spent establishing order in the classroom.  As the teacher, I show the students my expectations for how class should run and teach them the system of consequences that happens when they fall short of these expectations.

Experimenting with how I enforce this discipline has revealed a lot to me about how we're wired as humans - and how that affects our choices.  In my training, I was taught to establish a "ladder of consequences" that identified an increasingly bad outcome for each infraction a student committed.  As students make bad choices, they are informed of their choice, its consequence, and the next consequence if they continue in their actions.  When I used this system, I felt odd and out of character, like a cross between Will Smith kicking butt in some movie and an Old Testament minor prophet shoved into a 21st century Title I classroom, whose only job was to constantly belt out: "you have sinned, so now this is happening to you, and if you continue you will suffer more."  And how did this help my students?  I actually never saw this method correct behavior.  I was having the same problems in April that I had in September, because students simply acclimated to the outcome.  In fact, some students became worse-behaved simply to show that they could break the rules and undermine my authority.  Unfortunately for them, my authority didn't change; only the extent to which I had to exercise it over them did.  I found the whole experience eerily similar to living under religious rules, i.e. what is commonly called "the law" of the "Old Covenant" established by Moses in the Bible.

Halfway through last year, I decided to change the language of my system to that of choice.  Instead of facing consequences, my students faced a series of choices - the first one is theirs to make, second is mine, third is their parent's, and fourth is the administration's.  The change was immediate; my students (last year and so far this year) stopped unnecessarily pressing the system to the limit (i.e. administrative referral) because they had been given a choice.

But the weirdest part?  The first choice - a student's opportunity to correct - still never corrects the problem.  Students will still - 100% of the time - continue in their behavior.  Sure, they proved in the first system that they could break my rules, but under the second model, they couldn't uphold them!  Choice is an illusion; there is still only one outcome that actually occurs.

So why did the second model work?  How did students manage to change behavior?  In this second model, students come to realize that they have not been able to change behavior, and therefore accept my consequence as a helpful intervention.  The outcome is no different - they still have to move seats, or talk to me in the hallway, etc. - but they now perceive it as an opportunity I've created rather than a punishment.

I'm not saying that we were created without choice.  I don't know, I wasn't in on the design process.  I have observed, however, that regardless of what our state may be, we don't make the right choices.  We may be able to choose, but our will is not free to do so.  Piper describes this tension in terms of moral versus physical inability:

"This is a great stumbling block for many people  - to assert that we are responsible to do what we are morally unable to do ... It may help, however, to consider that the inability we speak of is not owing to a physical handicap, but to moral corruption.. Physical inability would remove accountability.  Moral inability does not."

~ John Piper, Desiring God, p. 65 (footnote)

I see a lot of myself in my students; I relate to God the way that they relate to me as their teacher.  Thankfully, God made the greatest intervention and provided such an amazing opportunity that it is literally irresistible once He reveals it - even to those (like me) that are "morally corrupt."  In the same way that my interventions make my students' continued rebellion seem foolish, His intervention makes my corruption seem unmentionably unimportant.

craving, conversion, confidence

"Once we had no delight in God, and Christ was just a vague historical figure.  What we enjoyed was food and friendships and productivity and investments and vacations and hobbies and games and reading and shopping and sex and sports and art and TV and travel ... but not God.  He was an idea - even a good one - and a topic for discussion; but he was not a treasure or delight. 

Then something miraculous happened.. First the stunned silence before the unspeakable beauty of holiness.  Then the shock and terror that we had actually loved the darkness.  Then the settling stillness of joy that this [experience of holiness] is the soul's end.  The quest is over ... And then faith that if I come to God through Christ, He will give me the desire of my heart to share His holiness and behold His glory.  But before the confidence comes the craving.  Before the decision comes delight." 

~ John Piper, Desiring God, p. 71-72

I've lived most of my life in that first scenario, simply "believing" in and talking about the idea of God.  I thought, and had been taught, that conversion to following Christ only involved that last step - "faith .. coming to God .. confidence ... decision" - however you say it.  I never realized until last fall that faith was a reaction.  And it's not a reaction only to my poorly-placed love; it's first a reaction to God revealing His unspeakable beauty and holiness, the light by which I am even able to recognize that my love was misplaced.