There admittedly were a few problems with this scenario. For one thing, the school used the A Beka curriculum published by Pensacola Christian College, and I just couldn't get on board with its narrow and dogmatic approach to everything. Among other things, I objected to its simplistic view of history and to its rigid insistence on one worldview instead of allowing students to develop their own.
We were an evangelical school, and among other things officially believed in the six-day creation described in Genesis 1. The school had been founded by an Assemblies of God church, and the church took the Bible literally, even the poetic bits.
This may seem odd to people not familiar with creationist thinking, but it's unwise to underestimate the human mind's ability to find logical consistency. Skeptics will ask how Noah fit all those animals onto the ark, for instance, but this isn't really a challenge. Just imagine Noah taking juveniles or eggs, and the species differentiating as they spread out after the flood, and the whole thing becomes a lot easier to believe.
As a teacher I favor giving people the tools to find truth rather than just telling them what to believe. I was expected to teach the creationist viewpoint, but I still wanted my students to understand the principles behind evolution even if they didn't believe them.
This meant that I often had to find or create my own materials to supplement the curriculum. The A Beka test on Darwin asked, "Explain why evolution is wrong." The test I gave asked, "Which model of life's origins do you believe? Support your answer."
I wouldn't even tell my students where I stood on the issue. That upset a few students, but what really caused problems for me with the other staff was my approach to staff devotions.
I've never been a big fan of such an approach to matters of faith when it comes to adults. I've always felt that the purpose of reading the Bible is to discover something new about holiness and our pursuit of God. Its messages of social justice and liberation should afflict us when we feel comfortable and make us think of a better way. Too often we use it to lull ourselves further to sleep.
If you read a story like Joseph and all you come away with is that Joseph forgave his brothers for mistreating him, and we should also forgive people who have been unkind to us, you have failed dramatically at understanding the story. There is so much more to learn by digging into the material, understanding the motivations that drive the characters to act the way they do, and grasping the authorial intent behind the story.
We were required to attend devotions every morning before school would start. The other teachers hated when it was my turn.
The other teachers read essays by authors like Max Lucado or short stories from books like Chicken Soup for the Soul. These were stories about the legacy a good teacher can have, or the value that lies hidden within each person. I shared readings that had made me think, or that shed light on something familiar from an unexpected angle.
As John the evangelist tells the story, the Pharisees brought the woman to Jesus as a test to see if he would uphold the Mosaic law and approve of her execution. Instead, Jesus famously replied, "Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone," and pointedly ignored the woman's accusers until everyone had dropped their stones and walked away.
In Card's first retelling of the story, the teacher in Christ's place spares the woman's life because he is corrupt, and sees an advantage in letting her live. In the second retelling the teacher kills the woman himself because justice must be upheld or the law will lose all meaning. That actually elicited a horrified gasp from one teacher.
A different time I shared a passage from Don Richardson's "Eternity in their Hearts," a book about redemptive analogies found in pre-Christian cultures. The book contains dozens of these, and argues that they providentially serve as a doorway for the gospel story to enter new cultures and grow organically in the culture without the baggage that comes with traditional missions work.
I am a former missionary and I find this sort of thing fascinating. The other teachers found it tedious. Evidently some of them must have remarked to the administration what a bad fit I was at the school.
"You don't do devotions the same as everyone else," the principal observed during one conversation we had.
No, I suppose I didn't, and I still don't. As I've aged, I've found that the Bible has found new ways to afflict me in my comfort. One of the most constant themes in the Bible is the divine obligation we are under to look out for others and to oppose injustice whenever we see it rather than turning a blind eye to it.
I live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, where my chief concern each day is not whether we'll eat, but what I'm going to make my family for dinner. If I get pulled over by the police, I can be confident that the worst I'll get is a ticket but there's a good chance I'll just get a warning. Not everyone is that fortunate. Particularly in the past week, the question "And who is my neighbor?" has become one with profound implications for how I live.
The school in Bethlehem was actually my second year teaching at a Christian school. My first year was at Cradle of Life Christian School in Haiti. We had staff devotions there only three times a week, instead of every day, and because we had a much larger staff, it took longer for each of us to have a turn. The only guidance there was the same as at my second school: Share what God is teaching you.
So one time, when it was my turn, I did. I shared the questions that had been piling onto my shoulders the entire time I had been in Haiti, about whether the evangelical gospel of forgiveness was really relevant in a country with such crushing poverty, or if it was incomplete and missing something.
No one in the staff objected in my hearing to what I shared, but the school administration didn't seem very happy with it. I was put on probation the next day. A month later I was fired after I shared the same thing with my students.
I've never been a fan of devotions, but I'm pretty confident I did that one right. I pray that we all get it right during the next four years.
Copyright © 2003, 2017 by David Learn. Used with permission.
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