This morning I was driving across our part of town to our church to do a voice-over for a video (a new skill of mine), and I had to have seen twenty or more high school and middle school aged students walking the streets. They weren't just near the schools, and they weren't just in the poorer neighborhoods. They were everywhere.
Now, as a once and future educator, I am appalled by this sort of truancy. As I drove, I was thinking bad thoughts about these kids and finally came to an important question. I asked myself, "Don't they know that they are handicapping themselves for their future by skipping school?"
However, this question immediately caused me to wonder about some even more important things. Just what is it that they will be missing out on if they continue on this trajectory? I realized that our secular society holds up materialism as the prize for those who work hard and succeed. That is exactly what we all tell our students in schools - work hard, study, behave so you can be successful and grow up to have a nice job, nice house, and things. The problem is that this sort of future is empty - profoundly. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Whole generations of people are even now coming to maturity who know that materialism fails to meet our most important needs.
Now, I definitely do not mean to excuse these truant kids as some sort of heroic rebels set against the corrupt system we have. But I am pointing out that what we are offering our students as the goal toward which they are working is not worth working for. We must offer something far more rewarding, and I think that such reward can only be found in Christ.
Of course, that last statement I made is a little hard to put flesh on sometimes, but Jesus gives us the meaning and value that we long for. Also, He provides us with a reason to be excellent at all things - His glory's sake. In addition, He has given us all (Christians that is) the ultimate mission to accomplish, which provides us with a community of support and an ultimately higher aim for our lives. Lastly, Christ gives us an eternal reward, while materialism is only valuable so long as you can enjoy it, which will certainly not last past your death and probably won't last that long.
We need to get out and offer this goal to those who are waking up to the failure of the American dream.
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3 comments:
I agree! I think kids can see through the lies we teach them. I'm not sure they're truant for that reason, but they're truant because they don't believe there's a good enough reason to be in school. The reason you give--for God'd glory in excellency--is the same reason we as adults (woah, are we really?) shouldn't call in sick when we're not, or slack in our work, or as parents, etc.
As a matter of fact, I think Christians miss the point of Christianity a lot. I think if we really "got it," we'd be beating down the doors of the lost, begging them to come to salvation. The kids are selling themselves short of an education, and we're selling ourselves short of realizing who we can be in Christ.
Can I start introducing you as the "once and future educator?" That would be so cool.... But "the voice of Wedgwood BC" has a nice ring to it, too. :)
I'm interested in knowing more about the new voice project. I think your voice will be great as a narrator.
I agree with your assessment of the failure of our educational system. I think that's why home schooling has gained such a following in the last 20 years.
We still see this lack of purpose in people in their twenties and thirties who have no idea what to do with their lives. Without God all lack purpose and yet his purpose for us is much deeper than a vocation. It extends to the core of our identity and most people today lack that. The schools sell materialism as the God-shaped vacuum in the hearts of their students is not allowed (on their watch) to be filled with God.
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