Lenten Pedagogy -- part 3

Consecration is an important element of Christian education, especially when we are tempted to look for greener pastures during the stressful times of grading and writing that every semester brings. Gerald May puts it this way:

Consecration means dedication to God. It occurs when we claim our deepest desire for God, beneath, above, and beyond all other things. We may not understand the full meaning of consecration: the ups and downs, the joys and agonies of the journey that must follow. And certainly we will be unable to grasp the overarching cosmic meaning of our small assent, the joy it gives to God, the deepening love it will bring to humanity, the . . . covenant it has enriched. But our yes comes from some bare recollection of all these things. In a tiny space our hearts can say yes.

Confession and spiritual mortification call us to self-examination that we may forget ourselves and to alms-giving that we may gain great blessings. Monks often take a vow of stability, pledging to stay in the place their life has been planted. While I am certainly not arguing that professors or students should never change universities, I do think we need to acknowledge that certain aspects of our growth require the suffering of endurance and the humility of choosing perhaps the lesser of places, at least in some academics' estimation. Calvin sees a similar kind of stability in the very vocations we are called to by God:

The last thing to be observed is, that the Lord enjoins every one of us, in all the actions of life, to have respect to our own calling. He knows the boiling restlessness of the human mind, the fickleness with which it is borne hither and thither, its eagerness to hold opposites at one time in its grasp, its ambition.

Therefore, lest all things should be thrown into confusion by our folly and rashness, he has assigned distinct duties to each in the different modes of life. And that no one may presume to overstep his proper limits, he has distinguished the different modes of life by the name of callings. Every man's mode of life, therefore, is a kind of station assigned him by the Lord that he may not be always driven about at random. (Institutes 3.10.6)

While Calvin’s model is perhaps more static than our lives necessitate, there is a real truth to this; namely, we are tempted by selfish motives that drive, even infect, our noble callings. This native presumption of the fallen mind can only too easily be attested to in education, so the gift of stability has much to pedagogically commend it. When we train in God’s kingdom, we are not training for ourselves alone, but for the needs of a hurting world, and this is true of the end and purpose of our teaching and the Christian educational project as a whole.

This training includes a counter-cultural approach to success. We need, I need, a self-check each time I blanch before those teaching at Yale, Princeton, or Oxford.