Huge Social Life

The past 2 Friday nights, I've been in bed, fast asleep, by 10 PM. I haven't been sick. I feel just fine. It's just that I've been tired, and I COULD go to bed, so I did. Most likely, I'll be in bed before 10 again tonight. It's just how I roll these days.

I wonder if it says something about a person when they choose to go to bed earlier on a weekend night than they do on a weeknight. Perhaps.

Today was a leadership forum at school. Several times a year we bring in someone to speak to our students about how they, as leaders, have engaged their world. Today's speaker was Gideon Strauss, a South African who was an interpreter for the Truth and Reconciliation trials of post-apartheid South Africa. Now, he is involved in several Canadian ministries linking a Christian's responsibility to influence culture with the workforce and economy. He focused his talk on 3 specific ways that we should posture ourselves toward our culture and our world - with wonder, heartbreak, and hope. The response of our students was overwhelmingly positive, and I must say that I went in to the time with high hopes and left feeling the time was better than expected.

I spend approximately 50 or so hours a week with high school students and I am often shocked at their failure to acknowledge, much less actively engage, their culture. For as much as I observe this in them, I'm sure I do the same, I'm just (duh) ignorant. We rarely wonder at the world because we take it for granted. They rarely think about the ease in which they can find entertainment, information, transportation, etc. They fail to wonder at their freedom and privilege, noticing only when what they believe to be their right is unavailable to them. I'm sure I'm the same way.

Then there's the posture of heartbreak. We have to be aware of how the world should be in order to let the cruelty, ugliness, and injustice truly break our hearts. Several times in the past year I have been horrified by my students' tendency to laugh or mock instead of to be shocked or hurt or saddened. Last year, watching a movie in English class, we got to a very intense scene in which a character begins sobbing after his wife dies, and my 10th grade boys spontaneously erupted in laughter - mocking laughter. Students today laugh at everything, mock everything. If you observe the world at a mocking level, you never have to truly engage it and let it influence you. Sarcasm and ridicule are defense mechanisms to prevent anyone (yourself or others) from seeing the truth.

Finally, we must face the world with hope. I must frequently remind myself of the hope of redemption in the lives of my students and of myself. I must look at my students as flawed, as having a sin nature, and must have hope that they can/will be redeemed. I must avoid the tendency to view them as Jonah viewed the Ninevites - to sit self-righteously as my students struggle, unaware of how or what to change. I must have hope that the little efforts we put forth on a daily basis are preparing our students to be culture makers - to drive, shape, improve our world.