The Conversation

Acts 8:30-31

I would argue that this two sentence dialog--

Do you understand?

How can I if no one teaches me?

is one of the most important conversations we can ever have. 

We want our children to reach heights we never before imagined, finding peace, comfort, hope, and fulfillment on levels we do not reach. How can they if we do not teach them of the ways of love, compassion, and grace; the ways of true meaning, purpose, and actualization of our God-given gifts of creative imagination and hearts that feel? 

We want to see an end to poverty, oppression, violence, and greed, but how can we if no one teaches us the power of the alternative to each of these overly prevalent drives in our society?

Seekers are hungry to find what life really is all about and how to find their place within the world. How can they if no one teaches them that are unique acts of God’s creative will with an inherent value, worth, and meaning that defies all reason?

We grossly undervalue teaching in our culture. Look at the constant struggle of public schools to meet the demands of educating children in an environment of starving schools of funds, resources, and equipment. We grow antsy when teachers ask to be paid for their trouble. We focus on test scores that reveal nothing more than who can take a test, not whose minds have become opened to the depth, breadth, and wonder of the cosmos and us within it. 

A few years ago, I was horrified to sit in a parent-student orientation to a special program offered by a church-related college. The dean presenting the program to prospective scholars spent the entire three hours speaking only of the six-digit salaries the students would obtain at graduation. Nothing about transforming or transcending the world as we know it, nothing about living a life of compassion, grace, and mercy (this was a church-related school, after all), nothing about any value to human existence other than a paycheck. I raised my hand and asked, “And when will the students learn of the interconnected, interdependent nature of human existence? When will they see the power of connecting human beings in a way that frees us from self to seeing the power of love to redeem, reorient, and, yes, fix the world?” Everyone looked at me as if I was from Mars.

Maybe I am.

I hear the Ethiopian every day. Every day I meet someone who desperately wants to understand the world, to find their place, and to find a reason to hope. They do not need to hear that they are a cipher in our conglomerate. They do not need to hear they are on their own. They do not need to hear that life is hard, and then you die. They need meaning that transcends all else. They need hope. The hundred thousand dollar salary looks nice and it offers a level of comfort, but it does not connect human beings to each other. Nice doors lead to ugly lives just as easily as a ramshackle clapboard gate. 

The Ethiopian looks for more--not more stuff, not more power--but more LIFE. He no longer wants to be lonely, isolated, and cut off from the world in which he lives. The author, Luke, chose his story well--the Ethiopian was a powerful man--an official with access to his monarch--but he was a eunuch--a wounded man, literally and figuratively. His power, wealth, status could not connect him to a world that injured him, literally cut into him. 

So, connect to someone.

See the wonder of being human. We ARE unique acts of God’s creative will. Unique means there is only one of each of us. We have something to offer. But we also need one another to fill out the portrait. We are not--and cannot be--complete in and of our lonely selves. God made us to find one another, and find our completeness in love. 

That process also takes someone willing to open us to wonder of the cosmos, the beauty, mystery, and joy of thinking, dreaming, and seeing what works we can do, if we do so in love. 

That takes teachers.

A teacher does not fill heads with facts, but with joy.

Teach someone.