I have nearly completed my first year of teaching (seven more weeks!). The last seven months have involved numerous joys, a plethora of challenges, and a mind boggling amount of learning. Between lesson planning, classroom teaching, student motivating, program preparing, community communicating, and attempting to unravel the mystery that is the teenage mind--at least a little bit--there is no end of things to learn and experiences to be had.
In the midst of this world of daily discoveries I have been baffled by a few things; one in particular being a students ability to completely disregard instructions on any given assignment. It doesn't seem to be something they will grow out of in the near future, because I have observed this phenomenon through the grades, K-12. I could give them written instructions such as:
"Step 1) Draw a straight line.
Step 2) Draw another straight line at a right (90ยบ) angle to the first line."
And I'm pretty sure what I would get back would be a few right angles, a couple parallel lines, a smiley face with some flower doodles, and one page displaying only a single line. That doesn't even include all the students who would completely neglect the assignment. Or, to take an example from my actual teaching experience, I could have typed at the bottom of the students' practice sheets "Practice sheets are due every Monday (or the first school day of the week)," and still have students turning in practice time on Friday (if at all).
Before I go too far and give the impression that I might be complaining, let me pick up something that I said before and take it a step further. "It doesn't seem to be something they will grow out of in the near future." I can be sure of this not only because of the observed pattern in my students, but also because of the observed pattern in myself and in the world around me. Humans struggle with following simple directions.
We see the people of Israel falling into this tendency only months after their miraculous exodus from Egypt. God tells them twice "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them," and again "Do not make any gods to be alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold" (Exodus 20:3-5, 23). Yet after Moses delivers these instructions and then goes up into the mountain for forty days the people demand of Moses' brother, Aaron, "Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him" (Ex. 32:1).
The Israelites outright disregard God's instructions (which they had all agreed to follow in Ex. 24:3). King Saul falls into another flavor of this human tendency. God sends Saul on a mission to destroy the Amalekites, "I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys" (1 Samuel 15:2-3). This was to be a fire sale; everything must go. Saul took the mission, but he changed some of the orders. "Saul and the army spared Agag [king of the Amalekites] and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs--everything that was good" (v. 9). The all-seeing and all-knowing Got must have been paying attention, because he sent Samuel to confront Saul on the issue. What was Saul's response to being called on a technicality? "But I did obey the LORD...I went on the mission the LORD assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the LORD your God at Gilgal" (vv. 20-21). Sometimes we change the terms of our instructions under the pretense that we are doing it on behalf of the one who instructed us. We may think we have a better idea of how things should go. Good luck finding a better plan than God's. There isn't one. Yet we continue to try.
This is a problem with which we all struggle. It goes all the way back to the garden. God said, "don't eat..." and we said, "okay...but I think it would be better if I did eat" (Genesis 2-3, Michael's dramatic paraphrase). We have continued to come up with "better" ideas ever since.
What if we just followed the instructions? What if we trusted the God who made us? What if we followed the Savior who died for us? What if we listened to the Spirit who guides us? What if we loved our enemies, considered others better than ourselves, trusted in the Gospel of Christ rather than the opinions and teachings of men, and loved God with everything we have and are? Maybe if we could do that, we might come to the end of our time in the school of life, and our holy instructor might say to us, "well done my good and faithful servant."
Life is a pop-quiz. Please read the directions. If you find anything on the quiz confusing or have any questions, raise your hands and the teacher will be glad to help you.
Begin...
Now!
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