Remembering

During our time on earth we constantly live between memory and vision. Our ability to remember is the most fantastic thing. From the time we are born we constantly categorize everything we encounter so that we will know it at some future time. Babies categorize the world into things to suck or not suck and faces they have come to feel friendly with and faces that are new and scary.

In Christian schools we educate children and young people who live, as we do, between memory and vision. In our minds are all the things we know and all the experiences we have had...our memories. But in the Bible, and in our hearts and minds are the visions of how God wants us to be, how God wants God’s world to be, how God wants our place in this world to be. That is somewhat in the present but very much in the future. And teaching this is what the Christian school is all about.

How do teachers teach this? In ways that are appropriate for different developmental levels. I watched this being taught in a kindergarten class one day. In fact, as I watched I first thought, “Is this teacher crazy?” and then when I caught on to what the teacher was doing I thought, “This is much too difficult a concept for kindergartner’s to comprehend. But you will see that I was wrong.

The children were sitting around the teacher and she had a stack of pictures of wonderful animals. Not the kind we know so well in North America but many of them were found only in your country. She had these pictures nicely glued to backings of colorful construction paper.

She picked up one picture and told the name of the animal and talked about lots of interesting things about that animal. Then she said, “I am going to give this picture to one of you to hold.” She picked a child but before she gave the picture to him she said, “This is my picture of the koala. I made it. It is very beautiful. It is mine. I love it so much. You must take very good care of my picture.” The little boy very seriously said he would and he did as he sat down.

Then she picked up another picture and did the same. At the end of the description of each animal she said (repeat....) (I thought she sounded a bit weird because she as so intense but the children were spellbound by her voice.)

After all the picture had been given out she said, “You know I am going to give you those pictures to keep. But what do you think I was trying to teach you when I talked about the pictures?” One very tiny boy said, “That we have to love these animals and that we have to see that they are beautiful and that we have to take care of them.” (I was surprised that he got all that.)

Then she said, “Why must we do all those things? Why must we love the animals and see how beautiful they are and enjoy them and take good care of them?” And all the children together said, “Because God made them and God said we had to do that.”

Their quick answers were clearly the result of many many lessons carefully taught so that they would come to these aspects of God’s world and what their places must be in that world.

We have Christian schools so that children and young people will come to know God’s world as God’s world. It is a world made for God’s creatures so that we may play in it, and live in it, and admire it, and marvel at it, and love it, and take care of it. We want children and young people to know and to remember how God intended for all the different aspects of this world to be. So together we study textbooks, work experiments, go on field trips, and study Scriptures so that our children and young people may come to know what God’s intention for this world really was.

Making a Space for Seeing

When doctors first learned how to perform safe cataract operations they went all over Europe and America operating on people who had been blinded from birth by cataracts. When they first learned to see, the vast majority of patients of all ages had a very confused idea of space.

Before the operation, the doctor would give a blind patient a cube and a square. The patient would feel it, maybe touch it with the tongue, maybe bite on it, and name it correctly.

After the operation the doctor would step back and show the same objects to the patient. The patient would have no idea what she or he was seeing. You see, the patients could not come to know about something by looking at it. They had to touch it to know because they had only one way of knowing...by touching.

Upon looking at a person, they seemed to have no idea of the size of the person without touching. When asked how large the person was, the newly sighted patient would hold the thumb and index finger out and measure that way.

When a newly sighted woman was shown a painting, she asked, "Why do they put all those dark marks on it?" "Those things are to show where the shadows are in real life," said her mother. "We need the dark shadows in order to understand what we are seeing. Without the dark shadows everything would look flat to us." "But everything does look flat," said the newly sighted woman. She could not look at an object and understand depth.

What those newly sighted people needed was to have opened to them a way to see...a way to interpret what they were seeing...a way to come to know by seeing. Someone needed to help them make a space for seeing.

That, I think, is what all teaching in Christian schools is about. Teachers at every level need to find ways to help students make a way for their own understanding of God’s truths. Teachers need to help students make a way for their own seeing, a way for their own hearing, a way for their own knowing, a way for their own learning to understand the truths of God’s creation can happen.

Questions middle school kids are asking!

Taking student questions seriously: We always gave lip-service to the understanding that sstudents' questions must be taken seriously. But we didn’t often do it very well.

A few years ago I completed a survey of 2500 12- to 14-year-olds who attend Christian schools in different parts of North America. One of the most important questions I asked was, “If you dared to ask your parents, or your teachers, or your pastor any four questions, what might they be?” Some of the questions they gave me were thrilling in their maturity and sophistication.

“How do Bible scholars come up with their answers?”

“Does it actually say in the Bible in more than one place that women shouldn’t minister to other people?”

“In the New Testament, people had convicted a woman of adultery or prostitution. Jesus squatted down and starting writing on the ground. I want to know what he was writing. After that, he stood and said, ‘If you have not sinned at all, you will be the first to through the stone.’ Something like that.”

What is the real reason other books aren’t in the NT?”

“Why was Elijah so special, but Noah and Moses died?”

“How do I witness for Jesus Christ without shoving the gospel down people’s throats and being annoying?”

“Do you think that God will listen more, if 50 people pray for a person or 1 person prays for a person? If they are the same, why do we have prayer groups and chains?”

“Why am I drifting apart so far from God? What has happened to me? I feel like a chameleon because I have to change in front of every new person I meet or have met.”

“If Eve never had any girls, where or how did Cain and Seth have descendents?”

“What’s the point? Besides asking God for things and saying thank you for other things, what’s the point? Why do we need God? Why do some people yearn for God or want more of him? I’ve never felt that way. What’s the point of God? Does our life matter at all? I mean, I’d rather be alive, but, again, what’s the point?”

“Does anyone else wonder if God is really real? Because Buddhist thinks Buddha is God. I feel bad for asking that but I wonder sometimes.”

“How can God be the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end? Why can’t I understand that? It sounds impossible. I know it’s true. But I can’t figure out how.”

“This is a question I ask to myself so many times, but I don’t really get the answer: If God knows everything, even the future, why did he created Adam and Eve, If he knew that they were not going to obey Him?”

And some questions made me think, “Oh, God, they are just children and they are asking these things?”

“Will people have sex in heaven? Because what if I die without ever having sex, if there isn’t any sex in heaven I’ll be missing out.”

“Is oral [sex] before marriage ok? I mean it’s not sex.”

“The Bible says its wrong to have sex before you’re married but how far are allowed to go? Can you do oral sex?”

“Can you name all the sins?”

“Could I be possessed?”

“Could you kill and still go to heaven?”

“Do you believe if you’re a Christian and if you commit suicide you go to heaven?”

“Does God forgive me if I keep doing the same sin?”

“Does it really say in the Bible that being gay is wrong?”

New organization

I haven't written for a while. To be quite honest, I find writing really difficult when there is no feedback. But I will continue.

Our new organization will serve schools in the slums of India. At the point when we have the organization set up I will tell you more about it.

Siani and Suphala

This is a picture of Siani and Suphala and their children. With them is Lynell, a friend from Michgian. Siani and Suphala started this orphanage a few years ago. Since that time it has grown rapidly.

If you want more information about them contact me, Gloria Stronks, stro@calvin.edu

They need a kitchen!

Siani and Suphala at New Life Orphanage in Orissa, India have moved into a new building which they are completing. They desperately need a kitchen so that the orphans will have a warm meal. That kitchen will cost $5,000 U.S. dollars.

If you are willing to help please contact me, Gloria Stronks at stro@calvin.edu. I will tell you how to send the money directly to the orphanage.

What does New Life Orphanage and School need?

Monthly Expenditure details of New Life School, Kesinga

Salary to 8 teachers @Rs2500/- per teacher So total Rs20000/-
House Rent : Rs5000/-per month
Salary to Principal Rs 5000/-
Salary to 2 persons @Rs1250/- per person total Rs2500/-
Electrical Bill per month Rs3000/-
Phone bill Rs500/-
Chalk & Duster Rs300/-
Printing, Xerox etc Rs700/-
Others , maintenance Rs5000/-

Total Rs42000/- per month

Yearly expenses:

Books, stationery, notebooks, pen , pencils Rs200000/-
Uniform , shoe , socks, tie, belt etc Twice in a year Rs200000/-
Sports equipments, Bench, desks, chairs, computers, toys etc Rs200000/-

If you would like to donate to New Life Orphanage, please contact Gloria Stronks at stro@calvin.edu.