My Conundrum

i’ve been thinking long and hard for the past few months about the viability of a long-term teaching career. Seeing as my bond ends in june next year, it’s only ever going to become an increasingly pressing issue. My students whom i first taught when i was posted to Cedar will remember my emphatic statements about how my long-term goal was to serve in full-time paid Christian ministry. That hasn’t changed. But the question is whether to expedite my entry into said occupation next year or perhaps one or two years after my bond.

The most important factor for me, with respect to any form of occupation, is its relevance to my vocation – who i am as opposed to what i do. Will teaching allow me to be a lover of Christ and a lover of people?

i think any rational person will state that it is possible in most occupations to do so. Occupations which aren’t, are clearly those which contravene God’s revealed and moral will.

The next factor that comes into play then is the question of what God wants me to do exactly or whether He even has a specificied occupation He wants me to undertake. Most of the time, i believe He leaves to the decision up to us. However, there are instances and there are times in a person’s life when He will call us to something specific to fulfill His will and advance His kingdom and salvation history.

At the back of my mind then looms a prophetic pronouncement, something that was unsought for and unexpected by me, confirmed by a trusted brother in the faith, that at some point of time, i would preach God’s word. 

Of course, the specifics of said calling have yet to be worked out and my skepticism and chronic inability to see how that will ever come to fruition means that i am and will continue to struggle in prayer with my God, until He defines the calling further.

Another factor would be that of finance. Though money is essential in this world, it is definitely not the be-all and end-all of existence, neither should it be that nagging thorn which shackles our every thought, desire and action. The advantage the believeing brother or sister has then is a heavenly Father, who by His very nature, promises to provide for every basic need, ensuring that the believer need not worry about the mundaneity of daily living and can go about the more crucial task of hallowing His name, advancing His kingdom and doing His will.

So that’s then, regarding the money issue. Hah!

The last factor that will prove to influential to my eventual decision is the efficacy and impact of my occupation. Honestly, this issue has given me much for cause for sorrow this year.

As i alluded in an earlier post, my joy in life, and thus in work, depends heavily on relationships, with God above all and with the people He has placed in my life. And i have not been able to help feeling that the relationships i have in school, whether with colleagues or students, are growing increasingly superficial and trite.

With respect to my colleagues, the busyness of our working lives demands that extra effort is needed if one desires to build a deep and meaningful relationship, professional and personal. However, if one allows  one’s self to be swept away in the wave of professional demands, then one will find one’s self consequently stranded on an island amidst many islands of weariness, loneliness and bitterness.

With respect to students, i marvel at teachers who can go at this for twenty years or more and still emerge fresh, hopeful and unscathed by poisoning cynicism. It is extremely hard not to be weighed and worn down by students who expect you to be simultaneously omniscient, omnipresent and flawless in every respect, having superhuman expectations of you, while at the very same time being hypocritically unaware of their own hubris.

i really cannot blame colleagues who gripe about this student or that or who feel terminally underappreciated by the very people they sacrifice much of their lives for. What prevents me from succumbing to the temptation to view humanity as a whole as “excrement” as a result of my job is the understanding gleaned from the word of God that we humans are all too fallible and flawed. Indeed, as the apostle Paul states, we have all fallen short of the glory of God, though when He first created us, He meant us for so much more.

So, short of the living truth and all too present proof that all people are flawed and imperfect, what more these students of mine are too young and immature, i, too, would have joined the ranks of disgruntled and disillusioned teachers.

But for the grace of God, i do not.

What i do find myself succumbing a lot to though, is sorrow.

Sorrow over a meritocratic system and society that places a premium on human achievement, efficacy and efficiency, while being blind to the value of effort.

Sorrow over a school system that produces unthinking drones and automatons in conditions of mindnumbing conformity.

Sorrow over students, each bearing the wondrous, if distorted, image of God who willingly accept a fate of dronehood and automatonisation. 

Sorrow over astonishing self-absorption that elevates the trivial problems of self while ignoring the cries and tears of a dying world.

If i am to leave the teaching profession, it is the sorrow that would drive me from it, not disillusionment.

But wouldn’t there be sorrow outside of teaching too?

Yes, undeniably. It is a fallen world we live in. When we aren’t too busy tripping over ourselves, we’re tripping over people who are just as decrepit and fallen as ourselves.

I’m just unsure whether i’m able to bear the pain of sorrowing over three hundred over students every day over an extended period of time. No other occupation affords the same “opportunity” to be as deeply involved and attached to so many people on a daily basis. Well, no other occupation other than that of a pastor, i suppose.

So, i’ll continue to wrestle and pray about this matter. In the meantime, i’ll cry out to God and you may cry out with me that He may cause me to love like He did and does, that He may cause to be as patient with people and with myself as He is with the world, that even if i am to be burnt in the cauldron of this world, that i may be burnt up as a living sacrifice and not burnt out as a frazzled teacher.