Incredible opportunity

When I was finishing university and looking around for what to do next, my internet searching brought up a professor doing work that I thought was interesting. So I applied to his department, and they flew me out to visit. It was a fun visit and I enjoyed sitting in on his class and office hours, but I decided not to go to graduate school straight out of college.

In the end, I wanted to learn from him so much, I re-applied to the program, moved to a big city I didn't like, and took his crazy 4-8PM courses for years. At one point, I was sick of that city and sick of the lack of funding in the department and looked to transfer to another program in another city. But I couldn't find a researcher I'd rather work under. And so I stayed in that expensive, crowded city, in that poor department, but with that professor. For all his faults and the surrounding difficulties, being his student was an incredible opportunity.

 [Jesus] must be clearly seen as the most important thing in human life, and being his apprentice as the greatest opportunity any human being ever has. ~Dallas Willard, "How does the disciple live?"

Being a student of Jesus is the most incredible opportunity. It is inconceivable yet true that the one who is right about everything invites us to learn from him. This learning doesn't consist of long-distance, over-the-internet lectures. This learning is an in-the-flesh, moment-by-moment, intimately-near and out-of-love experience. And from it, we can learn what is good, true, and beautiful.

This is really good news. It is a damaging half-truth to focus on our eternal souls when what we really mean is that we want Jesus to get us into heaven after we die. Indeed, it's a logical fallacy because eternity includes now. The good news of the Bible is not about later. The good news is about now and forever.

What Jesus actually says in "Great Commission" is this (which I've broken up for emphasis):

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
~The good news according to Matthew, chapter 28, vs 17-20

There are many points to make here, but what I want to push back against is our Christian cultural emphasis on just going. "Go means Go" I've heard pastors preach. And that's great. I agree. But what's to happen when we arrive? Making disciples. Introducing people to the incredible opportunity of learning all that is good, true, and beautiful with and from the loving Creator God.

What are we to be about? What does being a disciple look like? We'll keep digging into that next week.



  

Outliers, part 1: Someone had a bad day

In sixth grade, sometime at the end of math one day, the teacher handed back some graded something. As I was returning to my desk at the back of the class, L.O. stopped me and asked me, "What did you get?" I was kind of reluctant to tell her. She asked again, "What did you get?" I don't remember the grade, but just guessing, it was a 95 or 100 because that's just the way my math grades were. Then she said, "I hate you!" and stomped away.

I have lived for 20 years crushed by that encounter. When I think about how it felt to be effortlessly good at school, I think about that moment. Me being me was cause for a classmate to hate me, to see me with contempt.

I've been processing the experience of being an outlier lately and found that I kept running into grief. And when all roads led to this afternoon in sixth grade, I was finally able to reconfigure the moment. I had taken the experience completely personally which isn't surprising. Twelve year olds are only just coming into mature empathy and I was a late bloomer in that area. But with some perspective, I bet that L.O. was herself having a bad day. She was frustrated about her own grade and whatever else was going on in her life. Her pain was not meant for me, even though I carried it around for a long time.

It feels immensely freeing to give that memory and the emotional associations back to God. I've asked about half-a-dozen outlier friends about their childhood experiences and none of them seem to walk around wounded the way I was. I choose to believe that their positive experience is possible and that I had the more rare experience.

UPDATE: Links to Part 2 & Part 3