"That's not fair!"
You just can't sneak anything by twelve year olds. I'm currently in week two of a new rotation of students. It's that time when the initial niceness starts to wear off and the students decide to test me to see if my rules are really the rules.
I have a strict policy about leaving one's seat without permission. Anyone I catch moving about gets an immediate detention. Today a young lady decided to test that rule. You guessed it; she got a detention (after trying to briefly plead her case of course). Ten minutes later another student did the same thing, except they did it while I was answering another student's question on the other side of the room. I knew what I should do, but there were more questions to get to, my detention slips were on the opposite side of the room, and wanting to resolve the situation quickly I simply said, "Sit down." The boy immediately returned to his seat, so the issue was solved right? Wrong.
"THAT'S NOT FAIR!!!!"
No way was that young lady going to take a detention and watch a stupid boy get away with the same thing. To be honest she was right. In order to be fair I should enforce behavior equally among everyone. I made a quick cover of saying that he was going to receive a detention as soon as I finished the question I was still in the middle of answering. I think she saw right through the cover, but justice was being served so she relented, and once again the class was at peace.
As the students left and I let out the usual post-class sigh of relief, I flipped back to my Bible reading from yesterday.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:1-10
As I read this passage I thought about how imperfect I am as a teacher. Yes, I can say that I've learned a lot since first starting, but I'm finding more and more that the more I learn about this profession the farther I see I still have to go. This fact quickly spills over into the rest of my life. I'm not as good of a husband as I should be. As I write this I'm avoiding cleaning up the kitchen even though my wife cooked dinner. I could keep going but it would take the rest of the night and then the dishes definitely won't get done. The point is that these moments of self reflection always tend to get ugly. I'm far from perfect, I'm a sinner.
When I get honest with myself and read that passage from Ephesians I realize something. I'm really glad that God isn't fair.
I give students a fifteen minute detention when they are out of their seat. If God were fair, and gave me a fifteen minute detention for every sin I've ever committed, every wrong I've done, every right I could have done but chose not to do, I would owe a lot of minutes. I try to calculate it and I start to realize why those medieval guys came up with those ridiculous numbers for time owed in purgatory. I think that whole doctrine must have been invented by a Jr. High teacher.
However, according to this passage in Ephesians my minutes are erased. I've been saved, raised up and seated in the heavenly places while I was still in the process of racking up minutes! I have to be honest, that's not fair! And I'm really glad for that!
I guess that's grace. I guess that's why the Gospel when delivered in all its fullness is such a revolutionary idea. This just isn't the sort of thing humans would think up. It flies in the face of all that makes sense!
That's grace. It's from God, and it's given freely.
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