Afraid to Fail...

So this week I got the news.  Way back in October I completed an application for a summer scholars program.  I'm not saying I expected to get in... frankly I didn't know what to expect.  But I thought I might have a shot.  Then I got the email with this attachment:  "Rejection letter".  I didn't even have to read it - but I did anyway.  Very polite - assuring me there were many good candidates but very few slots...  in other words... we don't want you.

I'd be lying if I said it didn't sting at first.  I have this feeling - what I call my tingly Spidy sense - when I get such news.  But it came and went, I told my wife (who was disappointed), and then I got on with it.  Back to the salt mine... to try again.

This past semester I had some very interesting discussions with students on the topic of failure.  Out of 16 freshmen in my Core 100 class 14 of them admitted they were afraid to fail.  They were afraid they couldn't live up to the expectations their parents and loved ones had of them.  Some admitted the only reason they were at Dordt was to fulfill these expectations.  Others said "better to not try and fail... then to give it some effort and come up empty".  At least if you don't try, so the thinking goes, the failure doesn't really stick.   

I come from a blue collar family - and the older I get the more I appreciate it.  I'm not trying to say one gets used to failing... but when you have to fight for everything... when you get knocked down you know you have to get back up.  I remember in college struggling to find my niche- doing homework, going to class, working at the local Super Valu bagging groceries - the whole while wondering if I fit in academia.  From time to time I would have to channel my inner Lief (if you've heard stories about my grandpa you know what I mean) and say #$%@ it!  Put my head down and go for it.  Sometime it worked out... sometimes it didn't.  Yet hear I am...

I believe we need to give young people the freedom to fail.  We need to give them space to explore - to try different things - and totally bomb.  Maybe we need to start celebrating certain failures... giving them credit for having the guts to go for it instead of just playing it safe.  Look, I realize there are limits.  We need to have dreams for our kids and our students.  But we also need to encourage them to do what they want to do... free from the burden of our expectations.  

So here's to getting knocked on our cans... getting back up, shaking off the dust - and getting back in the game.

Down with Theology

Lately I've been taking my fair share of sucker punches.  Not me personally (ok... some are personal) but most are directed at what I do for a living - teaching theology.  

In this corner... we have a growing group of people who have made it abundantly clear that theologians are just stuck up snobs who use big fancy words no one can understand.  (And theology professors are those who make students read books by snobs who use big words no one can understand.) These students take their theology classes - get through them - and get on with the more important things in life.

In that corner... we have a growing number of students who believe there should be more snobbish language and categories... not less.  After all - we can't dumb things down.  We can't have people thinking that The Message is an appropriate version of the Bible... we need to be reading it in the original languages... parsing every verb.  We need to be using more scholastic language... not less.  More categories... more towers...  Interestingly, these students also take their theology classes - get through them - and get on with more important things.

So where does this leave us?  What ever happened with the search for truth?  Asking questions... even if it means tackling a big word or two.  Reading the questions and experiences of others because, after all, this is WHY we bother to read in the first place.  What happened to engaging ideas and definitions... questioning the categories and finding new ways to express timeless truths?  There has to be a place between the two corners mentioned above, where ideas and experiences are taken seriously.  A place where any discussion of the engagement of culture means you  read Niebuhr's Christ and Culture - if only to explain why you disagree with it.  A place where theological discourse does not exist for its own sake... but occurs because it means something and it has something important to say to the Christian community in a specific time and place.   

I realize theology can be abused and misused... just as I recognize there is a time and place to stand up for specific ideas and beliefs about God.  But I'm all for the place in between.  The question is... how do we get there?