Expo Pics and the Questions that Matter

The EPA Expo weekend before last went great! We're very proud of our students. You can find pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/110636788435437003869/EPA_EXPO_2010#.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

LOST is quickly drawing to a close. There are three regular episodes left before the two-hour finale. As the title of the show implies (and as conversation with any LOST fan will reveal), LOST is a show that raises many questions. What happened to so-and-so when she disappeared? Why did That Guy kill That Other Guy? What is The Monster? (For those of you who stopped watching mid-stream: No, we still don't know!)

There are perhaps 1,000 little questions that LOST has yet to answer, and many of us are wondering how the writers are going to answer them in only 5 more new hours of programming. I'm beginning to wonder if they intend to answer any of the little questions.

In fact, that seems to be their point as we head toward the finale: Not all questions matter equally. (In fact, one character even explicitly stated this back in Season 4: "Why don't you ask the one question that does matter?") They want us to focus on the big questions, which right now are basically boiled down to: What is the Monster? What is the Island? Who is Jacob?

While this frustrates me as an academic (I should have the ability to find the answer to any question, no matter how obscure!), I wonder if I need to be reminded that this is, in many ways, how God works.

In Scripture, we don't get the answer to every detail-oriented question: How many angles & demons are there? Was John the Baptist really saved before he was born? How old is the universe? What is "gopherwood?"

And from the point of view of the main themes of Scripture (the "Monster," the "Island," and "Jacob," if you will), these questions don't ultimately matter.

And perhaps this is not contrary to an academic mindset. After all, don't we teach our students to pick out the main ideas & themes of a work? Don't we want them to identify and readily employ the primary equations of a section?

Looking forward to May 23!

The Discipline of Dismay

My small group is going through Os Guinness' The Call. We recently had a discussion about Guinness' description of what Oswald Chambers called "the discipline of dismay." He describes it as the weightiness that settles in when, after the initial joy of following Jesus has passed, we realize that Jesus may be traveling somewhere we'll find unpleasant.

He gives the example of Jesus setting a course for Jerusalem, telling His disciples several times along the way that He was going there to die. (This setting makes their questions about who is the greatest seem even more ludicrous, but that's another blog for another day.)

It's at this point in the semester that the discipline of dismay sets in for me. There are six weeks left---only six!---and yet following Jesus for those six weeks seems so much more difficult than the previous nine. There are difficult conversations with students who have fallen behind; long-term projects come to an intense head; I get sick; multiple deadlines converge on the same day (and procrastination becomes a long-gone pleasure!); LOST offers more questions than answers...

(Okay; that last one is relatively tame, but it certainly doesn't help.)

It's also at this point in the semester that it's easiest to put false hope in the next semester, to begin planning for the next round of classes, when I know I'll "get it right."

But I need to learn what I can, and grow how I can, during this time. I need to accept the discipline of dismay, and not avoid it.