Doers of the Word
I seem to come across a lot of new learning at seminars these days. Come to think of it, I guess that’s what the seminars are for! I guess what really strikes me are the insights these seminars give me beyond my immediate career. Last time I wrote about the ‘Matthew Effect’ a term to describe a phenomenon in education taken from Jesus’ Parable of the Talents. I recently came across another idea that put me in mind of my Christian walk through my teen years.
Growing up in a Christian home, going to a Christian school and attending church every weekend I had some beliefs and behaviours that were pretty well worn in. One of these beliefs was that belief is more important than actions. Put simply I had a very narrow view of verses in the Bible such us ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,’ – Romans 3:23-24. The idea that I am a sinner and nothing can change that – but I shouldn’t worry too much because God will save me anyway. Of course, that’s a very simplistic view, but nonetheless, one I held.
I can vividly remember guest speakers at my school imploring me to ‘accept Jesus,’ ‘just trust Him,’ ‘all you need is to believ.’ Quite nice platitudes, but quite unhelpful to a growing teen. I think the line of thought then went – ‘if you can accept, trust and believe,’ you can then live perfectly, with the strength and endurance to withstand anything the world throws at you.
Well, I often struggled with this way of thinking because no matter how much I accepted, how greatly I trusted or how hard I believed, I couldn’t quite make it to that perfect shining example of Christian life. In my early Christian walk the story of St. Augustine stealing pears really resonated with me.
I thought back to this time in my life because the seminar I was attending involved ‘Professional Development and Teacher Change’. According to Guskey’s research and subsequent Model of Teacher Change, the change begins with practice and ends with a change in beliefs and attitudes. It struck me as odd at first that change in action should precede change in belief, but the more I pondered it, the more it made sense.
For example, as a teacher I am often modelling certain behaviour to my students and often correcting their behaviour. This is because, to paraphrase the work of Kelly (1955), young children copy the actions of others and their attitudes and beliefs are in no small part formed through this learned behaviour. Think of the cycles of violence or socio-economic disadvantage in society today. Some even suggest that Al Gore’s attempt to shed light on human-caused climate change was useless because even though many people claim to believe it, it ultimately did not lead to any great change. Roberts, journalist on the website Grist, suggests first making climate friendly pursuits easier, for example: making bike riding more convenient, encouraging members of society to install solar panels, pressuring building codes to expect more energy efficient houses etc.
Anyway, I’m getting off topic… As I continued along my trip down memory lane, I remembered a verse I came across that tied things up neatly for me. ‘But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.’ James 1:22-25 ESV
Acceptance, trust and indeed belief are important but sometimes doing comes first.
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Saint Augustine Bishop of Hippo (354-430) Confessions, Nashville, Nelson’s Royal Classics
Thomas R. Guskey (2002) Professional Development and Teacher Change, Teachers and Teaching, 8:3, 381-391, DOI: 10.1080/135406002100000512
George Kelly (1955) The psychology of personal constructs. 2 vols. New York, Norton
David Roberts (2010) Behavior change causes changes in beliefs, not vice versa, grist.org
