(31.) L is for Labor of Love

(31.) L is for Labor of Love

The Incarnation is the best model on the market for Christ-centered teaching. Master teacher Jesus could have chosen any method whatsoever to reveal and communicate the truth. He somehow decided that the Word had to become flesh. He chose not to remain abstract or distant, but personal and relational. The Word didn’t become mechanical or virtual, but a real presence. The living Word offered his life as the visual aid, giving shape to the character of God, fleshing out spiritual knowledge through earthly experience. God put skin on, became a rabbi teacher, and selected disciples/students. And he tabernacled, he pitched his tent with them, and called them his friends. Christ’s teaching was a labor of love, and thus so is Christ-centered teaching. Incarnational teaching means that teachers are fleshing out what needs to be loved in authentic education:

1. A love for Jesus, providing a picture of what a growing, passionate believer looks like, of someone who loves God with all his heart;
2. A love of learning, offering a daily example of what kind of students are desired at the school, of what it looks like to love God with all her mind;
3. A love of community, enjoying the school as a fellowship of interdependent learners, dedicated not to individualism, but to the common good;
4. A love of students, operating in and out of the classroom as someone who values relationships with students as the key to learning. Robert Louis Wilken, in his book The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, describes what the teacher/student relationship looked like back in the day… “Although learning precepts was part of the instruction, what counted for more was the example of the master and the bonds of friendship formed with the disciple. This friendship ‘is piercing and penetrating, an affable and affectionate disposition displayed in the teacher’s words and his association with us .’ (St. Gregory). The master had first to know and love his disciples before he could cultivate their souls and, like a ‘skilled husbandman,’ bring forth fruit from an ‘uncultivated field.’ To correct, reprove, exhort, and encourage his students, the master had to know their habits, attitudes, and desires. The teacher’s love for his disciples was part of the process of formation.”   

Christ-centered schools have incarnational teachers, fleshing out the reality of truth, for the student’s sake. When fleshing out the faith, love is always the bottom line.