A good side of social media are the family connections – no matter which part of the world the family is – we can video with grandchildren home from school and parents can share brief clips of scenes, moment, activities – unfiltered as they happen. I think young people learn to be both conscious and unconscious of the ubiquitous camera! So this week I have seen dance routines from London, playing on a large mud mountain on the farm in Australia (and yes, they got muddy! 😉 ), costumes for school, mushroom hunting in the bush, and more – the activities one gets up to these days when you live in safe and secure countries. But this week there was one clip that I watched about subtraction – in this case little cherry tomatoes – as they were being consumed. 4-1 = … thinking … ‘3’. 3-1 = … 2. 2-1 = 1. What about 4 – 2 and this is what I’ve replayed her concentration, her thinking, it’s almost visible and she comes up with ‘2’ and a big smile! And I was smiling broadly too and applauding. (Not bad, I thought, when your 5th birthday is this July.) However the maths has been learnt, she is building on her knowledge and skills to create a world that makes sense – in this case mathematical sense.
I remember subtraction at infants school – in the 1960s – and the teacher going out of the room having put up 20 sums ‘9-6=?’ sort of things but saying that the last sum was too hard for any of us. I still remember that sum. It was 32-18. I could tell that 32 was bigger than 18 so it wasn’t a trick sum but the way we’d been taught was to take the little number away from the big number but 2 was smaller than 8! I did get the answer – my way – and not the way I had previously learnt how to do subtraction. I felt pretty pleased. (I wasn’t old enough to know of Frank Sinatra’s song “My way”!)
Living is very much about doing it ‘my way’ having first been taught a way – to eat, to dress, to speak, to play, to think, to do maths, to learn, and so on – we probably call it ‘growing up’. That’s why our parents and family are so important for us because they usually teach us the first way we learn how to be, do, or say something. But there’s always ‘my way’ wanting to be there too! And so we learn to live our life with the choices we make, the beliefs we hold, and the behaviours we do. ‘My way’ can help us a great deal but ‘my way’ has a huge blindspot because it believes that it is the right way and should have ultimate authority. After all ‘my way’ teaches us to say, “It’s my life!”. But ‘my way’ ignores the big picture that we did not create ourselves and we have life as a gift – indeed we are a gift to those around us and to the world!
Theologically speaking, ‘my way’ turns me into my own universe where I want everyone to ‘orbit’ me. I’m the ‘god’ of my world. ‘My way’ leads to ultimate loneliness. ‘My way’ sees all religions as mechanisms to help me be in control. However Christianity refuses to ‘play ball’ because it isn’t a ethical or mystical philosophy but an encounter with a person – Jesus Christ – who reveals a Triune God – and who is the creator of my life – who gave me my life as a gift (through parents) to be lived. In Jesus we encounter God who serves us so that we might live with him. That sounds like we don’t have a life; that we are God’s puppets or something. But here’s the mystery – that Jesus gives life to us through his cross and empty tomb, through words, water, bread and wine so that you and I have the freedom to live life ‘my way’ – it’s just that God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness means that we seek to live life with Jesus not apart from Jesus. Sanctification is about learning to live as Jesus’ disciple and we have remarkable freedom how we do so! ‘For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5:1 ESV).
GS