The Emperor's Three Questions

Thich Nhat Hanh concludes his little book on mindfulness with a story told by Tolstoy about an emperor who had three questions he wished answered.  I believe this story conveys some profound truth that all who acknowledge God's revelation through common grace should heed.

"One day it occurred to a certain emperor that if he only knew the answers to three questions, he would never stray in any matter.  What is the best time to do each thing?  Who are the most important people to work with?  What is the most important thing to do at all times?

"The Emperor issued a decree throughout his kingdom announcing that whoever could answer the questions would receive a great reward.  Many who read the decree made their way to the palace at once, each person with a different answer.

"In reply to the first question, one person advised that the emperor make up a thorough time schedule, consecrating every hour, day, month, and year for certain tasks and then follow the schedule to the letter.  Only then could he hope to do every task at the right time.

"Another person replied that it was impossible to plan in advance and that the emperor should put all vain amusements aside and remain attentive to everything in order to know what to do at what time. Someone else insisted that, by himself, the emperor could never hope to have all the foresight and competence necessary to decide when to do each and every task and what he really needed was to set up a Council of the Wise and then to act according to their advice.

"Someone else said that certain matters required immediate decision and could not wait for consultation, but if he wanted to know in advance what was going to happen he should consult magicians and soothsayers.

"The responses to the second question also lacked accord.  One person said that the emperor needed to place all his trust in administrators, another urged reliance on priests and monks, while others recommended physicians.  Still others put their faith in warriors.

"The third question drew a similar variety of answers. Some said science was the most important pursuit.  Others insisted on religion.  Yet others claimed the most important thing was military skill.  The emperor was not pleased with any of the answers, and no reward was given.

"After several nights of reflection, the emperor resolved to visit a hermit who lived up on the mountain and was said to be an enlightened man.  The emperor wished to find the hermit to ask him the thee questions, though he knew the hermit never left the mountains and was known to receive only the poor, refusing to have anything to do with person of wealth or powers.  So the emperor disguised himself as a simple peasant and ordered his attendants to wait for him at the foot of the mountain while he climbed the slope alone to seek the hermit.

"Reaching the holy man's dwelling place, the emperor found the hermit digging a garden in front of his hut.  When the hermit saw the stranger, he nodded his head in greeting and continued to dig.  The labor was obviously hard on him. He was an old man, and each time he thrust his spade into the ground to turn the earth, he heaved heavily.

"The emperor approached him and said, 'I have come here to ask your help with three questions:  When is the best time to do each thing? Who are the most important people to work with? What is the most important thing to do at all times?'  The hermit listened attentively but only patted the emperor on the shoulder and continued digging.  The emperor said, 'You must be tired.  Here, let me give you a hand with that.'  The hermit thanked him, handed the emperor the spade, and then sat down on the ground to rest.

"After he had dug tow rows, the emperor stopped and turned to the hermit and repeated his three questions.  The hermit still did not answer, but instead stood up and pointed to the spade and said, 'Why don't you rest now?  I can take over again.'  But the emperor continued to dig.  One hour passed, then two.  Finally the sun began to set behind the mountain.  The emperor put down the spade and said to the hermit, 'I came here to ask if you could answer my three questions. But if you can't give me any answer, please let me know so that I can get on my way home.'

"The hermit lifted his head and asked the emperor, 'Do you hear someone running over there?'  The emperor turned his head.  They both saw a man with a long white beard emerge from the woods.  He ran wildly, pressing his hands against a bloody wound in his stomach.  The man ran toward the emperor before falling unconscious to the ground, where he lay groaning.

"Opening the man's clothing, the emperor and hermit saw that the man had received a deep gash.  The emperor cleaned the wound thoroughly and then used his own shirt to bandage it, but the blood completely soaked it within minutes. He rinsed the shirt out and bandaged the wound a second time and continued to do so until the flow of blood had stopped.

"At last the wounded man regained consciousness and asked for a drink of water.  The emperor ran down to the stream and brought back a jug of fresh water.  Meanwhile, the sun had disappeared and the night air had begun to turn cold.  The hermit gave the emperor a hand in carrying the man into the hut where they laid him down on the hermit's bed.

"The man closed his eyes and lay quietly.  The emperor was worn out fro a long day of climbing the mountain and digging the garden.  Leaning against the doorway, he fell asleep.  When he rose, the sun had already risen over the mountain.  For a moment he forgot where he was and what he had come here for.  He looked over to the bed and saw the wounded man also looking around him in confusion.  When he saw the emperor, he stared at him intently and then said in a faint whisper, 'Please forgive me.'

"'But what have you done that I should forgive you?' the emperor asked.  'You do not know me, your majesty, but I know you.  I was your sworn enemy, and I had vowed to take vengeance on you, for during the last war you killed my brother and seized my property.  When I learned that you were coming alone to the mountain to meet the hermit, I resolved to surprise you on your way back and kill you.

"'But after waiting a long time there was still no sign of you, and so I left my ambush in order to seek you out.  But instead of finding you, I came across your attendants, who recognized me, giving me this wound. Luckily, I escaped and ran her.  If I hadn't met you I would surely be dead by now.  I had intended to kill you, but instead you saved my life!  I am ashamed and grateful beyond words.  If I live, I vow to be your servant for the rest of my life, and I will bid my children and grandchildren to do the same.  Please grant me your forgiveness.'

"The emperor was overjoyed to see that he was so easily reconciled with a former enemy.  He not only forgave the man but promised to return all the man's property and to send his own physician and servants to wait on the man until he was completely healed.  After ordering his attendant to take the man home, the emperor returned to see the hermit.  Before returning to the palace the emperor wanted to repeat his three questions one last time.  He found the hermit sowing seeds in the earth they had dug the day before.

"The hermit stood up and looked at the emperor. 'But your questions have already been answered.'  'How's that?' the emperor asked, puzzled.  'Yesterday, if you had not taken pity on my age and given me a hand with digging these beds, you would have been attacked by that man on your way home.  Then you would have deeply regretted not staying with me.  Therefore the most important time was the time you were digging in the beds, the most important person was myself, and the most important pursuit was to help me.

"'Later, when the wounded man ran up here, the most important time was the time you spent dressing his wound, for if you had not cared for him he would have died and you would have lost the chance to be reconciled with him.  Likewise, he was the most important person, and the most important pursuit was taking care of his wound.

"'Remember that there is only one important time and that is now.  The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion.  The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who know if you will have dealings with any other person in the future?  The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life."

Living to Teach Rather Than Teaching to Live

As I have been pondering the possibility of returning to teach at Handong University in Korea, I have been revisiting the Analects of Confucius.  One in particular is especially applicable to anyone who senses that the calling upon their life is a call to teach.

Of his own role as a teacher, Confucius said, "For anyone who brings even the smallest token of appreciation, I have yet to refuse instruction."


This responsibility to the one seeking instruction was again impressed upon me when I read this morning these verses in The Wisdom of Solomon: "The beginning of wisdom is the most sincere desire for instruction, and concern for instruction is love of her."  So when one is met with a request from those who are sincerely seeking instruction, the one who has a call to teach must give the most deliberate consideration to responding.


This type of thinking challenges me to confront the question:  Do you teach to live or do you live to teach?  Another way to put the question would be to examine whether I am accept the offer to teach primarily and principally as a means to make a living, or do I view the opportunity to teach as an open door through which God is directing me to proceed in faith depending upon him and him alone to provide for my earthly needs?


Am I taking no thought for tomorrow, anxious over what I will eat or where I will live or how I will be clothed?  Am I willing to follow on trusting the one who is my Guide, not only to make the way clear, but also to provide all that will be needed for me to progress along that way?  Here Bonhoeffer instructs: "The only way to win assurance is by leaving to-morrow entirely in the hands of God and by receiving from him all we need for to-day" (Discipleship, 178).

  

"Watch and Pray"

I find myself in a time of waiting.  As I ponder the options that are before me, I continue to wait on the responses of others to clarify what opportunities are presently open to me.  While prayer is always essential to the one who seeks to follow Christ, I'm realizing even more how necessary it is during these times of waiting.

Bonhoeffer's comments on the petition "Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth" are particularly poignant as I seek to practice living a submitted, singular and sacrificed life.  He writes:  "In fellowship with Jesus his followers have surrendered their own wills completely to God's, and so they pray that God's will may be done throughout the world.  No creature on earth shall defy him.  But the evil will is still alive even in the followers of Christ, it still seeks to cut them off from fellowship with him; and that is why they must also pray that the will of God may prevail more and more in their hearts every day and break down all defiance" (Discipleship 166).

Psalm 40 echoes this theme -- "my delight is to do your will, O Lord!" -- and so may my heart and mind!  Show me your way, O Lord; lead me in the path you have set out ahead of me.  Again, Bonhoeffer speaks to the heart of the matter:  "It is always true of the disciple that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, and he must therefore "watch and pray" (Discipleship 170).

Practicing Mindfulness

A few weeks ago I learned that a teaching opportunity that I had been told would be opening for me here in the next academic year will, in fact, not be opening.  The door to that opportunity seems to be closing or is actually completely closed now.  I had been planning on that position, but now it appears that I have a much greater need to practice daily mindfulness rather than living so much for an imagined future whose fulfillment was and is completely out of my hands.

In the midst of this time of searching for guidance and reflection upon my calling to teach, I have started to read Thich Nhat Hanh's little book, The Miracle of Mindfulness.  Thich Nhat Hanh had a substantial impact upon Martin Luther King, Jr.  Dr. King even nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in the movement for peace in Vietnam during the 1960's.

I was first introduced to the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh by my good friend and colleague, John Han, when I served with him on the faculty of Missouri Baptist University.  As I have read, I have been challenged by Hanh's insights in to living a whole life.  In this little book, he writes: "Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves. . . it is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life" (21).

Thich Nhat Hanh's instruction on the practice of mindfulness echoes the theme of "single-mindedness" that pervades the New Testament.  More than merely a self-discipline, single-mindedness is very much a gift of the Holy Spirit as he is at work forming within each follower of Jesus the mind of Christ.  Paul exhorts the disciple of Christ to do whatever your hand finds to do heartily as unto to the Lord (Colossians 3:23) and to do all things to the glory of God.  This is practicing mindfulness.

May I be living more wholly in the fullness of my present calling today that I may know and practice such mindfulness in each moment that is granted to me.

Lehr, Lehre, Lehrer

Over the past ten weeks or so, I've been attempting to study German -- not conversational German -- though, that would be tough enough .  No, my PhD program requires that all students demonstrate competency in Theological German (frequently characterized by compound words the length of entire lines and complex sentences as long as normal paragraphs in English) by satisfactorily passing a translation exam.  Mine is now set for one week from this Thursday.  I would greatly value your prayers!

My study has been and continues to be a formative and enlightening experience.  I'm finding that by learning another language, I'm also not only learning more about the meaning of words, but also about my own calling and mission in life.  Take, for instance, one of the words in German used to convey the concept of a "teacher."  That word is "Lehrer."  Cassell's German-English Dictionary defines this word as "teacher, schoolmaster, instructor, tutor."  It is based upon another word "Lehre" which may be translated into English with words such as "instruction, moral, warning, lesson, precept."

Both words, though, are built upon a more basic concept expressed in the word "Lehr"  Here's where the whole notion of being a teacher finds its foundation, its root.  "Lehr" has the meaning of a "pattern or model."  When I discovered this interrelationship of ideas expressed in the progression from Lehr to Lehre to Lehrer, I thought of the call of Jesus to his disciples -- "Follow me."  He is his follower's pattern and model, and, as it was in Jesus' life, so also everyone who would seek to be a teacher of others can only teach what that one's life models.

We will only be a Lehrer of the Lehr that our life embodies.

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. ~ 1 Peter 2:21


. . . to give you in ourselves an example to imitate.  ~ 2 Thessalonians 3:9

The End of Memory

Some time ago, I was asked to participate in a symposium sponsored by Fontbonne on the subject of memory.  A colleague and friend suggested that I take on a recent work by Miroslav Volf from Yale Divinity School entitled The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World.  I'm scheduled to present my talk on 21 October as part of a panel focused upon "memory and religious imagination."  Here's what I'll be presenting.

The End of Memory:  Does Volf Have It Right?

Memory often inspires religious imagination.  Collective memories have so inspired religious imagination that these memories have come to form, in many respects, the sacred texts through which the stories, teachings, and worship practices of a religion are conveyed from one group to another.  And as memory inspires religious imagination, so too, imagination calls us to remember – to remember what has happened, what has been said, and what has been done.

With a keen understanding of this mutual interworking of memory and religious imagination, Miroslav Volf, a contemporary theologian on the faculty of Yale Divinity School, endeavors to answer two vital questions in his 2006 work entitled, The End of Memory.  They are questions that both address the core of human experience and test the limits of memory and imagination.  They are questions presented to all who pray “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  They challenge everyone who confesses that “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come,” and these questions especially confront those who take seriously the command to love their neighbor as themselves even when their neighbor is their enemy. 

The questions are these:  how should we remember wrongs suffered, and for how long should we remember them?   The quite widely accepted responses to these questions are: “We must never forget” and, “always remember wrongs done to you!”  These are the admonitions that resound throughout our day and age.  They call not only victims to remember past wrongs done to them, but also place an obligation upon all who would seek to assure that such wrongs shall never again be allowed to grow unopposed into atrocities of evil.  While Volf’s approach affirms this very valid and necessary goal, he challenges popular thinking about remembering wrongs and reaches very different conclusions.

Now at the outset of our consideration, we must observe that Volf does not ponder these questions as a mere academic inquiry of an ivory-towered theologian.  Rather, he approaches his task out of the depth of his own experience of suffering.  In the early 1980’s, Volf was a victim of oppressive interrogations and psychological abuses at the hands of his homeland’s military investigators who accused him, during his compulsory national service, of being a traitor and a spy against the socialist regime in Yugoslavia.  Throughout his work, Volf revisits his own memories of the wrongs perpetrated upon him by an officer he refers to only as “Captain G.”  In a very real way, we are invited to walk with Volf on his journey to put into practice what he learns in response to the questions of how and how long one is to remember wrongs suffered.  As we do, we might reframe Volf’s inquiry to ask: can religious imagination take us to the end of memory?

Just as Volf is honest about his past experiences, he is also upfront about the core convictions that shape the answers he offers to these questions – answers he describes as “grounded in the Christian faith” (43).  He sets forth his faith convictions in the following propositions:

“First, we don’t just happen to be in the world as products of chance or necessity; the God of love created each one of us, together with our world.

“Second, we are not in the world just to fend for ourselves while pursuing lives filled with as little pain and as much pleasure as possible; God has created us to live with God and one another in a communion of justice and love.

“Third, humanity has not been left by itself to deal with the divisive results of our deadly failures to love God and neighbor – a fissure of antagonism and suffering that taints all human history and scars individual lives; in Christ, God entered human history and through his death on the cross unalterably reconciled human beings to God and one another.

“Fourth, notwithstanding all appearances, rapacious time will not swallow us into nothingness; at the end of history God, who took on our finitude in Jesus Christ, will make our fragile flesh imperishable and restore true life to the redeemed, so that forever we may enjoy God, and each other in God.

“Fifth, the irreversibility of time will not chisel the wrongs we have suffered into the unchangeable reality of our past, the evildoer will not ultimately triumph over the victim, and suffering will not have the final word; God will expose the truth about wrongs, condemn each evil deed, and redeem both the repentant perpetrators and their victims, thus reconciling them to God and to each other (43-44).

In the next portion of his work, Volf lays out a four-fold path in response to the question: how are we to remember wrongs suffered.  Put succinctly, he suggests that to remember rightly, we must remember truthfully, so as to heal and not harm, in a way that promotes learning and growth, within the moral framework of two primary meta-narratives of sacred memory – the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt and the Passion of Christ.  That path, though, is fraught with challenge.  To begin, remembering anything truthfully is a difficult task. 

We must guard against false memories even as we guard against bearing false witness.  Indeed, Volf maintains that there is a moral obligation to remember truthfully and that it is “part of the larger obligation to speak well of our neighbors and thereby to sustain and heal relationships between people” (63).  In light of this obligation, he asserts that “truthfulness constitutes a just use of memories and it constrains their misuse.  Truthfulness is also an important element of inner healing – of learning how to live with the past without its wounds being kept open by the blade of memory” (71).

It is then “healing” that marks the second dimension of right remembering.   That healing is initially nurtured by integrating the remembered wrongdoing into our life-story as we find and give such memories positive meaning.  Right remembering, though, moves us beyond individual, inner healing to seek the healing of others.  This step toward the other is possible when the memories of wrongs to not define us.  We remember not just as those who have been wounded, but, embodying an identity of new life, we remember as those who are committed to loving the wrongdoer and seeking reconciliation.  Volf maintains that “we cannot experience full internal healing from a wrongdoing suffered without “healing” the relationship with the wrongdoer” (83).

Volf readily admits that “remembering truthfully” and “remembering so as to heal” are insufficient in themselves to advance us toward reconciliation.  We must also move beyond what might be termed “literal” memory to the exemplary use of memory.  Exemplary memory pushes us beyond the concern for our own individual well-being to concern for the other – to the realm of the common good.  Exemplary memory makes “use of lessons of injustice undergone . . . to fight injustices taking their course today” (89).

Caution, though, is needed here.  If we are to use such lessons from past wrongs rightly, we must use them not just to motivate the fight, but, as the prophet Micah commands, “To do justly and to love mercy” (Micah 6:8).  Volf observes, “The memory of wrong suffered can teach us to struggle justly against injustice only if it is accompanied by a principled opposition to injustice” (92).  The basis for such opposition may be found in a larger moral framework.  For Volf, it is located in the meta-narratives found in the Jewish and Christian scriptures – what he calls “the two central events in redemptive history – Israel’s exodus from Egypt and Christ’s death and resurrection” (93-94).

These two sacred memories provide the moral framework within which we may rightly remember wrongs suffered.  The sacred memory of the Exodus and the Passion shapes identity for the one participating in this memory by their regular re-actualization in the practices of the Passover Seder and Holy Communion.  In these ways, sacred memory is embraced and deployed in the community of faith.  Sacred memory also defines a horizon of expectations as it turns our view from the past to the future and to the presence and work of God. 

“The memory of the Exodus and Passion is not primarily the memory of an exalted example of human victory over suffering and oppression.  [Rather,] it is primarily the memory of God’s intervention in behalf of humankind” (102).  Volf further suggests that lessons from these meta-narratives may be applied to the ordinary memory of injustice in several ways; for example, “Remember wrongs so that you can protect sufferers from further injury; remember them truthfully so as to be able to act justly, and situate the memories of wrongs suffered into the narrative of God’s redemption so that you can remember in hope rather than despair” (115).

For Volf, the lessons of the Passion memory are significant.   First, this memory teaches us to extend unconditional grace since we have been the recipients of such grace.  Second, it teaches us that we must affirm as valid the claims of justice.  Grace does not disregard justice.  In the Passion, Christ himself took on the punishment that justice demanded.  Thus, in order for the wrongdoer to receive the forgiveness offered in grace by the one wronged, the wrongdoer “must acknowledge their actions as wrongdoing, distance themselves from their misdeeds, and where possible, restore to their victims what [their wrongdoing] took away” (121).  Third, the Passion memory instructs us to aim for communion [in] a fully reconciled relationship.  “By forgiving, we take one crucial step in a larger process whose final goal is the embrace of former enemies in a community of love” (122).

Next, Volf turns to the more difficult challenge confronting us when we ask: “How long are we to remember wrongs suffered?”  He characterizes his exploration on this latter question as a “thought experiment” – that is, “not a straightforward argument for a position but an argumentative exploration of a possibility” that he describes as “very much in sync with what Christian tradition claims about redemption, both now and in the future” (142, n. 34). 

His experiment does not merely seek to explain what might happen if the memory of wrongs suffered is brought to its end.  Rather, it also proposes a way of life as its attempts to imagine one aspect of living out the full measure of the Christian creed.  In theoretical terms, he argues that memories of wrongs will not come to the minds of those who, in the future, enjoy God completely and enjoy one another in God.  In practical terms, the more refined question he pursues is this:  What would it mean to give a wrongdoer the ultimate gift – the gift of non-remembrance of the wrong done? (142, n. 32)

Admittedly, this would be a very strange gift.  Wrongdoers do not deserve it, and those who have suffered are not obligated in any way to give it.  Rather, Volf suggests that the gift is given “to imitate God, who loves wrongdoers despite their wrongdoing” (142).  There is, however, a significant limitation upon non-remembrance of wrongs.  It presupposes both that the one who suffered wrong has forgiven and that the wrongdoer has changed his mind, admitted his offense, received the offer of forgiveness and mended his ways (143).  Thus, this gift will only be provisional in the here and now.  It can be given irrevocably only in what the ancient creeds of the Christian tradition call “the life of the world to come.”  

At this point in his exploration, Volf acknowledges that he has not as yet given this gift to his own wrongdoer, Captain G – the person who subjected him to repeated interrogations and deprivations during Volf’s compulsory stint in the Yugoslavian army.  Ironically, in the very book in which he advocates an end of memory, Volf has memorialized his own wrongs suffered.  Yet, his failure to give this gift does not concede that the granting of it is impossible or even undesirable.  Rather, his own admitted shortcomings demonstrate that the gift of non-remembrance is not simply an act of the human will but is instead a divine gift that flows to us from the promise of a new world to come.  Isaiah prophesied of God’s intention when he wrote:

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered nor come to mind.  But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight (Isaiah 65:17-18).

Thus, the forgetting of wrongs happens as a consequence of the gift of a new world.  Here we might rightly ask Volf whether the future non-remembrance of wrongs in the world to come has anything to say to us today.  His answer would be yes, because life in the world to come shows us how reconciliation reaches completion: “the wrong is both condemned and forgiven; the wrongdoer’s guilt is canceled; through the gift of non-remembrance the wrongdoer is transposed to a state untainted by the wrongdoing;” and both the wronged and the wrongdoer, bound in a communion of love, “rejoice in their renewed relationship” (149).

Volf concedes that this sort of “complete reconciliation” rarely happens in the here and now.  “In a world marred by evil, the memory of wrongdoing is needed mainly as an instrument of justice and as a shield against injustice.  Yet every act of reconciliation, incomplete as it mostly is in this world, stretches itself toward completion in that world of love” (149-50).  Thus, only those who are willing to let memory of wrongs slip ultimately out of their recollection will be able to remember wrongdoing rightly now. 

In this present world there remains an obligation to remember.  Such remembering is part of the pursuit of justice for the victims of evil acts.  As long as the evildoers remain evildoers and have not been brought before the ultimate Judge, the wrongs they have committed will have to be remembered (204).  But, Volf argues, that in fulfilling this obligation, Christians who take there faith seriously will aim at forgiveness and reconciliation. 

Forgiveness and reconciliation are also tied to the letting go of memories.  This non-remembrance, though, only makes sense after the victim has been redeemed; the perpetrator transformed and after a relationship between them has been redefined through reconciliation.  As long as reconciliation has not taken place, the obligation to remember wrongs stands.  Volf observes that “not only does memory serve justice; memory and justice serve reconciliation” (205).

But memory does have a limit.  It is not remembering “always.”  It is not “never forgetting.”  There will be an end to memory of wrongs when memory reaches its completion in the world to come.  Volf admits that if he did not hope in the world to come, he would embrace the “eternal” remembering of wrongs suffered.  But, because he believes that God has and will completely forgive in the world to come all who accept that gift, forgiveness is a possible way of life in the here and now. 

When we forgive those who have wronged us, we echo God’s unfathomable graciousness.  Just as God did for us in Christ, so too, when we forgive, “we decouple the deed from the doer, the offense from the offender.  We blot out the offense so it no longer mars the offender.  That is why the non-remembrance of wrongs suffered appropriately crowns forgiveness” (208).  By non-remembrance we overcome the past evil with the good of forgiveness and reconciliation.  Wrongdoing is thus consigned to its proper place – nothingness, and memory of wrongs suffered comes to its end (214).

Does Volf have it right?  Is the path he imagines the road to remembering wrongs rightly that will indeed bring us, though tentatively and provisionally in the here and now, to the end of memory?

            I hope so.

Practicing a Singular Life

One of my students at Fontbonne recently asked why I left the practice of law to become a teacher. When I have attempted to offer an answer to this question in the past, I usually end-up giving way more information than what the person who asked the question had anticipated, I'm sure.

Since the student who asked me was himself looking forward to going to law school and becoming a lawyer, I did not want my answer to convey that the profession of law was in any way unworthy of his pursuit.  To pursue it, though, we must be responding to a call.

Whether it is a call to law or a call to teach, we must, in order to respond, seek to understand how we have been individually designed and equipped to serve others.  When I initially pursued the practice of law, I was attempting to serve others, but somewhere along the way I began to live a duplicitous life.

The Scriptures teach us that "a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways."   Rather than seeking to serve others, I became more and more consumed by the ways of the world. (1 John 2:16).  Had I continued on that path, it would, for me, have been a road to desolation.

I was graciously enabled to depart from that road in order to seek to practice a singular life.  Now, I am, by God's grace, seeking to become what I have been designed and equipped to do for others.  That pursuit leads me to attempt to teach others what I have studied and am learning of the law and life.