This year the questions were lumped into similar categories and the students were allowed to vote on the top 8 they wanted answered in a follow up chapel. This has created a great opportunity for a lot of teachers to interact with our students in a nontraditional manner. One of the questions that was voted on for a follow up was one of restoration. The question asked why a Christian school would expel a student and in a sense "kick" a brother/sister while they were down, or in other words "punish the struggling". I have a few students that meet in my classroom during an off period and they wanted to continue the conversation about the topic. Apparently this generation of young adults has a different interpretation of the restoration process than I was raised with and it started a great conversation and has continued to roll around in my head for the past few weeks. When things roll around in my head they tend to pop up in the weirdest situations...
This past weekend I was placed in an awkward situation. We had a pipe burst from the cold. Luckily it was a non-pressurized drain pipe and not a water pipe. I called my dad to bounce some ideas off him (he is the plumbing guru) and then headed to Lowe's to get some parts. As I unscrewed boards from our deck and crawled through the "mud" to get to the broken pipe, my mind started to wander. I had to cut the broken section out of the pipe and fasten a custom cut new piece into the now missing section. It only took a few minutes, but I started to think about how much easier it would be if I was installing this pipe new as opposed to trying to restore the old pipe. Gluing PVC pipe together is one of the simplest tasks in plumbing, when you are doing it in a "new construction" setting. When you have to replace pieces, both ends are in a fixed position and it limits the ability to fit the new piece. (Like I said before, my mind wanders a lot!) Another conversation popped into my head about this time, one that my dad and I have had a few times in the past. Building things from new is much easier than fixing old stuff. The restoration problem is tough. You have to sand, saw, destroy, hammer, mend the old pieces before you can paint, glue, or re-finish that piece. Before the "broken" item can be made to look new again it must be put through a process. That process is hard, and can be painful.
When Kat and I bought our house we repainted EVERYTHING. Well, almost everything. I still have some doors to finish, and I keep putting it off because it makes me mad. I have to spend hours sanding off the old stained finish before the paint will properly adhere to the wood. Then I have to add primer, sand the primer, and apply the finish paint so the doors will look good. Without the sanding, the removal of the unwanted stain, the door do not come out as planned.
We also replaced the floors. In order to put in new tile, we had to remove the old. It took scraping, jack-hammering and leveling. We had to rip out the carpet and padding. With each thing we changed, work was involved. Demolition was involved. Sweat poured as we tried to make our new dreams fit with the old floor-plan. All of these things popped into my head as I was crawling around in the mud attempting to restore my old broken pipe, into a functioning piece of our plumbing system.
As these thoughts rolled around in my head I made a connection to the conversation I had with those students in my classroom. Restoration is painful. For the one restoring, sure, but even more so for the item being restored. In order for proper restoration to happen, the door has to be sanded, the broken section of pipe has to be removed, the floor has to be ripped out. Only once the broken or aged item has been brought down to raw material, can the restorer attempt a proper restoration. I think God works the same way with us. In order to restore our spiritual lives or behaviors some sort of process has to be undertaken. Oftentimes God uses our community to help in this process, especially if we have willingly joined a community of believers committed to pointing us to the Gospel. Restoration, in a spiritual sense, is not easy or pain free. It involves consequences. A word foreign to some of our kids these days. Our kids want to be restored with none of the pain that comes from the process. They want it microwaved, they want it in drive-thru fashion. Anything else cannot be Christian, can it? God wouldn't put us through pain! He wouldn't want any of His children to be "judged", right? I can't help but cringe from this thought process, but we see it all the time. Our students can't be cut from a team, or earn a bad grade. They surely can't be told they are wrong, or held accountable for their actions. That would be "un-Christian"!
We need to let kids know that they are not perfect. They make mistakes and these mistakes bring with them consequences that hurt, that are uncomfortable. This is ON PURPOSE!!! This helps make us into better people! This transforms us into a better version of our fallen self.
I have personally witnessed the restoration process in action. Having sat in on many expulsion hearings at a Christian School District, I watched with anxiety, as parents and students alike, cringe at the thought of the restoration process and how that process will affect their lives. Our process included some accountability between student and parents and also student and either a youth leader or pastor. Most parents saw this as being too harsh. "Why punish us?" is how they saw it, when told they would have to do a bible study or a daily devotion with their child. How terribly sad is the fact that we see these actions as painful, rather than a bonding opportunity. BUT when the process is completed, I can say without reservation that those who complete it come out on the other side with a whole different perspective. Somewhere in that process the light went on. Somewhere in that process God grabbed their attention and the transformation was incredible. Did this always happen?? Nope there were those who skirted the process and never really committed to it, so they were just going through the motions. But the loss was theirs and is another example of the consequences their choices have on their journey.
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