Men Without Chests The Good News (part 2)

Isaiah 30:20...He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. 21 Your ears will hear a word behind you, "This is the way, walk in it," whenever you turn to the right or to the left.

Much of what we teach in the Church is true, but is propaganda. Propaganda is the presentation of facts, true or false, meant to manipulate, to achieve a desired goal. In the Church when this happens, that goal is allegiance to a specific presentation of these facts. The Biblical goal, as I understand it, is becoming new creations, free individually and corporately to serve and worship God.

I remember sitting by Allen in the second grade, or at least I remember one particular day. The teacher had been teaching us simple addition. Much of it required memorization. What does 2+2 equal? On that day, we each received a mimeographed paper with 100 of those arithmetic problems to be completed in so many minutes. I loved school because I was good at it. The test was a game to me. Not so for Allen. About half way through the test, Allen laid his head on his desk and sobbed. The teacher didn't come to Allen, didn't put her hand on his shoulder, didn't whisper comfort in his ear. The teacher failed to achieve the desired outcome. Allen did not pass the test. Allen didn’t sob because he failed the arithmetic test, he sobbed because he failed to pass a much more important test. He failed to become like the teacher and those who could fulfill her expectations. Inability to assimilate facts and regurgitate them upon command relegated him to being separate from the teacher and most of rest of us. My next clear memory of him is many years later. I can still see him standing around with the worst that our town had to offer. The sobbing boy became a hardened young man with others like him.

C.S. Lewis wrote an essay that he called "Men Without Chests." It's about the result of teaching so as to achieve an outcome rather than teaching the student so as to prepare him to function along side of the teacher. Outcome based education, obviously, believes that the Educator can program the student to achieve the desired result by giving the proper input. Whether that outcome is ultimately good or bad, the process is still propaganda. Lewis uses the analogy of a mother bird leading a chick to become a mature bird, showing by example. She initiates the chick into becoming what she is. He contrasts this with the gamekeeper, or farmer, who manages that chick to achieve his own ends, ends that are unknowable to the chick. Knowledge, true or false, given so as to achieve an outcome is propaganda and produces men without chests, men with knowledge but not hearts. Lewis uses "chest" as a metaphor for those attributes we must admire. Courage. Honor. Honesty. These qualities and all the others that help us rise above instinct and self-preservation are not gained from facts. They are gained through others, whether teacher, parent, mentor, or friend, as they take time and invest in us. They initiate us into being fully human in the way God intended.

The goal that day in second grade was good. When the check-out attendant at the drug store gave me the wrong change the other day, being able to do the math in my head quickly was an asset. It's obviously true that knowledge and how to use it is important, but it's even more important how that knowledge is passed on. Is the teacher a gamekeeper who is entirely different from us, or is he one of us, coming along side of us, showing us how to be human?

The gospel can be true propaganda, knowledge shared to produce the desired outcome of conformity to that knowledge. Such propaganda produces a puppet conformed to the puppeteer, a caricature of the real.

The real gospel is shown and shared, and initiates us to being fully human as new creations. And seeing Him, and others trying to imitate Him, we become like Him, Men with chests; men and women with their hearts of stone replaced by hearts of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26 “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

Matthew 1:23'.,.and they will call him Immanuel"--which means, "God with us."

2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image.