Indeed, the Lord heaped blessings on me and mine in this most unusual time, which seems fitting for the God we serve, as He is want to heap blessings upon us in the most unusual of ways. And so it came to pass that during Holy Week, with the blessing of an unusual amount of time together, my family watched the Passion accounts of all 4 “Gospels According to Netflix” (i.e. the new movies that do each Gospel, narrated line by line). And my formerly Southern Baptist heart was strangely warm (I was Methodist for a spell as well before converting) when my children paid enough attention to Scripture that they noticed the Gospels seemed to have different times in mind for when Jesus was Crucified. Part of this was the use of the NIV translation for the movies (they kept saying things like “it was 9 am,” or “it was around Noon” and such). Were the Gospel writers at odds as to their timing of this, the event in which the entire world hung in the balance?
And thus came another blessing, more amazing than the first: I was going to get to use something I learned in grad school to practically help my family! See Mom and Dad, I didn’t take out all the loans for nothing ! You see, there were no clocks for—well—thousands of years until there were clocks, and before such a time, it made no sense to talk about 9am, or 11:53pm, or any specific time for that matter. No instead, you told time by the position of the sun, and so you spoke generally about time—the 1st hour of the day, the 3rd, the 9th, until the sun set, and then we talk about sunset, early evening, mid-night, and before dawn. So when this Gospel writer talks about “the third hour,” or that one talks about “around the sixth hour,” we have much wider spans of time in mind—9am to Noon, Noon to 3pm, etc., and this accounts for pretty much any question about things in the Gospel accounts of the Passion one might have. And there I stood, Grad School debt vindicated, family time vindicated, God’s Easter blessings vindicated, even in this, the most unusual Easter I have ever celebrated (and it even snowed once on Easter in Wichita for Heaven’s Sake)!
Now more than an autobiographical detail, what this episode in my family life calls to mind is the strange way that seemingly small technology can completely change the way we see the world. A little thing like the clock makes the world of time in 33AD seem not only like a foreign land, but a different planet. It is impossible to unwind (yes, a clock pun) these changes back to what they were. However, by learning anew to see the world through ancient eyes, we do not nullify or escape the world we now live in, but something much more than explaining Bible trivia is revealed as well. We think about how Monks have divided the hours of the day not as units to measure what we are currently up to or what we are doing, but perhaps paradoxically, to bring to live the different ways God throughout time has blessed the very character of each of these hours—Morning now will forever be connected with Resurrection, Noon with Crucifixion, Evening with the lighting of the Temple lamps, etc. It may seem paradoxical, but to look to the past is not to destroy or undo the present, but perhaps disarm some of its harmful tendencies, and to enrich our use of those technologies. And of course, paradoxes should not freak us out too much, here in the Easter season when the greatest paradox of the Faith is renewed for our consideration each time the festival comes about, the God Himself brought Life out of Death in the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In just this sense do we at
The Newman Idea hope to perform a similar “paradox” in the life of our students: we want them to find joy—yes, joy—in
online classrooms .
Now you may say, “Bo, lets not make rash vows. Life from death is one thing. But students actually enjoying a video conference?!” But as bold as it may sound, this is what we hope to do, in putting your outstanding gifts to good use.
For we think it is not only out of necessity that we can switch to an online platform, but indeed providential that God has raised up a group dedicated to wielding John Henry Newman’s understanding of personal influence to disarm what can be appear to be a technology almost antithetical to “real education.”
Others might see this episode of human life as necessarily damned to a world of lectures woodenly thrust into a new format, but we are either wild or dumb enough to see a blazing opportunity to “use it all wrong,” but for the Lord! Online education appears to be caught in the quick sand of passivity, fragmentation, and lost focus, but we are bold enough (or crazy enough!) to stare this challenge in the face and see a much different possibility: activating the power God has planted in each student, threading together a sense of community at a crucial time our students’ development, and bringing an engaging approach to awaken habit of integral knowing in each student. Are these lofty goals? Absolutely! But in this season of celebrating Christ defeating death with death, of winning the victory of life through the ultimate defeat of the Cross—who are we not to be foolish with the plentiful graces God has bestowed upon us? For paradoxically, the foolishness of God outshines the wisdom of men, and we count ourselves lucky to be enrolled in the ranks of God’s blessed fools!
We have this opportunity because God has bestowed such friends as you on us. Your prayers, your financial support, and your friendships have been invaluable. We know we don’t deserve it, but with God’s help, providence has chosen us to be part of His extravagant plans to “communicate the gift of Integrity” planted in the heart of the modern world by St. John Henry Newman. We are grateful, we are excited, and we look forward to “using this technology wrong” for our students, and for the Lord. All praise and glory to His name—Jesus Christ is risen!—and we thank you for equipping us to be a conduit for such world-overcoming grace.