The ratings are in...

In one of those classic 21st-century moments of "Follow the hyperlinks" while online, I found myself at au.rateyourteacher.com, a website where, as the name suggests, students can rate their teachers. I remember going there in my first year of teaching, finding that I wasn't rated, and moving on. I can't say I've even thought to look there again in the four years since. But there I was, and so I thought that, while I was at it, I'd have a look to see if I now appeared.

I steeled myself, of course, for disappointment - either that no-one thought of me enough as a teacher to even bother rating me, or that they thought of me, but all negative thoughts. Scrolling down the various names of Strathmore Secondary College teachers I told myself that it wasn't a very reliable form of feedback, that kids who went on to rate their teachers would really only bother doing that if they either felt strongly for or against you, that you were unlikely to find a balanced critique on such a site. Well, then I saw my name. Sure enough, I am now significant enough as a teacher to be rated. Phew.

To the ten students, of the several hundred that I have taught so far, who decided to rate me, I would like to thank you. Your average rating of 3.8 is certainly not going to make me seek another profession. But just for the record, my name is spelt "Pullar" not "Puller". A small mistake, I know, but please, our teacher-egos are very fragile things and something as subtle as a misspelt surname can send it crashing to the ground. I expect to see it corrected by the end of the week.

Fighting For Breath

I used to be quite a grouch when I was younger. One symptom of this was that I hated movies which you could describe as "inspirational". You know the sort: the ones ending with either a slow clap, an "Oh Captain, my Captain" moment, or sometimes both. I don't know why I hated these so much. You could say I found them overly sentimental, that life didn't really have these moments, blah-blah-blah. Then I saw a few genuinely inspirational movies and found that, sometimes, being inspired by a movie was a good thing.

There's still remnants of this old grouchiness in me, and some of it may be justified I suppose. I hate it, for instance, when iTunes describe Christian music as "Inspirational", regardless of actual genre. But I'm starting to see that, even when such terms are used as meaningless labels, we can wear them as badges of honour. I think I first began to realise this when I saw an old first-aid poster which used the word "inspiration" as the opposite of "expiration": meaning, of course, to breathe in. Which is basically what the word means: to take in breath. And who can possibly think that taking in breath is a bad thing?

In the Christian life, this is particularly important. It's very easy to think that, when you become a Christian, you breathe in once and then you're set for life. Most of us would at least accept that we need to breathe in once a week (we call that "Church"), and some of us breathe some mornings or evenings (we call that "Quiet Time"). But we still more or less believe that, once you're a Christian, your spiritual walk is a done deal. Yet there are far too many people I know who were once Christians and aren't any more to think that this could possibly be the case. I know all the theological debates, and it is a complex topic, but at the simplest level this is what I think happens - they stop breathing. I've found the temptation to do this in my own life far more strongly than I ever expected. And why ever would we do that? Why would we ever stop breathing? Because breathing is a reflex that we take for granted, and then sometimes it becomes harder than we think - when under pressure, when afraid, when hurried. Most of us do it at least occasionally - think of the phrases "shortness of breath" or "hyperventilating". And so we can do this spiritually just as much as we can physically. The spiritual version is every bit as dangerous as the physical version - more dangerous, because Christ is the source of all life, and being cut off from this is to be cut off from all kinds of life, however the outside may appear.

Think for a moment about the word "inspiration". Look at what word it comes from: "spirit". That's because, in Latin, "spiritus" can mean "spirit" as we understand it, as well as "breath" or "wind". Then look at the Biblical words for the same thing: "ruach" (Hebrew) and "pneuma" (Greek). They also, bizarrely, have that same double-meaning: spirit, and breath/wind. If you know anything about language, and know that Latin, Greek and Hebrew have remarkably little linking them together, you will be amazed to see that this link between breath and spirit is at the very core of the word we use to describe each. So to live without inspiration is not to live.

It's tempting, I know, to stop fighting for breath. It's a temptation that, right now, I face daily. But I won't stop fighting, because the moment I do, my life ends. So let's commit everyday - to be inspired. Read the Bible, pray, talk to other believers, be inspired by the life stories of other believers. But never stop being inspired by God. Never stop breathing Him in.

Ikea and Beautiful Feet

Sometimes life throws up situations where we feel that everyone else knows how to do something that completely escapes us. We scratch our heads wondering why it is obvious to everyone else. Was it taught that day of Prep when we were away sick? Did we not get the memo? Did we forget to buy the newspaper that day?

Most situations in life include handy instruction manuals; but not every situation does. Navigating the wilds of the Richmond IKEA store today, I wished that there was such a manual for first-time IKEA users. Now, my parents took me to IKEA when I was a child, but I can't say I paid terribly much attention to the procedure you had to follow. I remembered certain details - the shape and layout of the check-out area was vividly implanted in my memory; the smell of the Danish pastries available in the cafeteria will never leave me. But basic details such as "how to buy a bed" seemed to have escaped me. Everyone else knew what to do. Everyone else knew how to take down the details of the furniture they wanted to buy, which direction to walk in, where to pick up their actual furniture (because obviously you don't just take the bed that you like and walk out of the store with it). There's clear protocol, and everyone in the store seemed to know what it was, except for me. I felt like I had failed IKEA 101. Well, not failed as such, since I still succeeded in buying a bed, mattress and desk, but not without some embarrassment, and large amounts of confusion.

It makes me wonder if everyone else really understands IKEA, or if they are just good actors, because they too don't want to carry the shame of being IKEA virgins. There was certainly no-one there doing a "500 Days of Summer" routine, which seems the other option to managing the stress of IKEA - run with the chaos; confuse everyone else. No, everyone else was sedate. They seemed to enjoy it. But did they really?

But then my thoughts became a bit deeper, partly to justify my frustration at not understanding IKEA, partly because that's the way my mind works, and I moved into more philosophical territory: what about more important situations, where people need to know how to do something but no-one feels the need to explain it to them? Life, when you think about it, is full of these kinds of situations. I once had a segment in my Friday afternoon Year 12 Lit classes called "I know it's a stupid question, but...", based on the assumption that, if one of us has a "stupid" question we are too embarrassed to ask, at least a handful of other people will be wanting to ask just the same question, and will benefit from hearing the answer. The assumption proved correct. In life, we assume lots of basic knowledge which is not fair to assume. Everyone benefits from having the basics revisited, whether for purposes of reminder or to hear them properly for the first time.

Which made me think of a very moving part of a generally very moving letter - Paul's letter to the early church in Rome, when he asks them this series of questions: "How...can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!'" Paul wasn't writing about IKEA, of course, or anything like it. He was writing about the much bigger problem, of how to fix our broken human nature. Is there an instruction manual available for this job? There is, actually, but most of the time people don't know where to look for it. They're like me, wandering helplessly around IKEA, looking for instructions and not finding them.

I didn't notice any particularly beautiful feet today. I did notice that the people I asked for instructions had fairly grumpy faces, as if it should all have been obvious. I would have appreciated a few beautiful smiles. That would have been a good substitute for beautiful feet.

It makes me not want to go to IKEA again. But it does make me want to spend more of my life helping to answer the simple questions that everyone's too embarrassed to ask.

No offence intended?

I read these words by the wonderful N.T. Wright recently and they seemed appropriate to put out into the webosphere on this fine, sunny Christmas Eve:

"I was once preaching at a big Christmas service where a well-known historian, famous for his scepticism towards Christianity, had been persuaded to attend by his family. Afterwards, he approached me, all smiles.

'I've finally worked out,' he declared, 'why people like Christmas.'

'Really?' I asked. 'Do tell me.'

'A baby threatens no one,' he said, 'so the whole thing is a happy event which means nothing at all!'

I was dumbfounded. At the heart of the Christmas story in Matthew's gospel is a baby who poses such a threat to the most powerful man around that he kills a whole village full of other babies in order to try to get rid of him...Whatever else you say about Jesus, from birth onwards, people certainly found him a threat. He upset their power-games, and suffered the usual fate of people who do that." (Tom Wright, 2004, Matthew for Everyone Part 1, 13-14)

It's certainly true that we've managed to make the Christmas story quite innocuous. Nativity plays and carols about how "the little Lord Jesus no crying he makes" make it all very demure and comforting, when at the time it was anything but.

Which is not to say that Christmas should suddenly become a deeply unsettling time, and that peace on earth and goodwill to all men should not be encouraged. Any celebration that causes people to come together with their families, to be more loving, generous and charitable than usual, has to have at least some good in it. Yet it seems that, by missing the controversy of Christmas, we also miss the real joy, and the real power. Christmas, grasped fully, is the best news we can imagine. Christmas, grasped fully, makes every day of your life one of generosity and love.

"Only the noble of heart..."

I suppose we can take it as a given that, when beloved books are made into movies, people get offended. Some people are happy, and some are very much not.

My response to seeing the new 3D film version of C.S. Lewis' "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" was not so extreme. I try to avoid giving the standard response of "the book's better". Some might even say that the film was better than the book - those who found the book a bit too imperialistic (the film definitely got rid of the "submission to Narnian authority" bit early on in the story) or fragmented (the film adds a new thread which unifies the narrative, and reorganises the stories to fit that framework better). Some who find the act of reading a bit dull, or find Lewis' distinctly British style of storytelling too ponderous, will probably prefer to have the picture on the wall leak out torrents of water right into their 3D glasses. It was certainly a highlight of the experience. And most people would have to be happy with how the film visualises the frontier into Aslan's country - less hokey than the 1990 BBC version but just as touching and serene.

So I can accept that, when adapting books to films, scenes come and go, and some people might think Eustace should have been fatter while others might think he was perfect as he was. This is all part of the adaptation process. But I noticed one subtle but key omission, and one subtle but key addition. The omission was: grace. The addition was: the gospel of good works and self-esteem.

Yes, the film kept Eustace's conversion experience, but it came much, much later in the story, and only after he had already made himself a hero by saving the ship from many perils, befriending Reepicheep and gaining his respect, and taking a sword for the team. His first act, after becoming a boy again, is not to become a better person (he's done that already, while stuck in a dragon's body) but to save the world. Tick.

The film also tells people to "be themselves" and to "see their own value". These are not, in and of themselves, bad things to tell anyone - they can be very valuable in their place. But they take the place of love and respect for Aslan, something that the original stories placed very highly. In the novel, and the BBC series, when Aslan growls at Lucy for wanting to be Susan, it isn't because she fails to see her own value (though she does), but because she has become envious and despises her sister for her beauty. In the movie, her sin - resentment of a sister; covetousness - becomes the subject of a self-help book. Apparently Lucy needs to learn to value herself, more than she needs to love her sister, and love and trust her creator (for it is distinctly as her creator that Aslan appears to her at that moment in the original story).

And finally the film tells us that "only the noble of heart" can enter Aslan's country and that "no-one deserves it more" than Reepicheep. Deserves it? Whoever said anything about deserving it? Yes Reep is noble, and Aslan values his nobility - perhaps a bit too much for 21st century hipster Christians' comfort - but no-one ever deserves to get into Aslan's country. No-one ever gets there by their own merits. Which, if you're Eustace, or Edmund, is an exceptionally good thing.