Education and Character: Learning to See Clearly (part 1)

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen.

Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

–C.S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?”(1945)

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My years are beginning to show. I am facing the fact that I can no longer read most print without a pair of reading glasses. A cloudiness in my right eye suggests something more ominous, but I’m ignoring that for the moment.

Unlike the floaters I see in the air, which only appear when I stare at a blank surface, I am seeing connecting threads between many different things I’ve been reading in a variety of rich sources lately. Most of these ideas boil down to truths about learning, about character and about perspective, how we look at the world and how that looking affects us.

Weeping in Ramah

“A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”           Matthew 2:18 NIV

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This has all happened before. Innocent children’s lives snuffed out at the hands of a madman in a small town. No warning; no mercy. Only savage slaughter.

We can piece together the reasons, after the fact. Jealousy, revenge, anger, irrational fear, despair. None of these words ameliorates the crime.

Explanations are not comforting and offer no acceptable excuse.