A student and a tutor

An attractive female student went to see her tutor about a course she was struggling with. She knocked on the door, and he answered.

"Dr Smith, I really need to pass your course, and I would do anything ..... anything whatsoever ...... to pass."

Now you probably think you know where this is going. Of course I am going somewhere different.

Dr Smith looked at her, noted that Lucy was both attractive and moderately intelligent, but who had been enjoying university life rather too much, and not doing as well as she should have been in her course work.

"Lucy," he said. "I have 4 pieces of advice for you. Firstly, never offer anything unless you know precisely what it is that you are offering. Secondly, most things in life that you work for are better than those handed to you on a plate. And thirdly, don't be a cliche. Now get out."

She left his office quickly, and was almost at the coffee shop when she realised that he hadn't made sense. She was just about to return and ask him about it, when the answer hit her - she was reasonably clever after all. As she realised, she got a coffee from the shop, and returned to her room to study.






I am sure that you understand this, seeing as all those who read my blog are wise and intelligent people, but I have to explain it because I want to make a point.

The core point that Lucy realised is that Dr Smith had only made 3 points explicitly, despite offering 4 pieces of advice. Of course, this was the 4th piece - that people sometimes lie, that you cannot always trust people. So what did this mean in the context? Well, he could have taken advantage of her - or, considering his first piece of advice, insisted she do something highly publicly humiliating - and then not given her the pass she asked for. That was a lesson in itself, but there was more.

The comment about the cliche was a reference to the response you might have expected. It was a pointer to say that the thing she needed to do was actually work. The point is that if he had simply told her this, she would probably have dismissed it, but because she had to work it through, because she had to work to find the answer, she understood it better. That was the real message he wanted to teach her, and she learnt it because she had to work a little bit to get there.

Of course, the story is just made up. We all know that tutors are not that perceptive, and students don't get these sorts of lessons so quickly. Or something. But the point is there - people learn more by doing than by being taught.

I am tempted here to give some examples of how this applies, but I am sure you can all find better examples, more appropriate ones. I am not dismissing book-learning, but I am suggesting that simply reading things in books is not "learning". learning is something you only get if you work for it, fight for it, struggle to get it, understand because you have engaged with it. I am currently working for my advanced driving test, and I realise that many of the things I have learnt in some 30 years of driving have been learnt the hard way. But it means that I am now a better driver, having learnt not from someone teaching me, but from my own experience.

Everything I know about God....

Another of my Christmas reads - after Dazzling Darkness - was Everything I know about God I learned from being a Parent by Veronica Zundel. After the spiritual, challenging and insightful read from Rachael Mann, this was a different book.

Actually, this book title is a misnomer - in many ways, it doesn't talk about God. It is a book about the struggles of parenthood, especially parenting a "difficult" child. In terms of this, it is a good read, and a valuable insight into the struggles of parenting. As a parent of two boys, of a broadly similar age to Veronicas, I know that parenting is a very difficult and challenging job. I have no idea why anyone would take it on - except that it is also incredibly fulfilling.

But what about learning about God from this? In truth, Veronica has learned a lot about God from this experience, but that is almost irrelevant. From reading her struggles, and relating her difficulties to some of my own experiences, I can learn something about God. For me, it shows far more how I can learn from life experiences, from what I go through.

What is interesting is that the two books do have something in common. They are both telling individuals stories, about how they have experienced all sorts of difficulties and problems, and the message of how these individuals have found God through their experiences. In the end, there is an important lesson for everyone through these stories.

The truth is that we can all see more of God through those experiences that we go through. The difficult times in life are ones that can be times that we can see something new about God. As for Veronica, when we experience being a parent, we can get new insights into what God as a parent really means. With a child, we can understand more about what Jesus meant to the Father. As with Rachael, the challenges of living with a body that is wrong gives insights into what the body means, what an incarnated God is about.

In truth, everything I know about God I have learned from life - the good times and the difficult times, the parenting and the being parented, the times I have felt comfortable and the times I have felt out of place.

This is not a naive argument that minimise the difficulty of the challenging times. It is not about saying "oh look, a great learning experience". It means that when we look back at the difficult times, we might be able to see something new there.

But still, sometimes, life sucks.