QotW: Dealing with teachers who have different beliefs
A day late, but here is another Question of the Week. I’ve received a few questions on this topic in the past few days, so I thought it might be helpful to think through it together. The basic question is this: how should I respond to a teacher who is talking about his/her beliefs in class (and those beliefs are different than my own)?
When this happens, there might be a number of different things that run through your head. You might be angry, because the teacher is using his/her platform to share things that could possibly mislead your classmates. You might be frustrated, because you’d like to share your perspective on things. Or you might just be sad or burdened, desiring your teacher to come to a knowledge of God’s truth.
So what are we to do? Should we demand an equal platform to share our beliefs? Should we confront our teacher with what he/she has said? Or go to the principal? You’ll have to work the specifics out for yourself, but I’d encourage you to think more along the lines of trying to win your teacher over to the Gospel.
1 Peter 3 gives us a start on this. Although he is talking about how believing wives ought to interact with their non-believing husbands, I think the principles he mentions apply to our situation. In verse 1, he writes, “Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives…” If you substitute “students” for “wives” and “teachers” for “husbands”, you’ll see what I mean. Peter is talking to Christians about leading such good lives that non-believers are “won over” to their views simply by their behavior.
As Christians, we’re called to work at everything we do (including class) as though we were working for the Lord (check out Colossians 3:22-24), and are called to respect our authorities, no matter what they believe (1 Peter 2:13-15), because God has put them in our lives. In the classroom setting, that means striving to be the best student that you can possibly be. It means working hard in class, following all of our teacher’s (class-related) instructions, offering to help him/her with anything he/she needs, and respecting our teacher in every way. Why? Because you agree with your teacher’s views? No. But because you’ve been called to live that way by God and are actually serving Him.
And when we do this, I think it says something really powerful to both your teacher and other people who happen to be watching. Your life becomes “winsome”. Your teacher will wonder about why you’re such a good student, particularly when you don’t agree with her views. It would be very natural for you to slack off in her class, because you don’t agree with her, but it is supernatural (and requires God’s help!) to serve someone who has different views. And through this, maybe, just maybe, your attitude and lifestyle will give you an opportunity to dialogue with your teacher about spiritual things. She might ask you why you are such a good student, and you’ll have a chance to share with her the reason behind your behavior. That you’re serving Christ and that you wanted to care for her by making her job as easy as possible. And even though its really simple, that communicates the Gospel, because it reflects the way Christ loved us! He loved us and served us and died for us while we were yet his enemies!
Ultimately, as you know, God is the only one who can change our teachers’ hearts, and that’s why prayer is needed too. You can pray that He would soften his/her heart, and even use you and other believers in the class to “win her over” with and without words…
So, in short, my answer is this: Pray. Strive to be the best student in the class. Look for opportunities to serve and engage your teacher with kindness. And be prepared to talk about your faith when appropriate. In a word, be “winsome”.
Leave a Reply
