For the Love of Teaching

I've learned, as a teacher, that some days rock; some days, really don't. On Wednesday, I had the second kind. On Thursday, with a good night's sleep between me and my mistakes, I thought of this verse:

Mark 10.17-22

17 Now as He was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”18 So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Do not defraud,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’”[c]20 And he answered and said to Him, “Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.”21 Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.”22 But he was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

What strikes me about this passage is that Jesus loved the young man.

In truth, the young man is not being very lovable right now. He's self-righteous, self-centered, and greedy. He asserts, probably loudly, how well he's kept every commandment; he keeps his wealth instead of giving it to those who really need it, and walking with Jesus. Jesus has every right to be frustrated, even angry, with the man, and we know from the incident at the Temple that Jesus could get angry. 

Yet Jesus does not get angry. He does not even get upset. All we are told is that Jesus loved the young man, for no observable reason whatsoever. He simply looks at the young man, and loves him.

No matter what the young man does, no matter how he hurts Jesus here, he cannot sin himself out of the love of Christ.

Graham Green writes in The Power and the Glory, "It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It  was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization - it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and corrupt." In the end, this is the message of the cross: that beyond all our expectations, beyond anything we have actually earned, Jesus loves us. 

This is a reassuring, comforting truth of the Gospel. 

It is also a challenge to me as a teacher. 

Sometimes, my students are easy to love, like when they write notes telling me that my class has changed their life, or purchase purple shoes as an in-class joke. Sometimes, they're not, like when I catch them on Facebook in class, or whey they blow off homework assignment after homework assignment.

How do I respond to this? Unfortunately, all too often I do the opposite of what Jesus does to the young man: I do not look at my students and love them; I look at what they are doing, and get upset.

This, I think, is the key difference between Jesus's love and my lack thereof: I get distracted by what my students do; Jesus, not one to get distracted, sees only the young man, created in the image of God inherently valuable, distinct from all his poor choices. Nothing the young man does can erase the fact that he was meant to walk with God, and nothing my students do should erase my love for them.

This doesn't mean, of course, that I should be a pushover. They deserve, and often desperately need, their teachers' love, but sometimes what they need most of all is tough love, the kind that doesn't take late homework so that they learn to respect deadlines, or the kind that gives out that F when needed so that students actually learn to write well. Nor does loving students mean I let them get away with whatever they want in class. A student using Facebook may be distracting to the other students, for instance; loving students means loving all the students, making sure that everybody thrives in class.

Honestly, though, reminding myself to be strict is really a reminder I do not need, like telling a child that it's okay to have a cookie every now and then, or like telling a couch potato that it's okay to have a day without exercise. The reminder I really need is this: The most important thing I can do as a teacher is love my students, regardless of whether their behaviour pleases me or frustrates me.

Because in the end, it's not about me.

This, I think, is what trips me up. I make class about me: I need to rock this lesson, I need to get them interested in this 1600s essay, I need to earn their respect. Class is performance, and I am the starring character. How different from Jesus's love, which went to a cross on which he could win no glory, simply for the love of half-hearted and corrupt humanity. How different from what class is meant to be, a journey in which students become better writers, better readers, better and holier thinkers.

Sometimes, we Christians pour scorn on those who say they believe that Jesus was a great moral teacher. He was the Son of God, we exclaim!

True, but He was a great teacher, the very best. In the same way that humanity is made in his image and meant to be like Him, I want my teaching to be made in his image.

Teaching made in his image is not, ultimately, about doing thorough research or understanding Milton's Areopagitica; it is not about whether I have the students' respect or their attention. Teaching in the image of God is about whether I love the students. If I can do that, everything else will fall into place. Will every day be perfect? Absolutely not. Jesus was the perfect teacher, and yet Judas betrayed him. But regardless of what my students do, I will be doing what Jesus did: looking at my students and, by the grace of God, loving them.

May it be so.

The Scandal of the Gospel

The great scandal of the Gospel is that God forgives people like Jeffery Dahmer.

I’ve recently been reading Philip Yancy’s book, What’s So Amazing About Grace? There, Yancy tells the story of Dahmer coming to faith in Christ. Whether Dahmer was sincere, no one can say but God. Yet the truth is, the gates of heaven are flung wide for people exactly like Dahmer.

Scandalous.

When I was a child, I always heard there was something scandalous, something offensive about Jesus, but I never figured out exactly what the scandal was. I assumed it lay in how we presented Jesus. If people were meant to find the Gospel scandalous, surely that was because we were meant to be on the offense in witnessing, getting in people’s faces a little, berating them for their sins? A friend of mine, as a child, rode her bike up and down her neighborhood streets, yelling fire and brimstone at the top of her lungs. This, clearly, was the scandal of the Gospel.

No. The way we share Jesus with others may be offensive, but the real scandal is Jesus Himself. Too often, this is not the Jesus we talk about in church. Too often, the Jesus we talk about in church “offends no one at all”, as Michael Card sings in his song “Scandalon.” The Jesus we talk about is busy inviting children onto his lap, feeding the hungry, heading out for a fishing trip with his disciples – all true, but hardly scandalous. The Jesus we don’t talk about is the one hobnobbing with whores and corrupt tax collectors, the one who rescues an adulteress from her just punishment and sends her away, scot-free.

The truth is, the scandal of the Gospel is grace. Do we really believe in grace? Do we really believe in free access to God for anyone – anyone –who comes to him through Christ? We say we do. We name our churches something like “Grace Baptist Church” or “Grace Community Church.” We print the sinner’s prayer at the back of every church bulletin and post it on church websites.

Then someone like Dahmer cashes in on God’s unending grace, and deep inside we are shocked. How could God’s grace possibly stretch far enough to cover someone like Jeffery Dahmer? Deep inside, something whispers to us that we are more worthy of God’s love than Dahmer. After all, he murdered people; we do not. He ate people; we serve juice and animal crackers at children’s church. We take a summer missions trip, we hold back snarky comments about Aunt Ethel at the family reunion, and we vainly imagine that our actions earn us a larger share of God’s love than Dahmer could ever receive.

Yet this tidy little myth of our own goodness is blown to bits when someone like Dahmer is saved. In someone like Dahmer there is absolutely nothing that could merit God’s love, yet God loves him unreservedly. However many animal crackers we serve in children’s church, however kind we are to Aunt Ethel, such love cannot possibly be earned. This is the scandal of the Gospel, that we stand exactly where we have always feared to find ourselves: as sinners, desperately in need of the no-strings-attached grace of God.

Realizing that we are in the same boat as Jeffery Dahmer need not be a downer. On the contrary, to remember how greatly we stand in need of God’s grace is to take the first step towards tasting that grace ourselves.

Humility, according to G.K. Chesterton, is the central virtue of Christianity. Indeed, in the Bible humility marks nearly every person’s journey towards God. Naaman is cured because he lays aside his pride and bathes in the Jordan, David the great king dances before the Lord, heedless and happy in his tightie-whities, and Zaccheus apologizes publically and promises to restore four times what he has stolen.. Whenever people come to God, they come to Him on their knees. Whenever they see God, they see Him best when they are not blinded by the phantasm of their own goodness. Whenever people are blessed by God, they are blessed because they are humble.

When we are humble, C.S. Lewis assures us, “the Mercy will receive us.” I would add that when we are humble, we will finally allow ourselves to receive mercy. Yes, Jeffery Dahmer’s salvation is scandalous. Yet that scandal is our saving grace. In the face of such scandal we are at last able to let go of our collective fantasy that we are somehow worthy of God’s mercy, able to bend our stiffened knees and in humility discover the endless grace of God. 

Why Write?

Author's Note: On Friday, my Creative Writing students will be turning in their Statement of Purpose for the year. In solidarity with them, and to help me write the rubric, I am writing my own Statement of Purpose. Do enjoy!

Writing as a Spiritual Gift

Whatever St. Paul says, the church has persisted in idolizing some spiritual gifts. Intellectually, we acknowledge that all spiritual gifts, all talents, are necessary to the healthy functioning of the body of Christ, but publically, we latch on to certain gifts as the coolest in the Kingdom of God. In the early church, the cool gift was speaking in tongues; in evangelical America, spiritual encouragement. We pair up with fellow believers to mentor them; we group up with cell groups, grace groups, life groups, and Bible studies; we attend Sunday-morning coffee hour regularly, holding a doughnut and ready to affirm fellow believers that are struggling; we ask people, "How are you?" and wait for them to emote to us so that we can support them. 

Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining. Far better that we support each other in the faith than tear each other down. Here's the problem, though: I am notoriously bad at encouragement. I've never mentored anyone in my life, or for that matter, been mentored. Almost no one emotes to me, which means there's rarely someone for me to encourage. Especially since my hope is to not only teach my students writing but also teach them about Christ, this failure to launch as an encouraging mentor can be discouraging. 

Last October, I shared my discouragement with a friend, someone who excels at encouragement. What she said stuck with me: Stop worrying about a gift you don't have. Work on the gifts you do have.

I later mentioned this advice to another friend. She, in turn, told me about her sister Laura, a writer. According to one of Laura's writing teachers, not writing when you can is a breach of social responsibility. Do you have good ideas? Yes? Then share them, so that other people can benefit from your thoughts.

This way of seeing writing stuck with me. For far too long, I've seen writing as a hobby, something to be indulged during the long hours of a snowy afternoon, practiced after dark when the whole house settles down. Yet after dark, I'm tired. I'm more likely to hop on Facebook, read up on the Mars One mission, scroll through Buzzfeed drooling over pictures of delicious desserts that I will never make. I've always known I was wasting time; I've never thought that I was wasting my spiritual gift. I may not be gifted in giving spiritual comfort, but dang it! I'd like to think, at least, that I'm gifted in writing. 

By this point in the 2014, many people are starting to give up on their New Year's resolutions. Yet just because New Year's resolutions don't work that well, doesn't mean that we should never make goals, that we should drift through life aimless, terrified of setting a goal lest we fail in our attempt to reach it. 

Here's mine: I want to write more this year, and all the years subsequently. 

For me, that mostly means writing non-fiction: more blog posts, more essays submitted to online publications (Relevant, Converge, Gospel-Centered Discipleship). Six years of writing literary analysis for my bachelor's degree, my master's degree, and my master's thesis means that non-fiction is far and away my strength. (And yes, non-fiction can be creative.) But just because we have a weakness doesn't mean we need to succumb to it. Therefore, I also want to write more poetry, more fiction; I especially want to try new things with poetry and fiction - more structured poetry, more frequent poetry; more fiction altogether. I want to stop worrying about the gift I do not have and focus on the one I do.

Writing in the Church

St Paul reminds the Corinthians in his first letter that the church does not function properly unless every gift is being used; stress any single gift too much, and you threaten its well-being. A car won't run correctly if we put on brand-new tires, snazzy hubcaps decked out with bling, and forget to change the oil. Why should we expect the church to run correctly if we polish one gift and neglect the others?

Right now, the church is excellent at forming relationships. What else do all those life groups, cell groups, or grace groups do besides build relationships between believers, providing them a space to come together weekly and share each other's spiritual and personal burdens? What else does the stress on mentoring do, but remind people that they need a confidante to help them get through hard times, and remind people that they need to care about others going through the hard times?

Unfortunately, what the church is not excellent at is reflection. Adam McHugh and Susan Cain, both of whom have written extensively about introversion, point out that almost nothing about church promotes deep reflection. The meet-and-greet at the beginning of the service, the doughnut-and-coffee hour, the Seven-Eleven songs that replace deep theological hymns and liturgies - all these favour emotion, not thought.

Here is where the gift of writing comes in: While believers who are good at dealing with emotion can do so, we who do not excel at dealing with emotion can trade in thought. We can, by our writing, draw our fellow believers back to issues we need to contemplate, back to reflection on our God and our relationship with Him. In many ways, the role of a writer in the church is similar to the role of a single in the church. We who are single are a symbol to our married peers, reminding them that human relationships are only for a time; the highest and best of all relationships will be with Christ in heaven. Likewise, we who write, we who reflect, are a symbol to those who do not, reminding them that life in Christ is not meant only to be experienced but to be thought about carefully.

Is it possible that to some extent, we writers even do the thinking for our brethren, a kind of heavenly division of labour? In St. Paul's words, some believers speak in tongues; some teach; some organize and direct; some show mercy; some pray. Could it be that some of us minister to the emotions; others, to the thought? That when our relationship-savvy brethren come to what we write and think about, they discover there something not germane to their own spiritual life?

Obviously, the question is a tricky one, all the more so because not having a particular spiritual gift does not excuse us from spiritual responsibilities (I may not have the spiritual gift of prayer, but I should still pray, for instance.) All the same, my hope as a writer is to supplement the church's focus on relationships with analysis and reflection, to remind my fellow believers that we love Christ not only with our heart but also with our mind.

Writing for Me

Still, these dreams are somewhat grandiose. Is it not presumptuous to think that I by my writing can change the church? Perhaps. I am, somewhat unexpectedly, reminded of the safety instructions delivered on an airplane right before take-off. "In event of cabin depressurization," they warn, "Put your own mask on before helping those around you." Only a foolish sense of heroics would violate these instructions: Try to help someone else with their mask first, and you may run out of air. You may endanger not only yourself, but also the person you were trying to save. 

I wonder whether it is only my foolish heroics that hopes my writing may draw the church back to reflection, supply the deep thought necessary for life in Christ to thrive. Perhaps the real reason for my writing is much simpler: When I am writing, I am reflecting. 

Remember those Buzzfeed articles I mentioned earlier, with all the beautiful dessert pictures? Scrolling through those is not conducive to deep reflection. Not even my newest intellectual hobby, reading the New York Times online every morning, really promotes reflection. Reading the articles may give me stuff to reflect on, but so long as I am reading what someone else wrote, I cannot be alone with my own thoughts. Not until I write, or at least until I sit and think, like Descartes in his window, can I reflect. 

Perhaps this is a selfish reason for writing, but it is nonetheless important: I want to write more so that I can reflect more, so that I am spending my mind and intellectual energy not on an endless array of food pictures on the Internet, but on things that matter. Like the scientists of the 1600s, I want to think God's thoughts after Him, and to do that, I need to think, and write.

Poet Dorothy Parker is said have to claimed, "I hate writing. I love having written." The same is true for me: Is writing hard? Absolutely. It's much, much easier to just read Buzzfeed articles. It's much easier to email a friend than to write a poem. I spent nearly two hours on this blog post alone, without editing. Yet the benefits from having written are endless: Having written means that I have reflected, that I have thought about the world I live in and the God who designed it - and that is a treasure worth all the work.

How Are You? Be Honest, This is for Posterity

When I lived in the Czech Republic, I was warned that Czechs answer the question, "How are you?" honestly. Don't use it as a greeting, people told me. Only use it if you *really* want to know how someone is doing. 

The same apparently goes for Russians, according to an article in the New York Times this morning. According to op-ed writer Alina Simone, Americans's pat answer - "Fine." - would never fly in Russia. In Russia people give you a rundown of their medical history, delivered in an appropriate tone of longsuffering. Americans, she writes, are shocked by such honesty.

I would add that Christians are equally shocked. Face it: We're as guilty of fineness as any other American. In fact, we've spiritualized fineness. The usual responses, "Fine," "Doing good," or "Okay," aren't enough for us. Asked how we are, we say, "Blessed" or "Better than I deserve."

True, "How are you?" is just a greeting and doesn't always need a detailed response. Yet leaning too heavily on this chipper call-and-response may keep us from recognizing real hurt as a normal part of a spiritually-healthy life.

Maybe Russians, Simone wonders, answer the question "How are you?" more honestly since "As a citizen of a Communist utopia, you were pretty much supposed to feel fine all the time". To describe your ailments in detail, then, is less about complaining, more about making a political statement. Or maybe, she writes, it's simply a spiritual reality for them, that (quoting Dostoevsky) "suffering [is] ever-present and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything".

Either way, the Russians' honesty has something to teach the church.

I wonder, does the church sometimes fall into the same error that the Soviets did? Do we expect believers, as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, to pretty much feel fine all the time? Isn't this what the expression, "Better than I deserve!" implies, that  whatever happens to us on this earth, we should be fine with it since by rights we should be in Hell?

Yes, we believers are supposed to rejoice in suffering. At the same time, rejoicing in suffering is not the same thing as pretending it doesn't happen, and our pat, slightly-too-cheery answers to "How are you?" are meant to gloss over suffering quickly, not rejoice in it.

Even the way we Christians respond to people who aren't fine implies that in the church, fineness is normal; grief and suffering, abnormal.

A perky colleague, told I was "Fine," to my surprise asked me what was wrong. I wasn't interested in having a heart-to-heart with a man I barely knew, so I brushed him off with a polite nothing and went on about my business. Yet his assumption that there was a problem, and his his insistence on knowing what it was, struck me as curious, even invasive. In fact, there was no problem; I was simply not brimming with delight that morning.

Several months later, I told a friend who greeted me that I was "Okay," and was pulled up short when she too asked me what the matter was. Again, I told her that there really was no problem; my mind was occupied with leaving work and stripping off stiff, uncomfortable work clothes.

Of course, my colleague and my student both meant very well. I am grateful that the people around me do care about my well-being. What I am concerned about, though, is that my less-than-stellar pat answer to the greeting, "How are you?" prompted two very different people to assume that there was something wrong with me. That assumption, I think, further illustrates that in the church, we are all pretty much supposed to be fine. Anything less than fineness is abnormal, a problem to be solved or at least prayed over.

By all means, pray over the problem. But let's not pretend that prayer will restore us to fineness.

The truth? Jesus wept, so surely we can weep. Jesus prayed before He went to the cross, but He also dreaded the cross, so surely we can experience dread too? Surely we can be discouraged, tired or upset? Surely we can simply be okay without people wondering what in the world is wrong with us?

The truth is, at least in this life we are made to experience a wide range of emotions. God designed us for joy, but he also designed us for grief, weariness, anger, frustration; he designed us to be distracted by problems, sunk in thought, mellow. Admitting this does not make us less spiritual. It makes us human.

Ultimately, Simone suggests that Americans take a page out of the Russian playbook: "Take a vacation from fineness," she suggests, listing off more realistic alternatives to "Fine": "So-so," "the usual," or "eh."

In other words, be honest. 

Good advice. We Christians would do well to heed it.

Credit to Coffee With Jesus, "Just Chill"

Book Picks (2013)

Part of the reason I enjoy social media is all the good book recommendations I discover. On a blog I follow, the writer has posted a long list of cheap, good books on Kindle. On Facebook, an old college friend has listed the books she most (and least!) enjoyed this year. For most of my life, I read books faster than I could find recommendations for new ones, so book recommendations are a goldmine for me.

It's time to return the favour. In this post I want to describe the two best books I read in 2013, one fiction and one non-fiction. I read a lot of good books, books that I enjoy during the reading and books from which I learn something. The truly good books, however, stick with me: I find myself talking about them weeks and months later, bringing them up again (and sometimes again and again) in conversations with friends; such books touch, and may even change, my life. What I want to do in this post is try to capture what I found so thought-provoking about each of these books. 

At the bottom of the post, I'll list a few honourable mentions from the last year

. Feel free to chime in in the comments, or via email: Per my confession, I love hearing what you are reading!

Best fiction: The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell

Science fiction is a genre, a grouping of similar books, in the same way that apples is a classification, a grouping of similar fruit. There are many different kinds of apples - some you like, some you don't. There are also many different kinds of science fiction - some don't work for you, some do. I cannot get invested in Isaac Asmiov's novels, nor am I interested by the pop science fiction with the bodice-ripper covers. Thankfully, The Sparrow is neither of those: it belongs to that rare class of novels: religious, contemplative science fiction. 

The Sparrow is about a doomed Jesuit mission to the planet Rakhat, the first that humanity makes contact with. Out of the perhaps eight people who leave Earth for Rakhat, only one returns. The mission is drawn to Rakhat when the planet's piercingly beautiful music is picked up by SETI equipment. Two Jesuit priests and several non-religious scientists, they go to Rakhat wanting not to colonize, not to exploit, but only, as the dust jacket notes, "to know and love God's other children". This, unfortunately, is not what happens. 

What touched me most deeply about The Sparrow was its gentle but unflinching honesty. At its heart the novel is a religious exploration of suffering, how the loving God of Jews and Christians can not only let suffering happen but lead us directly to it, as into a trap. The question of suffering is one of the thorniest in all our faith, and so the temptation is to hurry past it with easy platitudes.

The Sparrow does not do that. Its answer is longer, many-sided, cloaked in the complexities of narrative form; whether there is an answer at all I leave for you to decide. I, however, remember the graciousness with which the novel handles the question, acknowledging both the undeniable truth of God's care and also the equally undeniable truth of real suffering:

"There's an old Jewish story that says that in the beginning God was everything and everywhere, a totality. But to make Creation, God had to remove Himself from some part of the creation, so something besides Himself could exist. So He breathed in, and in the places where God withdrew, there creation exists." 

"So God just leaves?"
"No. He watches. He rejoices. He weeps. He observes the moral drama of human life and gives meaning to it by caring passionately about us, and remembering." 

"Matthew ten, verse twenty-nine: Not one sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it." 

"But the sparrow still falls."

Sometimes we believers use God's care for the sparrow to gloss over real hurt by reminding the suffering soul that God is caring for them. Absolutely God cares for us. Yet His care doesn't, or at least it doesn't always, make us feel better; our suffering is real. This is The Sparrow's genius: In its narrative of suffering, the storyteller tells both sides of the story, the pain and trouble of real suffering, and the unending goodness and sovereignty of God. 

Besides this, The Sparrow is simply a well-written novel. Its characters are expertly drawn, with several rounded characters; there are rich descriptions of food, smells, and scenery. The plot is very tightly woven: Though some readers (not me) find it slow in the middle, nearly everything in the plot has a purpose; there are no loose threads. 

Cautions: Some graphic description towards the end. (There's a bit of a plot twist, which I won't spoil for you, but be aware that it's a dark twist.)

Best Non-Fiction: Salt Sugar Fat, by Michael Moss

Non-fiction is a newer pleasure for me. Unfortunately, Moss's book spoiled a great deal of lesser non-fiction. Salt Sugar Fat is a gem: thoroughly researched and descriptive, carefully organized, and most important of all, thoughtful and well balanced.

Salt Sugar Fat is about exactly what it says: the enormous quantities of added salt and sugar and fat which make processed food possible. Yet it's also about the way that food is marketed, with public attention diverted from the additives so that consumers can purchase more, and still more, of a particular product. Moss's point is not that readers should give up processed foods altogether. No, what Moss does is akin to what happens at the end of Wizard of Oz: Pulling back the curtain, he exposes and therefore weakens the magic of the food processing and marketing system.

When I was a child, I was fascinated when school related directly to my personal experience. I learned one day how the bones in the arm twist over each other when I turn my hand palm-up, and since then, I find it interesting to turn my hand palm-up, and then palm-down, and then palm-up again, thinking about how, underneath my skin, my arm bones keep crossing each other. I find Salt Sugar Fat memorable for exactly the same reason: Every one of us buys food from supermarket shelves, so the book is personal for every one of us. In some sense, it is about every one of us.

Take one example: Line extensions. Line extensions, Moss explains, are specialized versions of a particular product: cherry Coke or mint Oreos. When line extensions are available, people are not only more likely to purchase the specialty product, they're also more likely to purchase the original. Now, I see line extensions everywhere. I pick up candy-cane flavoured Hershey Kisses for a recipe I'm making, and I think about line extensions, about more money lining the pockets of Hershey executives.

Take another example: Cheese. In America, we add cheese to things: to a chicken dinner, to pasta, to a salad, even to dessert. In Paris they eat it plain, after dinner, in place of dessert. Turns out, there's a reason for why Americans eat cheese the way they do, and it has nothing to do with cheese tasting good. When Americans began to prefer low-fat to high-fat milk, the dairies had a lot of extra milk fat on their hands. They turned it into cheese, and then they had a lot of extra cheese on their hands. So they started a marketing campaign designed to get people to eat cheese. That's right: the American taste for cheese is manufactured. Savvy advertising, not the great taste of cheese, convinced us to eat as much cheese as we do. See how well Moss's book relates to real life? And are you still sure you need cheese in your salad, especially if you can't taste it among all the various vegetables?

You may still eat the same things when you finish Moss's book (I still like cheese, for instance), but you will think differently when you purchase them. Or you will eat them in different ways (I rarely add cheese to my salad anymore.) Salt Sugar Fat, in other words, will change how you think about food.

Cautions: None

Honourable Mentions: I would be up all night blogging if I described every single good book I read in the last year, and there's no way you would make it through the book-length post. I did want to list some of the books I enjoyed besides these, however:

• Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, Rosaria Butterfield. An agnostic lesbian professor converts to Christianity. Describes how she came to accept the Christian faith, and also describes how believers can learn from the GLBT community.
• Real Sex, Lauren Winner. A defense of chastity as a crucial part of faith for non-married believers. Based on what we learn about Christ from chastity, and a good alternative to the courtship drivel a la Josh Harris
• Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton. Describes and defends the habits of thought and assumptions that make orthodoxy possible. Extraordinarily witty. 
• Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg. Practical advice for how women can become more prominent and happier in the workplace.

What about you? What have you read in the last year? What will you read next year?

Only You Can Prevent Identity Theft!

So, are you worried about the security breach at Target?

Me, I bought something with my credit card on December 15, the last day that cards were said to be vulnerable. So far, I haven't noticed any fraudulent activity, but I'll keep checking regularly for several weeks.

If anything, the news about Target underscores how vulnerable all of us are to identity theft. I found this out the hard way last spring, and in light of the Target news, I want to share with you what I learned about protecting yourself from identity theft.

My hope is that this post is very practical, very useful. Therefore, I strongly encourage you to read it, or at least skim it, and then bookmark it, in case you ever need to go back and access the information that I have included in here. Email me if you have questions.

My story:

On the last day of February in 2013, I got a call from an unknown number. When I answered the phone, the man on the other end introduced himself as a staff member with a collection agency on the East Coast. He was calling about payment on a credit card that I had taken out nearly a year ago, late in May 2012. More than $700 was owed on the card. 

Problem was, I never took out the card. 

Trying to figure out what was going on, I asked a few more questions about the card: What were the last four digits? What address was it associated with? What information did they have on me? and I listened as he read out, correctly, my full name, my date of birth, and my social security number. 

At that point, I thanked him, hung up, and called my father at work. "I think my identity's been stolen," I said. 

It was nearly four months, mid-June, before I learned that the banks and credit reporting agencies had recognized the card as fraudulent. During those months I spent hours (sometimes entire days, especially over Spring Break) on the phone with various financial organizations. I spent hundreds of dollars on postage, sending in whatever official documents I could use to prove that the card was, in fact, fraudulent, that I wasn't trying to weasel out of paying a $700 balance. I closed and re-opened all my banking accounts, sometimes twice. 

Yet some time during those four months, something odd happened: I called my father for advice one day and discovered that he was asking me for advice about protecting himself from identity theft. Somewhere during all the phone calls, all the paperwork, all the Internet research, I became the family expert on protecting yourself from identity theft. 

In fact, thanks to the stress of those four months, I've become somewhat of an evangelist on protecting your personal information. I will tell you if I think the information you're posting on Facebook is too personal, and I reminded the school where I work to take students' Social Security numbers off paperwork whenever possible. And, I'm writing this blog post: Here's how to protect yourself from identity theft, and what to do if happens anyway. 

Protect Yourself: Take Precautions, Especially online.

Various people worried about Target's security breach are recommending a move back to cash and checks. It's not a bad idea, especially the cash part. Yet with an increasing array of online purchasing and banking options, it's not feasible to stay cash-only, all the time. Here are some ways to protect yourself.

Obviously, be very, very careful about your Social Security number. Don't carry it around in your purse. Don't take it on trips. Lock it up somewhere. When you give it out to someone, make sure that person has an actual need for the number and may already have the number (most banks, credit bureaus, and employers fall into this category.) When I traveled to Argentina this summer, I had to fill out a health form. At the top of the health form was a place for my SSN. There was absolutely no need for my SSN on that form: No one traveling with me needed access to my credit report, nor did they need to hire me for any reason. Ultimately, I chose to simply leave that space on the form blank.

Online,  don't use the Internet Explorer browser. Right now I'm using Chrome, but Firefox is safer still. Download this and use it regularly and exclusively.

Set your browser to delete cookies whenever it's closed, then close your browser regularly. Cookies stored on your computer can be used to enable a phishing scam and steal passwords. You can Google how to delete cookies.

Be aware of any website that looks as though it may have been tampered with - for instance, a new home page, or something missing on one of the pages. Such minor changes can signal a phishing scam. If you suspect phishing, place a call to the owner of website immediately and ask.

Choose your passwords carefully, and don't use the same password for more than one site. If you're like me, meaningless strings of numbers and letters are difficult to remember, so follow this trick: Write a relevant sentence about what you use the website for, then choose the first letter from the sentence. So for instance, your iTunes password might be based on this sentence: The only Christian artist I like is Michael Card. That means my password would be this: T o C a I l i M C. You can then add relevant numbers to the set of letters, to make the password even more difficult to guess.

Protect Yourself: Checking Your Credit Report

Most of you probably know this, but your credit report is a list, provided by the three major credit bureaus (Transunion, Experian, and Equifax), of all credit accounts you've ever opened: any credit cards, any mortgages, any loans. Your credit report also keeps track of your public records, such as any payments made to collection agencies, and of organizations that have checked your credit score. 

That means, if someone has been using your credit fraudulently, their activity will show up on your report. The first thing I did when I discovered my identity theft was order my credit report, and sure enough, there was the bad card, its $700 charge heading my accounts. The credit report confirmed the theft gave me the information needed to clear my name. 

Each credit bureau (Transunion, Experian, and Equifax) are required by law to supply you with a free copy of your credit report once a year. (You have to pay extra for the credit score.) The only place you should order a copy of your credit report from is this website: annualcreditreport.com. This website is the one recommended by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the government branch that deals with identity theft. Pro tip: When you access the website, be sure you're on a computer connected to a printer. You will download PDFs of your credit report and print them out, and while it's possible for you to save them, it's easier to simply print everything right then.

When you get your credit report, look it over carefully for accounts that you haven't opened. If you find nothing, then Congratulations! Your identity has not been stolen. If you do, well . . . you might want to read the section below on cleaning up after identity theft. 

Protect Yourself: Credit Monitoring Service

If you're particularly worried, consider signing up for a credit-monitoring service. For a fee, such a service provides you with regular access to your credit report, maybe once a month, maybe unlimited. You can Google 'Credit Monitoring Service' to get an idea for what services are out there, as well as read consumer reviews on the various services. 

Of course, checking your credit report is like checking to see whether your front door is closed when you come home from a trip: good to know, but not actually effective in preventing identity theft. Thankfully, there are ways to "lock your door" when it comes to your credit. 

Protect Yourself: Fraud Alerts, Freezing Your Credit

Usually, you will only add a fraud alert to your credit report, or freeze your credit, after you've been the victim of identity theft. However, for a fee you can do both without having ever had your identity stolen, just as a protective measure. 

A fraud alert is like a little flag on your report, which should prompt the credit bureaus and lending agencies to contact you before opening new credit in your name. A freeze prevents agencies which have never had access to your credit score before (for instance, a bank issuing a new credit card, or a bank starting up a mortgage with someone who claims to be you) from gaining access to your credit agency. Neither is completely foolproof; like a lock, they can be picked, but you're safer with them than without them. 

To put a fraud alert on your credit file, you contact each of the three credit bureaus in turn. To freeze your credit, you contact your state attorney's office first and ask whether there is a fee to freeze your credit. Then you contact the three credit bureaus (Protecting your identity, and cleaning up after it, means you spend a lot of time on the phone with our friends, Experian, Equifax, and Transunion.) The FTC has further directions here.

Cleaning Up Identity Theft: Immediate Steps

If you discover identity theft, here are the first things to do:

• Contact all three credit bureaus and place a fraud alert on your accounts. The first fraud alert is good for 90 days; after that, you can get one for 7 years. 
• If you haven't done so already, order an official copy of your credit report. If you are getting a copy through a credit monitoring agency, you'll want to actually contact the bureaus, or go to annualcreditreport.com, and get the real thing. While the monitoring agency report should be accurate, you'll be using your credit report to prove that the fraud occurred, so it needs to be as official as possible. 
• Contact the police and FTC to report the identity theft (more on this below).

If the fraudulent account is still open, contact the moneylenders to get it closed as soon as possible. If it's closed (mine was closed due to non-payment of the bill), you will still need to contact the business. More on this below, in the section on contacting credit bureaus and businesses.

You will also want to keep a journal of sorts, a day-to-day record of whatever progress you make towards cleaning up identity theft.

The FTC lists these three steps, along with other helpful information, here.

Cleaning Up Identity Theft: The Police Report

When my identity was stolen, I filed a police report as a matter of course. It was just one of many things listed on the FTC's "To Do" list, so I ticked it off, and didn't think anything more of it. Turns out, the police report is incredibly important. It's like your passport into the world of "identity theft victim": This is what you'll use to prove, over and over again, that you are in fact the victim of identity theft.  Credit bureaus will ask for it, and the lending agency implicated in the fraud (as in, the agency responsible for the bad card, the bad loan, the bad mortgage, whatever) will ask for it. 

To make my police report, I simply called the local police department, and I set up a time that an officer could come over to my house and take the report (As I remember, it was snowing, and it was easier and safer for the officer to come to my apartment, than for me to go downtown.) You could, however, simply show up in person and make the report. Whichever you choose, it is critical that you get a copy of the police report.

Clearing Up Identity Theft: Report it to the FTC

Like the police report, the identity theft affidavit through the FTC is proof that yes, you really are a victim of identity theft. You will want to make the report as soon as possible, then keep track of the affidavit. Even if you don't have all the information in about the identity theft, go ahead and call the FTC. They can update your affidavit as you go along.

The link to the Identity Theft Report is here.

Clearing Up Identity Theft: Reporting Fraud to the Credit Bureaus, Credit Card Business

Once you have your police report and FTC report, you're ready to report the fraud to the various responsible agencies.

The most important agency for you to report to is the one who issued the card in the first place, the one who is providing financial backing for the cards. Usually this is not Mastercard or Visa, but the bank or lending agency responsible for the card. The one opened in my name, for instance, was opened through a national bank, and so I contacted that bank to report the card as fraudulent. Ask the agency to either close the account, or if it is closed, to clear the fraudulent charges.

Incidentally, the Federal Trade Commission will tell you that the first step is to contact the bureaus. It's not. Once you've set up your fraud alert with the bureaus, contact the agency backing the card. Last spring, I very nearly missed this step because I didn't realize it was important; had I missed it altogether, I would have wound up paying the $700. Once you've contacted that agency, then you can contact the bureaus and report the card as fraudulent.

So, how do you make these contacts? What do you say?

The point of contacting the business and bureaus is to dispute the account and its charges. The FTC offers sample forms to contact the business backing the card, the credit bureaus, and even a collection agency here. I found the forms extremely helpful, and followed them to the T.

Whenever you contact the business or the bureaus, you'll nearly always include several things:

• A copy of your police report and your FTC affidavit (Remember, these are proof that you're really the victim of identity theft)
• Any information on the fraudulent account, such as an account number and the amount of money on the account
• Copies of your credit report, with the fraudulent account highlighted and personal information blacked out
• Whatever documentation you can use to prove that you did not, in fact, open the fraudulent card (such as proof that you regularly pay bills on time, or proof of address if the account was opened in a different state)

You may also be asked to submit proof of identity, including a copy of your driver's license and Social Security card. This is normal.

Before you submit all this paperwork, be sure you call the agency, business or bureau and ask workers to describe exactly what you should turn in. What they want from you varies from place to place. Nearly every place, for instance, was interested in the police report, but some of them didn't feel a need for the FTC affidavit, and not all of them wanted me to prove my identity. When you call, you should ask for the address to send your material to.

Before you mail the paperwork off, make copies of everything that you send. Keep this readily accessible during the whole affair. I eventually purchased a separate file case just to keep track of the identity theft documents.

When you do submit the paperwork, send it return certified registered mail. Yes, this is expensive, but it's also a guaranteed way for you to track the material and make sure that it arrives where it's supposed to. I also encourage you to follow up with your mailings: Call the business or bureau and confirm receipt of your paperwork, then call them again several weeks on to see if they're making progress on your claim. By law they have to process your claim in a certain amount of time, so they should be making some progress.

A final warning: Some credit bureaus will offer an online form for disputing fraudulent accounts and charges. Do not use this form. The form will not allow you to submit paperwork documenting your claim, which means that disputes begun via online form are rarely resolved in your favour. The only way to dispute the charges is by mail.

Cleaning Up Identity Theft: Other Recommended Actions

Whenever you hear back from the business, a bureau, or someone else involved, keep whatever mailing information they send you. You will especially want copies of your extended fraud and security freeze information, as well as any information about the account that they send you.

Especially if your social security number was fraudulently used, you should contact your local social security office to determine the extent of the fraud. For instance, people can sometimes find employment under your social security number and name. Set up an appointment with the social security office, go in, and check on your account. (You will not, incidentally, be able to get a new social security number, even if yours is stolen. That happens very, very rarely. Your goal is to make your Social Security number unprofitable, by setting up fraud alerts and freezing your credit.)

Contact your bank and any investment agencies and explain the situation. Depending on the kind of account, they may be able to freeze your funds, they may put an alert on the account, or they may advise you to close out your current account and open a new one.

You may want to notify the IRS that you suspect identity theft. They cahere.
n then take this information into account when processing your taxes. The form to do so is

 Random Tips and Questions:

The big question is probably, Do I sign up for an identity protection service, or identity theft insurance?

Ultimately, it's up to you, but I chose not to. Here's why. ID theft protection services, such as Life Lock, receive fairly poor ratings from users. More importantly, however, they don't actually do much you can't do yourself, for free. Yes, Life Lock provides you with a copy of your credit score, but you can get your own copy of your credit score. You can put a fraud alert on your own account. Essentially, you're paying to be lazy. See Consumer Reports review of Life Lock here: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2013/06/id-theft-protection-review-lifelock-consumer-reports/index.htm

Second, when you call the large credit bureaus, use the right phone numbers. The numbers listed on the bureaus' website and on the FTC website will get you to a phone tree, not a real person, and you will get lost. The most recent numbers I have for the three bureaus are these:

• Transunion's Fraud Department, 800 - 680 - 7289
• Equifax, 877 - 784 - 2528
• Experian, 877-870-5640

Note that the phone numbers change fairly regularly, so they may no longer work. If not, Google "how to get a real person at Transunion / Equifax / Experian" and the phone numbers should pop up. 

Incidentally, with some major organizations you can ask to be transferred to the American office. Sometimes this will get you out of the Indian office, and sometimes the customer service representative will take offense. But it's worth a try.

An Open Letter on the Eve of Finals

To all my freshmen students:

Tomorrow morning you start your very first round of final exams. Good luck! I hope they go really well - as well as you are hoping, even better than you are expecting.

My first semester in college, I started studying for my tests two weeks in advance. Trust me, I know exactly how stressful finals week is. So now, on the eve of all those big tests, I want to offer you a little encouragement.

First of all, you'll do fine. Have you studied? Showed up at class all semester? Paid attention? Then there's no reason to worry. Worrying can actually make you perform worse. Keep studying, and studying hard, but make wise decisions that are not influenced by your fears about the exam. Don't, for instance, skip a night of sleep to study a little more. Taking an exam on a foggy brain is not a wise move. Don't skip meals because you're nervous or studying too much. Taking an exam on an empty stomach is also not a wise move. You're smart and dedicated students, and you've got this. When final exam time comes, sit down, pull out that scantron, and trust God for the rest.

More importantly, remember this: Your finals are only a very small part of your academic education. Even your grade is only a very small part of your academic education. By "education", I'm not referring to the various life lessons that you learn living in the dorms, pitching in at church or holding down a job. I'm referring to what you actually take away from the course: The letter grade, whether it be an A or a C or even an F, is a poor indicator of what you've learned in any given class. I personally learned more in some of the classes I received a B in than in some of the classes I received an A in: Expository Writing, for instance.

Your final, scary as it seems right now, is not the most important part of the course. The most important part of the class is not the letter on your transcript; it is not the printed red number on the bottom of your scantron; it is not even the litany of facts and dates you may be able to rattle off afterwards. All that will be forgotten.

No, the most important part of the class is how it changes you. Do you think new thoughts? Have you picked up new habits? Found God somewhere unexpected? Do you see Him more clearly? Hopefully, the answer to this is Yes.

Perhaps the most life-changing class I took never had a final exam. I fell in love with my class in Milton, especially with the fiery anti-censorship tract, 'Areopagitica'. Yet days before the end of the semester my senior year, a campus-wide whooping cough epidemic forced administrators to close the school early. Faculty were given a choice between giving a shorter, earlier final exam or simply skipping the final altogether. As I remember, most of my teachers picked the first option, but Dr. S picked the second. She used that final class period to deliver one last lecture on Paradise Lost. This was not, or at least not entirely, out of kindness to the students; Dr. S was one of the hardest graders I ever had. No, her decision was a decision of priorities: Exams are important, but the truths that we learn in class, truths that perhaps cannot even be covered on the exam, are far more important.

I still have my notes from that class. According to my notes, the final books of Paradise Lost hold out, in defiance of Adam's fall, a promise of hope: that "All this good of evil shall produce" - in other words, that whatever errors we commit, Providence shall erase them, and correct the sum. That final class was the story of Redemption, of the foundation we believers have in divine grace. Such truths are, obviously, worth so much more than a grade on an exam.

You may not have a whooping cough epidemic to get you out of exams, but what you do have is this:  the opportunity, in every class you take at Emmaus, to discover such truths for yourself, and to be changed by them. Those of you who take English Composition with me have (hopefully) already made such discoveries: for instance, that all truth is God's truth, that sometimes the deepest truths (even the truth of the Gospel!) are communicated by story. Yesterday at lunch my student A. told me about a discovery she made in her Old Testament class: that Leviticus, despite its reputation for being a dull and legalistic book, was actually shot through with evidence of God's grace and His desire to walk close with His people.

Hold fast to these discoveries. Long after the exam is finished, long after you've forgotten your grade in the course, these truths are the ones that you will remember. These truths are what make your education worthwhile. They guarantee that not only your mind but your soul and spirit are growing as well, that you are being transformed into a thoughtful, Christlike individual.

Study hard for your exams, by all means. That's a good decision. But even more than that, study hard to discover, in every class, more of Truth, and more of Christ.

Good luck tomorrow!

Your teacher