By: Dr. Chris Hobbs

It’s the last day of February! The month of Valentine’s Day, and as Charles Schultz, creator of Charlie Brown, famously quipped – ‘all you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.’ My wife and I have developed a new dating tradition of jumping in the car after dinner during a busy week, and burying our stress at a local Freddy’s where I have discovered an amazing chocolate milkshake. I LOVE THE CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE AT FREDDY’S. 

‘One of the great sicknesses of contemporary society is the confusion between love and desire. Desire consumes. Love wills the good of another.’ – Dallas Willard

Apparently, I do NOT love that chocolate milkshake. Apparently, I desire it. February brings us a stream of advertisements that promote a vision for love that is more like desire. The aforementioned quote by Dallas Willard includes a subtle definition that was coined by St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas defined God-like love, agape love, as ‘willing the good of another.’ 

Love wills the good of another. Think about all the things you say you ‘love’, and then think about Aquinas’ definition. For me, the list according to that definition thins out quickly. ‘I love being an educator’ might be better replaced with a challenging question. ‘Do I will the good of those I am responsible for as an educator, really?’

Well? Do you? Do you utilize your God-given free will to choose the good for those you are responsible for? How quickly do you begin to choose yourself over those you are responsible for when things become difficult? Or when the people become difficult? I understand that these are polarizing questions to ask educators who are altruistic in their nature. But, these might be the most important of questions to ask since our efforts impact impressionable students, or faculty members who are giving their all for their students. 

As educators, God has given us an awesome responsibility to will the good of others in an industry in which it is uniquely potent to do so. Here are four things to remember so that you can continue the great work of loving – willing the good of- others as an educator. 

Remember WHO started to will the good first 

The most important things about us did not begin with us. C.S. Lewis in, ‘The Four Loves’, declared God the ‘real beginning of love’, and that he loved us into existence so that He could love us. Tim Keller notes that ‘…when you see how much you are loved, your work will become far less selfish.’ Remembering who started to will the good of others makes our work matter more for the benefit of those at our schools. 

Remember WHY He willed the good

God loves us because He has declared that we matter. Our value has been assigned to us by Him. Like a quarter declaring itself to be worth 27 cents, assigning our own worth is futile. Consider this statement from Donovan Graham in Teaching Redemptively. ‘Education that does not recognize the created nature of the learner serves a bad purpose. Any approach to education that fails to consider who is being educated is bound to fall short. To reduce a human being to less than what God created is to thumb our noses at God.’ God willed the good of us because He is the source of love and He created us to be the recipients of that love. C.S. Lewis once quipped, ‘there are no ordinary persons. You have never interacted with a mere mortal.’ Remember that your school building is full of the recipients of the good that He wills. 

Remember that we CAN will the good for others 

A significant part of our significance is our dignity. The dignity of a human is demonstrated in God’s gift of free will. God lets us choose, and any attempt to remove a person’s freedom to choose is to remove their dignity. We maintain our dignity when we use our free will to choose things which honor God. St. Thomas Aquinas’ definition clarifies love as a decision to be made not an emotion to be felt. An educator that decides to will the good for others is an educator that is displaying the fullness of their God-given dignity.

Remember that we MUST will the good for others 

Paul challenged the Corinthians with an athletic analogy when he implored them to run the race of the Christian life to win it. He followed that up with a rhetorical statement. If athletes train themselves to win a temporary crown, how much more important is it that we train ourselves to pursue an eternal crown? There is a lot at stake in the world of education, maybe more than ever. ‘Education must have an impact on the learner or it serves no purpose.’ (Graham, 2009). We cannot forget that we MUST will the good of others in our schools. In the words of Sir Alec Peterson, ‘let us master ourselves so that we can become servants to others.’

Lead on, educators!