The Value of Life

Imagine a world where the inherent value of an object has no intrinsic worth, no price tag, and means nothing other than its own merits to an individual. A world where money has no application and becomes useful merely for momentary satisfaction including the sound of coins falling with the result being a soda coming from the machine. A world where the appeal for materials is based primarily on preference without regard of quality, history, potential, supply, or demand. A world without greed for more, or envy for those who have, or conversely without pity for those without, and no acknowledgment of rich or poor, a world of equality, and a world without judgment.

This is the world of Joel Tucker, autistic since birth. He does not understand money. Oh, he understands the price tag on an item and he can add up the dollars and cents, and he knows that it takes money to buy things at the store. He also knows that Mom and Dad discuss money and often seem concerned about it, but in the end, he doesn't know why some things require more than others. An RC cola out of the machine requires 3 quarters that make a fun sound when fed into the machine, whereas a tie at the store needs paper money or Dad's little plastic card in his wallet. On any given day, Joel would like a new suit or a pipe organ in the house or a bag of chips with hot sauce. Purchasing shoes for $5 at a corner sale has the same meaning as a new pair from Macy's. He can accept that we have told him that a pipe organ is not an option for our home but it does not change his desire for one. Yet his wanting one is not a covetous obsession but is rather an idea of a given moment similar to his desire for a cola or new shoes.

The need for more money is a motivating incentive for hard work in our society and indirectly affects supply and demand, which then creates an economic culture that pervades our footsteps and our actions. Without a sense of labor and free trade, we fall into the futuristic and flawed Utopian Brave New World of total equality and peace devoid of the human elements needed for growth and improvement. Ironically those very elements are what lead to both happiness and misery in our world. If our happiness and joy is based upon money which leads to greater acquisition of wealth, then we fall into an extrinsic desire for more. In that marvelous book by Aldous Huxley, those rare moments of dissatisfaction and confusion require a "soma" to reach a drug-induced state of happiness and false euphoria. When joy is derived from material objects, the inevitable result is an emptiness from never having enough.

Supply and demand is a result of the inner need to improve, a drive to succeed, a necessity for affirmation, an intrinsic need for self-actualization, a desperate requirement to be important and to acquire more things. It seems to be human nature to want more toys for Christmas, and we want the best most expensive toys (never mind, that children tend to play with the boxes more than the actual item!). And yet, before falling into a diatribe on society's materialism, it is the inner drive and human spirit that has created cities, technology, and progresses forward to greater heights of creativity. Personal ambition, dedication to labor and self improvement leads directly to an acknowledgment of the value of objects and the ability to make judgments of worth.

To return to Joel's world, a world without knowledge of money and the value of objects can and does result in a lack of ambition for wealth and acquisition. This makes Joel's world rather bland by our standards and oddly confusing. The new Lexus that drives by is simply a vehicle, not to be admired more than an old Chevrolet. With clothes, food, and shelter, and a piano or organ, Joel is happy. He does not seek out ways to improve and is not able to pass judgment on the quality of any given material. He does not experience envy, greed, or drive to be the best. He is comfortable in his skin and does not approach life seeking to place value on the things around him. He simply accepts, unconditionally, that all things are equal and only desires the basic necessities of his world. His is not a world of external values, values artificially placed by human beings as they manipulate the economic system, he values lives around him. Rather than place a monetary value on all he sees, he instead values people and life.

Try taking a day to see the world through the eyes of the egalitarian Joel. All becomes tinted, all becomes equal, and, most importantly, all becomes beautiful.

Faith in the Classroom

Applying faith in an academic setting should be both intentional and natural, as an outgrowth of one's world view and Christian practice. Much has been written about faith and discipline for college teachers but ultimately the question is a philosophical one with pragmatic application, worthy to discuss and worthy to embrace. Should we incorporate and even embed our faith in our teaching to our students? What do we gain with this approach or what do we lose? Can it be done easily or will the process become stilted, prescribed, and contrived. How do we, as college professors, avoid such pitfalls?

In reality we are discussing the integration and melding of two distinctly different but beautiful concepts--knowledge and faith. Of course, the objective is to make the two as one, unified ideals that operate independently and congruently. Let's use music as way to demonstrate the application of this goal.

The word monophony or monody refers to one sound or one musical line, namely the melody. In early music, the idea of singing in harmony with more than one sound was both unknown and even religiously rejected on the grounds that a service should have unity as one of its intentional outcomes. Singing in harmony or in polyphony (many sounds) acknowledges people's differences as they seek to worship the one Lord God Almighty. There are theologians, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and churches today that insist on singing in unison with the idea that harmony and musical division does not lend itself to unified worship. Yet, if one subscribes to the idea that music is one of God's greatest gifts, and that human expression through music can be rich and unbounded, and that harmony and polyphony add layers of creative beauty to music, and that God is the author and perfecter of faith, then it stands to reason that the ultimate expression of music is that which achieves the sublime and synthesizes many sounds into one.

So let's return to the idea of applying one's faith to the classroom. There is little doubt that adherence to the needs of the discipline and the requisite knowledge must be imparted consistently and well in order to meet the expected learning outcomes of a particular subject. All teachers are aware of the necessary goals required for claiming expertise in a given topic. If, for example, the history teacher does not present and demand exact historical information, with precision and awareness of both micro and macro history, the subject and the clientèle then are not being treated with the academic respect the integrity of the subject deserves. Since integrity of truth is supreme, teaching then must be the process of imparting accurate and complete information.

But is this really enough, and does it tell the whole story? If this were the complete truth, there would be little need for teachers since most of the world's information, particularly on any one subject, can be found in print among the thousands of publications currently available. A teacher, however, does more than present facts to students who then ingest them and regurgitate them for assessment. In fact, a teacher does more than teach the facts, a teacher inevitably teaches the topic through the lens of himself or herself. A good teacher cannot help but emanate his personality, values, integrity, philosophy, emotions, and life experiences in his commitment to excellence. To ask a teacher to teach objectively, extracting all biases and emotions from the topic, is to ask a teacher to be an automaton devoid of the very essence of what education is all about.

Back to music. Many consider the greatest music to contain melody, harmony, and rhythm (see earlier blog entries for discussions of sound and the meaning of music). A lesson without faith can be likened to monophony, certainly worthy and meaningful, but not multi-dimensioned. The application of faith in a lesson is polyphonic in essence and harmonious in content. One's faith and one's world view comes through naturally and holistically in the classroom regardless of the subject matter. It is not and should not be interjected abruptly, prescriptively, nor contrived in any sense; but rather, is simply a part of who the teacher is both specifically and comprehensively. To take the faith part out is to make the music, the classroom, the institution, and the experience less than its intention and certainly less than its potential.