Christ Sings in Every Subject

We tend to study what delights us. When a delicious new flavor hits our taste buds, we ask for the secret ingredient. When a new athlete delivers an outstanding performance in a sport we love, we want to know the stats. When we enjoy a conversation with someone new, we press in to learn their story. Delight leads us to deeper study.

The psalmist expresses this clearly in Psalm 111:2 when he declares, “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.” Those who delight in God’s many works of creation and redemption channel their delight into deeper study. If it is true that delight leads to study, then we should expect that, with worthy objects, further study leads to greater delight. We can describe this as a positive flywheel — like a potter’s wheel or wind-up toy car — that directs the energy of delight into study, which builds momentum leading to even greater delight. This positive flywheel is at the heart of lifelong learning, serving as an engine for our joy that energizes our love for God and neighbor. True education aims not merely at acquiring information or skills but at forming our souls’ capacities for lasting joy.

Given this purpose, how can a teacher guide his students toward delight in learning? And how might a teacher maintain his own delight when repeatedly teaching a subject he has already studied?

Teaching for the Student’s Joy

Most people have experienced a boring classroom. The learning is lifeless. The study is all drudgery and no delight. Student and teacher alike count the minutes until class is over. Whatever the cause — whether teacher or student, content or context — learning in this mode will not last. External motivators like grades for the student or a paycheck for the teacher may keep the classroom functioning, but learning stops when the last grade is posted. Without the joy of encountering something good, true, and beautiful, learning does not last. What can be done?

“Learning that leads to joy will last far longer than the hour in the classroom.”

The Latin root for education means “to lead forth,” which is precisely the job of the teacher. Good teachers lead their students to see what is honorable and lovely about their subject. But for the student to value what he studies, he needs more than information; his loves must be formed. Teachers must train him to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8), instruct him in how to “abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9), and encourage him to “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis describes how education requires training in what Augustine called ordo amoris, or rightly ordered love:

St. Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind and degree of love which is appropriate to it. . . . [The student] will not at first have the right responses. [He] must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likable, disgusting, and hateful. (17)

Genuine learning leads us to love what is worth loving, and to teach for a student’s joy is to cultivate his loves. Students need teachers to lead them; we all need models for right loving. When students watch their English teacher exult over John Donne, they see a model for loving poetry. When they witness their music teacher awed by Beethoven, they’re drawn to the beauty of symphonies. The teacher’s joy in his subject invites the student to join him in delight. Learning that leads to joy will last far longer than the hour in the classroom. When teachers skillfully introduce the treasures of their discipline, they cultivate the taste buds of their students’ souls.

Reviving Our Joy as Teachers

But as teachers, what can we do when our own joy in the subject fades through familiarity? Boredom in the classroom may reflect misdirected loves in the student, but sometimes the teacher has lost his passion for the subject.

The labor of teaching, of course, is no easy task. Teachers must know their subject and learn principles for good pedagogy, often by trial and error. They also must know their students and learn the best ways to lead each individual, which is a fresh challenge with every new class. But even when a teacher knows his stuff and knows his students, he may still struggle to teach with delight.

In a letter titled Instructing Beginners in Faith, Augustine names a challenge every seasoned teacher has experienced: the difficulty of teaching cheerfully when “constantly rehearsing familiar phrases” or themes for each new group of students (45). We can lose our original joy in a truth when we rehearse that truth for others. How do we maintain our joy when we already know the literary text or philosophical paradox or mathematical theorem so well that we could recite the truth without reencountering it ourselves?

“All learning done for our joy overflows in love for God and neighbor.”

Augustine guides us to shift our attention from what we are teaching to whom we are teaching. When our subject no longer excites us, he says, we must draw near to the student with love. When we teach from love, we develop compassion for the student before us — just as Jesus modeled when teaching the crowds (Mark 6:34). This compassion transforms teacher and student alike. “This feeling of compassion is so strong that, when our listeners are touched by us as we speak and we are touched by them as they learn, each of us comes to dwell in the other, and so they, as it were, speak in us what they hear, while we in some way learn in them what we teach” (45). The labor of teaching and learning is a shared enterprise. Our teaching affects (“touches”) the students, and their learning affects (“touches”) us, the teachers. The compassion of the teacher launches both parties into the shared joy of learning.

How exactly do teachers “learn in [the student] what we teach”? Don’t we already know what we teach? Augustine unpacks his surprising claim with an analogy. When we show a friend a beautiful yet familiar sight, we see that sight afresh through the eyes of our friend (46). For me, growing up across the bay from San Francisco, the sight of the Golden Gate Bridge became so familiar that I might overlook its gleam even on a sunny day. Yet, when college friends visited from the Midwest, I reencountered the majesty and wonder of seeing that bridge at sunset from the East Bay. Augustine describes this well when he says, “Our own enjoyment [of familiar sights] is revived by sharing in the enjoyment that others derive from seeing them for the first time” (46).

In our teaching, we have the distinct privilege of reviving our joy in familiar truths through the delight of our students encountering them for the first time. The familiar becomes fresh when we see through their eyes. The student’s joy can pull the teacher back into the positive flywheel of delight — and in the best circumstances, redirect our eyes to the source of all joy.

Learning That Leads to Loving

Learning cannot end with the student’s or the teacher’s joy. When we delight and study, we cannot help but invite others into what has produced joy in us. All learning done for our joy overflows in love for God and neighbor — because all genuine learning ultimately leads us to God. And finding our joy in God compels us to invite others to know and be satisfied in him. There is no greater act of love than inviting brothers, friends, neighbors, and even strangers to find their joy in God.

All genuine learning, then, leads outward in love. As we delight in our studies and study what delights us, we would be wise to look for ways to deepen both our delight and our study of God and his works so as to energize our love for God and neighbor. Jesus invites us to come and see (John 1:39) — to learn from him — so that we might find fullness of joy when we draw near to him (John 15:11). Come learn of Christ so that you might love Christ.