I'm who i am because of high school. And so are you.
People with advanced degrees in psychology will argue with me and they will probably win. Nonetheless, i do not recant. I believe that what you experience in high school is much more formative than what you experience as a child. This is because high school is where we line up. It's where we get ourselves organized from best to worst. It's where we establish our expectations for approval in life. We leave high school understanding our place in the world. The irony of it is that we pretend, at some point, that we've left it behind. We have not. We say out of one side of our mouths that "beauty is within" and "attitude is more important than aptitude" even while we continue to rank ourselves according to physical attractiveness, intelligence and athletic prowess. We all still play the game of seeking and bestowing approval.
You'll have to forgive me for feeling sentimental on the day i leave. In general, you must forgive me also for not wearing my new role as missionary with the appropriate amount of disinterest. It's my first time. I'll get over it and shrug about it like everyone else later. For now, suffer my passion.
Here's something that Donald Miller had to say about the approval game in high school in his book Searching for God Knows What:
"The feeling was that if we were last on the social ladder, or near last, we would be facing some kind of torture. Though it sounds absurd, it felt true, as though there were a spirit in the air directing our passions. It was incredibly important to climb this ladder, and the closer you were to the top, it was believed, the easier you could breathe, because at the top people loved you and cared about you and gave you a little bit of the thing God used to give you."
I'm bringing this particular subject up because this social game that we all play makes us ineffective as missionaries; and we are missionaries, all of us, disinterest or no.
In a weird way, Miller is saying two opposing things here. On the one hand, when you seek the approval of others, what you're really seeking is God's approval which is freely given. On the other hand, if you realized how desperately people needed the approval of others, you'd give it freely. Don't seek the approval of men, but when men seek approval from you, give it. Right?
You're like a conduit between God and his lost people. They're desperately looking around for someone to approve of them, just like you were. At some point someone hooked you up to the source, so now you receive approval from God and give it to others, and suddenly, they're being filled up with a divine sort of approval that they could never really get from a person anyway. That's how it's supposed to work.
My point is that we talk alot about loving people of whom we do not approve, and this is absurd. You cannot love someone if you don't approve of them. I need Jesus to give me his heart because he, alone, loves messed up people with full approval. That includes me, as i still distance myself from weirdos, telemarketers and people with mullets, while skillfully ingratiating myself to people who summer in the greenbriar. It's in my blood. I can't help it.
I'm who I am because of high school. And so are you.
People with advanced degrees in psychology will argue with me and they will probably win. Nonetheless, i do not recant. I believe that what you experience in high school is much more formative than what you experience as a child. This is because high school is where we line up. It's where we get ourselves organized from best to worst. It's where we establish our expectations for approval in life. We leave high school understanding our place in the world. The irony of it is that we pretend, at some point, that we've left it behind. We have not. We say out of one side of our mouths that "beauty is within" and "attitude is more important than aptitude" even while we continue to rank ourselves according to physical attractiveness, intelligence and athletic prowess. We all still play the game of seeking and bestowing approval.
You'll have to forgive me for feeling sentimental on the day i leave. In general, you must forgive me also for not wearing my new role as missionary with the appropriate amount of disinterest. It's my first time. I'll get over it and shrug about it like everyone else later. For now, suffer my passion.
Here's something that Donald Miller had to say about the approval game in high school in his book Searching for God Knows What:
"The feeling was that if we were last on the social ladder, or near last, we would be facing some kind of torture. Though it sounds absurd, it felt true, as though there were a spirit in the air directing our passions. It was incredibly important to climb this ladder, and the closer you were to the top, it was believed, the easier you could breathe, because at the top people loved you and cared about you and gave you a little bit of the thing God used to give you."
I'm bringing this particular subject up because this social game that we all play makes us ineffective as missionaries; and we are missionaries, all of us, disinterest or no.
In a weird way, Miller is saying two opposing things here. On the one hand, when you seek the approval of others, what you're really seeking is God's approval which is freely given. On the other hand, if you realized how desperately people needed the approval of others, you'd give it freely. Don't seek the approval of men, but when men seek approval from you, give it. Right?
You're like a conduit between God and his lost people. They're desperately looking around for someone to approve of them, just like you were. At some point someone hooked you up to the source, so now you receive approval from God and give it to others, and suddenly, they're being filled up with a divine sort of approval that they could never really get from a person anyway. That's how it's supposed to work.
My point is that we talk alot about loving people of whom we do not approve, and this is absurd. You cannot love someone if you don't approve of them. I need Jesus to give me his heart because he, alone, loves messed up people with full approval. That includes me, as i still distance myself from weirdos, telemarketers and people with mullets, while skillfully ingratiating myself to people who summer in the greenbriar. It's in my blood. I can't help it.
I'm who I am because of high school. And so are you.
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