Awakening 2

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5. In the middle school years, the brain reaches a point of new development. I attribute the crazy behavior of middle schoolers to these brain developments. Abstract reasoning develops. Children are able to think in ways they haven't thought before. They have more strength than they had before. Their ability to exercise their own wills seems to reach new heights.

I suspect that middle schoolers sometimes think that, because they are having a thought for the first time, they assume no one else has ever had that thought. They assume their parents have never experienced what they are experiencing. They assume their parents don't know anything and have never learned what they are realizing and learning for the first time.

I have thought of this with cheating. A middle or high schooler (or even college student) might think, "I'm going to cheat in x way and the teacher/professor won't know the difference." Now sometimes a person might get by with it. But often a person gets caught, the thought not occurring to them that the same tricks have probably been tried on the teacher a thousand times by previous students... who also thought they were having the same bright idea for the first time.

I have found this with plagiarism even among adult students. If I might be frank, a professor usually notices if a paper suddenly starts sounding way more intelligent than the student's papers normally do. A beginner at a subject may think they know more or have greater insight than they do. An actual expert can spot the blind spots immediately. (Of course I shake my head at what I consider the blind spots of many scholars too, and I'm sure I have them.)

So when a paper from a student who does not typically have great insight suddenly becomes profound, a professor starts searching around to see if the student has stolen material from some other source. All it usually takes is a Google search. I can't tell you how often a poor thinker gets caught at plagiarism because their paper suddenly becomes uncharacteristically good. This reflects a lack of self-awareness on the part of the student.

This dynamic is true on every level. We often do not realize when our thoughts are defective. A more experienced or more insightful person can see it, but we often can't. This is always the case with God, who patiently endures our embarrassing yet arrogant ignorance.

6. Unfortunately, the middle schooler these days may be right that their parent doesn't know anything. A vast number of adults seem to be children with a bank account. They have not matured beyond their high school days. They just got old enough to have the freedom to do whatever they want with the money they have. No one is grading their papers, but they are still getting Ds without knowing it.

Many adults have forgotten what it was like to grow up and so simply repeat the mistakes of their parents. You occasionally come across a parent in a public store talking to a child as if the child is developmentally old enough to have a clue what the parent is saying. To the child it must amount to something like, "Blah, blah, blah, smack." Even pastors sometimes over-theologize the actions of young children and see carnal intent at resistance to a parent's will.

One of the most insightful classes I took in college was developmental psychology in May term at Southern Wesleyan with Hal Robbins. The brain develops. The way many Christian parents engage two year olds and the way they overlay it theologically with thought of sinful natures more likely reveals their own ignorance and parental inadequacies than the theological state of the child. It actually can become a self-fulfilling prophecy as they create wrathful children on the basis of their own lack of understanding. And they do it in the name of Christ.

7. So middle school is often rough. My year of substitute teaching (1996-1997) was a rough year as I mostly found myself in middle schools in south Florida. If you're a bully, middle school often goes fine. I still remember the names of the two middle school boys who, one Halloween night, forcibly extracted my candy and mask from me.

As I said, I did not particularly distinguish myself in elementary school. I got all good grades but I wasn't put with the gifted kids in the transition to middle school. My mother used to say that she was glad I didn't have that pressure. One of the brightest of my classmates burned out in early high school.

So they put me in the ordinary math class in the sixth grade. I had perfect scores. I also seem to remember some kid behind me using my ears as motorcycle handles from time to time. I seem to remember a lot of ear flicking in those days. Lunch often involved toe stomping contests amongst friends.

We came to a point of decision at the end of the first quarter. The math teacher thought I should be in the advanced math track. We came to a point of decision. I didn't want to move. I wanted the status quo. We fear change. But I wouldn't be on track for honors courses in high school if I didn't change ships now.

It was a hard decision for my mother, but they switched me. It was an important fork that completely changed my future. I got a few Fs initially, and then resumed As. Then it was pre-algebra in the seventh grade, algebra 1 in the eighth, geometry in the ninth, algebra 2 in the tenth, trig and analytic geometry in the eleventh, and calculus in the twelfth.

8. I believe it was during middle school that I was first exposed to scientific creationism. At some point Henry Morris would come to Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church for a creation-evolution debate. I was excited by the subject, disappointed by him. I felt he spent more time quoting people than actually presenting evidence.

I was being formed by both fundamentalism and the public schools to think like a scientist. Interestingly, creationism claimed to play on the same playing field as modern science. That is to say, it accepted the rules of scientific investigation but argued that science pointed to creationism. Josh McDowell would soon take the same approach to apologetics--Evidence That Demands a Verdict.

These days were long before I was exposed to Karl Barth or neo-orthodoxy, which rejected evidence or argument as a basis for faith. My faith-formation assumed the central role of evidence, logic, and the scientific method. Morris and McDowell argued that the evidence, following the normal rules of inductive and deductive reasoning, compelled faith. This was also the approach of C. S. Lewis, who wrote books like Mere Christianity with arguments for God.

I have retained this epistemology despite my exposure to Barth and then later post-liberalism. I do not believe that the evidence demands the verdict of faith, but I believe that faith is reasonable. I believe that, in general, we should follow the evidence to its most likely conclusion. In fact, I believe that evangelical Christianity, because it has so often taken contrarian positions counter to solid expert positions (often without expertise itself) has not only discredit its claims to be interested in truth but it has made evangelicals highly susceptible to charlatans selling conspiracy theories.

I remember in Mr. Nelson's eighth grade science class coming up with what I thought was a clever argument. [1] I remember thinking, "Wow, that's a really smart thought." It was like the first time I thought I had a really clever thought on my own.

The thought was, "If humans evolved from apes, why do we still have apes?" The classmate I was arguing with got the teacher's attention. "Mr. Nelson..." He responded in a pastoral tone. "Well, evolution doesn't really argue that we evolved from apes but that both apes and humans evolved from a common ape-like ancestor." My first clever thought turned out not to be very clever at all.

It was also in eighth grade science that I learned from the girl next to me the Rapper's Delight--"I said a hip, hop, the hippie to the hippie, the hip hip a hop and you don't stop a rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie the beat."

There was no secular music really in my home. My dad listened to country gospel (the Saturday evening radio show was called "God's Country" on Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church radio). The only secular music I really knew I heard in elevators and public spaces. We did not think positively of the Beatles (John Lennon's murder was not consequential in my home, nor the death of Elvis).

I remember the whole backward masking hype over Stairway to Heaven. Living in the shadow of Dr. D. James Kennedy's church, my teens were spent at one of the centers of the culture wars and the forging of the Moral Majority. I grew up in the shadow of the rising abortion movement, anti-globalism, scientific creationism, and fundamentalist apologetics.

9. I had shop, home ec, and art in middle school. In shop I learned how to use a band saw, how to sand things, what the basic tools were. In home economics I learned to sow and made an apron. In art I made a clay rhinoceros (and its baby) that I only threw out finally in our move to New York.

The art room, as I recall, had a dark room that was really neat. You went into a chamber whose door was cylindrical. You turned it to get in and it did not let any light into the dark room because by the time you could rotate the opening around there was no longer any opening to the classroom. I must have developed a picture in there, although I don't remember what of.

10. I had not participated in any of the summer teen camps of the Florida District. At twelve years old (1979), I finally did. My next street over friend Steve Corso went as well. My brother-in-law Dennis Waymire was in charge of the camp, which made it a more comfortable experience for a painfully shy boy.

I remember being alone. I was often alone. There were people around me. They were in groups talking to each other. A girl I had a crush on from my home church was there, with her boyfriend from my home church. I remember the last night. It seemed everyone was having fun with their groups. I was alone.

These days, I'm pretty good with alone. I am rarely alone. I have a wife and family. But I no longer have a problem with alone. In fact, it has been a little funny in the past when someone will find me sitting reading or writing at a restaurant by myself and feel the need to invite me to sit with them or feel like they need to join me. I am good with alone.

The last night of that camp was one of the more unique experiences of my life. The final worship service was interrupted because one of the teens was behaving strangely. The leaders of the camp, including my brother-in-law, were called to help. We were all told to pray.

The word that came back to us that the young man was demon-possessed. For example, he had shown an unusual strength to resist several men. He was particularly resistant to prayer. I would hear later that a doctor had also suggested that what was happening was not an ordinary mental event. I will not draw a conclusion on what was really going on, but it certainly was a memorable event!

11. That was also the summer we went to the Philippines to visit my sister Juanita. It was my first time out of the country. I was impressed by the squatter's huts and the missionary compound. The missionaries in residence were the Meeks and the Turners. We went up to the Bible school at Rosales--I remember how in just a couple days a creek went from something I could step over to a river you wouldn't want to try to cross. We went up to another Bible college at Sinipsip, where I believe it was mildly snowing because of the elevation.

By the way, the only time it snowed in Fort Lauderdale was 1974. I was in the second grade. We all went outside from class to see it.

We also traveled west to the China Sea. I remember the discomfort of peeing into a hole in the ground. Then I slipped and got a little poop on my three piece suit. I think it was a creamy green suit.

I remember talking about how culturally insensitive some visitors from the States were. They expected the standards of living that we have here. Some expected to be served, perhaps not even realizing that they looked down on the people as inferior. It's a kind of ignorant soft prejudice. You poor people. We have come to help you, in our greatness and benevolence.

This is, by the way, a danger of short term missions trips. First, Americans sometimes think that they are superior and are the great benefactors. Second, they have no real sense of what a burden they can be to the people they visit, how unreasonable their expectations can be. In the meantime, the people probably understand their visitors better in some ways than those visitors understand themselves. Issues of race are the same today--majority culture often is ignorant of its own ignorance although it is overwhelmingly obvious to the minority culture in its midst.

That trip was probably the beginning of an understanding of how culture works, and it set me up well for a life of travel and living abroad.

[1] I had Mr. Nelson in the sixth grade as well. I remember feeling grown up in the sixth grade when we changed classes every hour, as opposed to being with the same teacher in the same classroom most of the day.