Lessons from a science room door

We had the most interesting day yesterday – five PGCE student teachers and I – visiting the Design Technology and Engineering facilities at Highgate School. Alongside soldering PCBs and programming Vex robots and Microbits, we were shown around the beautiful junior school by the hyper-enthusiastic Adam, and it was there I came across this sign on a number of doors: do not enter without a teacher.

It is, obviously, a safety notice to children not to trespass in science labs and art rooms.

But it’s a good way of thinking about a rule for life. Don’t embark on anything without a teacher. Don’t imagine that your wisdom will be sufficient to live a useful and wise life. Rely on the wisdom of those who through hard work, prayer and considered patient thought, model a way to live. Don’t imagine you can take risks without consulting those who have walked that way before. Don’t go without a guide.

Trust in the Lord, said the writer of Proverbs, with all your heart. Don’t lean on your own understanding. And certainly don’t lean on your emotions. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths. This is good advice, and I have proved it, over and over again, however imperfectly.

Two days ago I was in conversation with a lovely friend, and we got talking about choice and the Equality Act (2010), which defined the concept of protected characteristics. I was making the point that some aspects of our identity – ethnicity and sex particularly – are different from other protected characteristics in the degree of choice we have to modify them. Obviously there are degrees to this, but changing religion, sexual behaviour, and gender involve severe degrees of choice in a way that ethnicity, disability and biological sex do not, or cannot. Certain things about us are more fixed than others. Some are subject to choice, others are not, or at least not without doing great damage to ourselves. I have another great friend, raised Muslim, now happily atheist while he figures out how to live life. Hard to do, especially in a strongly observance-focused faith like Islam, but surely possible. This is a huge problem with the Equality Act (2010) by the way, but that is not the point of this post.

I should be able to be criticised as a Christian as I chose that identity. In fact, I can expect it. If I don’t get flak for being Christian, I am not doing it properly. Is it right I am discriminated against for being a Christian? Probably not, but it’s inevitable anyway.

The heart of the conversation with my friend, was that as a Christian, those identity choices that are left to me need to be done with my teacher as a guide and reference point. And that means asking Jesus about how he would act, think and speak if he was living my life instead of me. I may not like the answer, I may not even do what he is telling me (Christians excel, unfortunately, at disobedience), but considering that question before any decision I make has to be done, if I live in the hope of the resurrection and his eagerly anticipated return. We accept his yoke, and walk with him.

Do not enter without a teacher!