My Arguments Bounced Off of Her Like Tigger on Red Bull

A few years ago, I had the joy of serving a group of pre-teens and teens in a Geography class. Not being a geography expert (understatement of the year and a fact that I made quite clear to the parents and students when they asked me to serve), I was happy to walk with the students through their Geography textbook as they memorized vocabulary words and definitions and took their tests and quizzes. But, as I told them, I was never going to remember the name of every ocean / river / lake or the capital of every country / province / state, etc. because:

A) I don’t have the time to memorize all of those details; and
B) I don’t really care.

I know that I can look up facts and figures when I need to know them and I’m very happy to be a 40-something stay at home mother rather than a junior high student.

That being said, I did have big ol’ goals for our class—goals that went far beyond memorizing the capitals of countries only long enough to pass a test:

1. I opened each class by having one student read from Operation World and then lead us in prayer so that we can always remember that history is His-story and geography is NOT just about memorizing facts and figures. We learned about religions in other countries and how temperature, land masses, population growth, etc. etc. affect real people because we want to live our lives for the glory of God and the love of our neighbors; even if our neighbors are thousands of miles away.

2. I wanted to help my young friends to learn how to THINK. I prayed that by the end of the year, they will have even an introductory understanding of logic and thus be able to both identify and avoid some common logical fallacies.

3. By the end of our time together, I hoped that my students would agree with my conviction that citations to Wikipedia are not acceptable for any report or presentation they would ever do that they wanted to be trusted and well-received.

4. I prayed that I might be even a tiny encouragement in their young lives to know that truth exists and is knowable and (to quote Kevin DeYoung), there are “reasons for reason” and “one of the first tasks of evangelism today is to reintroduce the law of non-contradiction.”

Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.

Oh, how I pray that the young people I serve will have sweet compassion, jaw-dropping patience, and not a scintilla of fear when they encounter people making faulty arguments (or no arguments at all) about the most important things in life! When our arguments bounce off of people “like Tigger on Red Bull” (to use Kevin DeYoung’s turn of phrase), we can be gracious and calm, unmoved and unruffled.

My favorite Bible memory verse on this topic?

“And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.” 2 Timothy 2:24-26

SDG,
Tara B.