Youth and the Gospel Essay

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Theology -- Youth and Theology

Genuine truth is the focus of Palmer's To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey. Pointing to Jesus as the source of truth, Palmer contrasts truth with society's currently deranged approach to knowledge. The author also discusses a faith-based, holistic, communal, healing approach to education in which the teacher is a lifelong student who creates space in which the teacher and students practice obedience to the whole truth.

What is Truth?

Parker J. Palmer's To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey hinges on Truth; consequently, exploring the author's approach to education logically begins by discussing the meaning of truth. According to Palmer, truth consists of more than facts and reasons (Palmer xxiv). Truth is personal and communal Christian faith focused on "the person who said, 'I am…the truth'" (Palmer 47). It consists of living relationships with Jesus and each other in community (Palmer 49) and it is in these relationships that the truth becomes known.

b. What is the purpose of teaching?

The purpose of teaching is to "form students in the image of truth" (Palmer xxvi). To that end, teaching creates a space in which the teacher and students practice obedience to the whole truth, including our failure to live the truth (Palmer 105-6). In this context, "obedience" means mutual service to the community of truth (Palmer 109), in which we teach ourselves and our students about our connectedness, which is vital to living an ethical life (Palmer xix). This holistic educational method requires that we use both the mind and the heart to "re-member" (Palmer 103): to bring the fragmented portions of truth back together in order to heal ourselves individually and as a community (Palmer 2, 103). Parker's faith-based, holistic, communal, healing approach to education markedly differs from the knowledge that is currently communicated in our society and youth groups.

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c. What is different from the knowledge that is communicated in our society and in our youth groups?

The knowledge that is currently communicated in our society and in our youth groups approaches the universe as a chaotic mess in which we are alienated from Jesus, from our inner selves and from each other, imposing our separate wills in a vain attempt to forge a safe and sane little niche for ourselves (Palmer 4). This distorted view of the universe and our place in it does not accept life as the gift it is; rather, it treats the universe and everything in it as objects that we must dissect and manipulate in order to gain profit and mastery over them (Palmer 2, 107). In this arrogant and opportunistic worldview, truth becomes "whatever works" (Palmer 4) and education becomes a slave to our manipulative, power-hungry economic system (Palmer 107). Victims of this system must resort to objectivism, which attempts to tell the universe what it is, and/or to subjectivism, which listens only to our separate selves (Palmer 67). Palmer rightfully states that this approach distorts….....

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