Teaching kids to “see layers of God’s creation they couldn’t see before”
How to calculate your compensation beyond what you get paid, how life-giving it can be to simply stop being surprised by thorns and thistles, and why you need more “Himalaya Boundaries” in your calendar to protect your family and rest.
Links Mentioned:
[0:00:05.4] JR: Hey friend, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast, I’m Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians, those of us who aren’t pastors or religious professionals but who work as video game designers, security guards, and program directors? That’s the question we explore every week, and today, I’m posing it to Dave Stuart Jr. He is a high school teacher in Michigan and a super popular blogger, whose content about teaching is read by teachers all around the world.
Dave and I sat down and had one of my favorite conversations we’ve had on this podcast in a while. We talked about how to calculate your compensation beyond what you’re getting paid. We talked about how life giving it could be to simply stop being surprised, that work is hard and difficult, and we talked about why you and I need more Himalaya boundaries in our calendar to protect our family, our rest, and most importantly, our time with the Lord. Do not miss this episode with my new friend, Dave Stuart Jr.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:10.5] JR: Hey, Dave, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.
[0:01:12.7] DS: Jordan, good to see you, thanks for having me.
[0:01:14.9] JR: I love that you’re actually in the classroom, so on brand, there are fluorescent lights above your head, I see a giant map on the wall. What do you teach, by the way? I can’t – my team briefed me everything about you.
[0:01:26.0] DS: Good question.
[0:01:27.1] JR: I don't know what you teach.
[0:01:28.1] DS: I teach world history exclusively for the past couple of years, but I’ve also taught English a number of years. High school.
[0:01:35.1] JR: How long have you been teaching high school?
[0:01:36.5] DS: 18 years, yeah.
[0:01:37.6] JR: What’s your favorite lesson to teach in world history?
[0:01:41.3] DS: Oh dude, that is a – we’re starting right out of the gate here.
[0:01:43.6] JR: Come on.
[0:01:44.6] DS: I just love any lesson where I can kind of like, take a preconception and just sort of disrupt it.
[0:01:49.0] JR: Disrupt something for me right now, we got time, this is fun, come on.
[0:01:51.9] DS: I mean, we’re studying World War Two right now. Classic, like, bad versus evil story, and it’s just interesting to look at, you know, the types of things that happened all over the place during World War Two and how the violence sort of steadily ramped up and we like to, you know, students will say, “That’s kind of like, you know, when you’re with a sibling and you’re arguing and like, all of a sudden, it kind of escalates.”
And you know, it’s a very similar dynamic in World War Two. So, it ends up being this horrible, you know, just instance of bloodshed, the worst in human history. I mean, kind of everyone leaves with blood on their hands. So, it’s not a super inspiring topic.
[0:02:29.9] JR: Super fun topic.
[0:02:31.0] DS: But you know, what I like to tell the students today is that history does invite us to examine evil, to like, examine things that are hard and difficult, and of course, to examine good, which is really important stuff, and I think timeless stuff that engages students.
[0:02:45.1] JR: Yeah, that’s exactly right, I love it. Hey, so in addition to teaching high school, you’re also a pretty prolific blogger. Tell us a little bit about what you write and blog about.
[0:02:53.6] DS: I write about the work of teaching, the inner work of teaching, boiling teaching down into its fundamental pieces. I was the classic teacher in the start of my career that wanted to be like the people in the movies, wanted to be the guy, the one teacher in the movie that cares about the kids.
[0:03:11.2] JR: You want to be Mr. Holland.
[0:03:13.1] DS: Yeah, right-right, Mr. Holland, Erin Gruwell in the movie Freedom Writers, and it actually burnt me out. It took me away from teaching, and I quit for a year. My wife and I lived in New York City. Thankfully, I went to Tim Keller’s church, Redeemer Presbyterian, and it was enough to kind of like, this faith work theme that you write and touch on in your work, it kind of is what drew me back.
But, I knew, when I came back that I couldn’t do it in that like, workaholic, 90 hours a week way, and so, one of the ways that I taught myself to simplify my practice and make it a more humane experience for me, and I’ve found a much more humane experience for my students, is to write about it. Writing just has this magical byproduct of clarity, it will produce clarity. It’s not easily won, you know, it’s difficult.
It’s very humiliating at times because you’re just faced with the lack of what you know and understand, but you know, it’s a reliable means to gain clarity and to simplify things. So, I’ve been writing for teachers for – well, since 2012. So, about 13 years, and I’ve written a couple of books and things like that, and that kind of gives me good balance in my work, Jordan, because I get to be with high schoolers working with them on a day-to-day.
But then, I also get to be with colleagues and educators just all over the place periodically, and it just helps me to root myself in sort of the – you know, there’s like a – there’s a lot that we have in common in all these different places where we live and work that nourishes my soul routinely, going and speaking to other teachers.
[0:04:41.8] JR: It’s good. Writing is seen as an avocation for most people. I think it should be a core of most people’s vocation who want to get great at what they do, right? Like, because it forces you to, as you said, get clarity and get clear on how you do the thing that God has called you to do.
[0:04:59.4] DS: Yeah, it’s a phenomenal gift that God gave us, the capability of using, and of course, it requires an education to use it. So, it’s one of the privileges that education provides us with, and especially in a world that’s so unreal, I think a lot of times, like, there’s such this thing like, ephemeral nature to the world that we live in, and it’s just like, all these little things flashing in front of our screens.
Like, you get out a piece of paper and like, even keep a prayer journal. That’s not something that I’ve done until the last six months, but gosh, it is a good feeling to just hold this physical object in my hands on a daily basis and just look and say, “Oh yeah. You know, I am conversing with the Lord and we’re working things out as we go.” And you know, I start to understand the psalmist’s messy psalms a lot more when I write out my prayers because they’re very messy a lot of times.
[0:05:49.1] JR: Yeah, if David had ChatGPT, we wouldn’t have nearly the raw prayers that we have. Thank God he didn’t.
[0:05:55.2] DS: Right, right. I agree, and I think that you know, this is something that my work will continue to lean hard into, and even this year with my students, I’m going to have to really speak into, and teach into, and give them experiences with writing that prove to them that like, the thing that writing gives you is not the final product primarily. Primarily, what it gives you is the transformation that will reliably occur in the human mind through doing the writing.
[0:06:20.2] JR: That’s good, man.
[0:06:21.1] DS: So, you know, imagine a ninth grader in small town Michigan who wants to be a welder, and the teacher is saying for the 60th day in a row like, “Okay, we’re going to begin class with 10 minutes of writing, here are some prompts.” You know, some days, he’s like, “No, absolutely not, give me your best shot, Mr. Stuart, not going to happen.” But then, you know, you do these other things that teachers can do to just cultivate the will to work, and eventually, the student realizes what you feel like.
Given 10 minutes, you can produce 200 words, whereas before, you were stuck at 10. So, it’s an incredible and very accessible tool, provided, though, that we properly value it. A lot of my work is about helping people to students to value what we do in education because it’s hard to do, it’s hard for them to do.
[0:07:06.3] JR: For sure. Man, I tell you what, the little I read on your blog, I could tell how much you love teaching. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone speak more beautifully about this craft. In our reinterview, actually, this video you submitted, you said that, “Teaching is about making students citizens of different disciplines, helping them see layers of God’s creation they couldn’t see before.” That’s not bad, Dave Stuart, that’s not bad at all. Tell us more, riff on this for a little bit. Tell us a little bit more about what you mean by that.
[0:07:40.8] DS: By the end of Genesis two, every discipline that we teach in school exists. Like, Math is there, all of it, including much that we have no idea about right now. Computer science is there.
[0:07:49.6] JR: Math’s there, branding is there.
[0:07:51.8] DS: Everything is there, everything is there, right? So, the human story is, yes, this like, relationship with God, just walking with God, but it’s also this unpacking of this massive present, you know? That is as big as quintillion plus stars, billions of galaxies. So, to like, bring that down to the classroom level, what you’re doing as a history teacher, or math teacher, English teacher, music teacher, modern business teachers, you’re inviting them into these different cosmoses.
These different universes, these ways of experiencing reality that, apart from learning math, like, you just can’t, you can’t experience being alive in this certain way, this math way, in any other way, except math. Like – and no one can – no one can like, give it to you. You can listen to the best mathematician ever on YouTube talk, and it will be fun, it will be entertaining. But like, what that person is speaking to is a reality that they've known, that they’ve seen.
So, what I’m describing though is like, it’s kind of this base layer understanding of what school is for, and it’s probably like the – maybe the one thing I contribute more than anything in my life’s work is going to be to help people to understand that schools are basically, these institutions that promote the long-term flourishing of young people, promote the long-term flourishing of young people or in Christian language, the Shalom of young people, by doing this specific thing.
Guiding them towards mastery of the disciplines and arts that we teach, and when you use that language with any audience, okay? Secular, religious, it’s very, very, very, something that we all, deep in our hearts, you know, we understand. We long for this for our young people, we want them to experience flourishing, and we kind of know instinctively that there is just a good feeling that comes from learning more science, being successful in science.
There’s a good feeling that comes from understanding the history of the world a bit more, and so these are the types of experiences that regular teachers all around the world provide every day, but so much of my work with teachers is helping them to basically have faith in that. Faith in, like, that is the thing that you’re doing, the unseen thing that you’re doing as you get really good at teaching your subject and helping young people learn your subject. Yeah, probably enough to keep me busy for the rest of my life, right there, you know?
[0:10:20.9] JR: And then, and then some, helping with them zip it, right? Because it gets lost in the mundane. How do you keep that perspective? Like, how do you, you’ve been at this for years and years, how do you maintain that perspective on your craft and this work God’s called you to do, without getting jaded, without being jaded by the politics, by the – everything else that you know, comes with the thorns and thistles pushing back against the work?
[0:10:49.7] DS: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a few things that are very helpful. One is the Genesis three takeaway is it’s going to be hard, and I do, and this year, I have, like, experienced pain and misery and torment from that. But like, surprise, I can actually get rid of over time. I don’t need to be surprised when work is difficult and frustrating.
[0:11:10.5] JR: That, that right there, just that, we could do a whole episode on. Like, stop being shocked that the work sucks some days. Read Genesis three, it’s going to suck some days until Isiah 65 when we’ll long enjoy the work of our hands.
[0:11:25.1] DS: Yeah. Yeah, you know, and I mean, even if we just look at the work of Jesus, right? Like, He’s encountering the same thorns and thistles in His teaching practice, in His discipling of the small group. Surely, He got splinters and blisters as a carpenter. So, like, these are not surprising things. The other thing, though, I think, that you know, the kind of flip side of this to keep it from being really somber is we could be super confident that the work that we’re doing, even when it appears pointless, is producing good.
That I mean, as Christians, I think it’s very logical to suspect that you’ll probably do something today that you’ll be recollecting with someone in a billion years. To me, that’s a straightforward reading of the scriptures and the things that the writers are describing. So, you know, kind of good news when you have a bunch of classes, one day, where it’s like, everything is going not how you want it to go, and you know, certain behaviors are all forming into this alignment of just maladies in your class.
So, just realize that like, well, if you just continue to attend to what you control, the work, learning experience you’re trying to create, and attend to the reality that like, brief interactions can produce outcomes that last eternity, you can go home on a hard day and rest well and understand that I see no fruit today but it means very little about whether they’ll be fruit in the future.
This is something, by the way, Jordan, that teachers, we get really, really, good glimpses of, because it’s classic to you know, run into the student five years, 10 years after you taught them and they say, “I still remember this,” right? There’s one thing that teachers – teachers get to experience more than the average person, I think, and I share that because I do think that the average person, like, whatever their work, if it involves interacting, producing something, some good for someone, you know, there’s this very matter of fact eternal significance to these things that we do that look super normal.
And this is part of the, I think, wildly audacious uniqueness of Christianity in particular that these kinds of small, seemingly mundane acts that draw no special attention are significant forever.
[0:13:34.2] JR: That’s right because of the one who is weaving them into significance.
[0:13:37.7] DS: That’s right.
[0:13:38.5] JR: Right? Like, it is the fact that it’s the Holy Spirit who is working through us to do those things, and somehow, God is weaving all this experience. I once heard you mention Keller – I’m not sure Keller, I think this was at a sermon at Redeemer that I was reading. He was talking about Watergate, and he was able to draw a line from Watergate to the reason why he was at Redeemer, with like, these dozens of like, micro interactions and the intricacies of everything.
He’s like, “So, the next time you thank God for Redeemer Presbyterian church, thank God for Watergate.” And look at how God has woven all these things together, but all those big things, small things, whatever it is, yeah, God’s work in them for good, even when you can’t – even when you can’t see it. By the way, speaking of things you can’t see. I mean, you, Dave, like, the vast majority of our listeners are working in the “Secular world.”
I would argue it’s not secular because you, as a follower of Jesus, are there, and you’ve read my book, The Sacredness of Secular Work. So, you know that I believe your work has intrinsic value to God, but you told me before that you also see instrumental value in your work, and that your work can be a vehicle for pre-evangelism. Tell us what you mean by that, because I love this idea.
[0:14:52.8] DS: I mean, it’s from Schafer, right? I haven’t read much, but this term really stood out to me, and I probably encountered it first at Redeemer, but I’ve been reading some Frank Laubach lately, and he says, “The simple program of Christ for winning the whole world is to make each person He touches magnetic enough with love to draw others.” And I think it’s kind of related to this idea of pre-evangelism.
So, this whole thing that as you apprentice yourself to Jesus, you become a kind of person who is not totally of this world because you’re tapped into a different, bigger, more fundamental layer of reality than just what we see. Just being that kind of person and sweeping a floor or doing the dishes, or passing someone by in the street, I think we can create credibility to say that that, by itself, is a significant instrumental thing.
Again, not in ways that we see because of what you just described a minute ago, right? Like, if Watergate can be twisted in God’s economy, or shaped in God’s economy to produce a good on the magnitude of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, then, like, it’s kind of all bets are off if we think that we know what’s going on, and I think Jesus’, work again is just magnificent for us to think about.
I’m a human being constrained by time and space, like human beings are, and my goal is to bring this all together. Like, as Lewis says, like, dive to the bottom of the pond and pull the treasure up, right up through the muck, and he does it by, in a fairly backwater place, politically insignificant, compared to the Roman empire, really doing nothing with politics at all, doing not much at all with the elite, people who matter, the people who are famous and respectable.
He picks a super small group, rag-tag, is a charitable way to describe them, and he invests in them for about three years, right? And then, of course, you know, the Holy Spirit comes and Pentecost, and all these things happen, right? But like, very practically that I mean, I think that that’s – that was Jesus’, like, this was the plan because it was a very, very perfect way to bring about what we are seeing has been brought about, which is this movement that continues to today, and it started with a very, very small group.
A group of people that could fit in this room that I’m in, and the world still reverberates with the difference that that made.
[0:17:15.9] JR: We don’t have to worry about connecting the dots in every conversation. We can worry about being as those magnets of love. What was that, what was that exact phrase again?
[0:17:23.9] DS: Yeah, Frank Laubach, the simple program of Christ for winning the whole world is to make each person He touches magnetic enough with love to draw others.
[0:17:34.4] JR: That’s good, that’s good. We don’t have to be terribly direct about that.
[0:17:38.7] DS: No, no, sealing the deal, that is so like a – an obsession of our time.
[0:17:44.3] JR: It really does.
[0:17:45.4] DS: That is a blink, I think –
[0:17:45.9] JR: We want to microwave people into believing Jesus Christ.
[0:17:48.7] DS: Because if that’s what you’re supposed to do, the Sermon on the Mount is –
[0:17:51.5] JR: Silly.
[0:17:51.7] DS: Incredibly irresponsible.
[0:17:52.4] JR: Silly.
[0:17:53.6] DS: Where’s the follow-up, man? Where’s the, like, where’s all the machinery to make sure? How are we measuring, right? I mean, you can picture us, watching and saying, “Oh, Jesus, let’s get you into consulting.”
[0:18:04.4] JR: Hey, let me, let me introduce you to this consulting firm of mine I’ve worked with.
[0:18:09.0] DS: Yeah-yeah, right? I mean.
[0:18:10.1] JR: Get up that conversion rate by at least 20%.
[0:18:12.4] DS: Yeah, yeah, right. It’s the conversion rate, exactly.
[0:18:16.8] JR: I was talking to somebody the other day, talked in terms of X dollars per soul, that a nonprofit was winning. I was like, “Ooh boy.” What are we talking about? We’re not speaking the language of Jesus. We are not speaking about being magnetic enough to draw people with our love, it’s wild. Hey, I want to talk about your blog a little bit because I know you started blogging, what year is this? 2012-ish.
[0:18:40.7] DS: 2012, yeah.
[0:18:41.8] JR: And from what I can tell, things started to really take off really quickly. I know you had a lot of financial opportunities come your way as a result of that, that you eventually turned down. What’s the story there?
[0:18:52.4] DS: Yeah. I mean, a common trajectory for someone that does the writing for teachers thing is you do it long enough to be able to just do that work full-time. So, you go, and you travel to school as youth trainings, and you know there’s much more income that can be made that way.
[0:19:07.9] JR: You’re telling me there are jobs that pay better than high school teaching.
[0:19:10.8] DS: Yeah, there are.
[0:19:11.4] JR: Okay, interesting.
[0:19:12.3] DS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, although for people listening, I would argue that the pay is not as bad as it says.
[0:19:16.9] JR: It’s not as bad as the press, huh?
[0:19:18.4] DS: Right-right-right. So, people who would start asking me, “What? Are you going to do this full-time? Like, how much longer are you going to teach?” And a couple of things, maybe one, just you know, my impression from the Lord was like, you’re still in that classroom, but my experience in the classroom, right? My affinity for it still has yet to wane. Again, it’s difficult, but like you know, there’s just so many things that keep me in the classroom.
There is a very practical reason to stay in the classroom; everything that I talk to teachers about that I write about is rooted in daily practice. So, I can, I mean, I can gain credibility with a group incredibly easily just by describing something that happened in school last week, and it’s not inauthentic to do. So, it just this is what I’m thinking about. I have this sort of place that roots me in the world.
I live five minutes from here, so there’s like this local work that I get to do that I really don’t want to be done doing in the foreseeable future, but then like you know, the writing thing is just such a beautiful thing too, to get to once in a while get to travel to a school, and just meet teachers that are doing things way cooler than I have ever thought of doing, and I’ll bring that back or sometimes I get to go to a Christian school and get to speak about student motivation from the standpoint of the Christian faith, which is deeply nourishing to me.
So, yeah, yeah, I’m a bi-vocational dude when it comes to kind of the ways that I’ll spend my working hours, and of course, it can be difficult, and stressful as we were talking before the show started of just like balancing the things, but I think that that’s good. All types of work can be great spiritual disciplines, ways to develop in our apprenticeship to Jesus, so His curriculum for me right now involves this.
[0:21:09.2] JR: What I hear you saying is money isn’t in the driver’s seat of your vocational choices. It’s in the car, it has to be in the car.
[0:21:16.6] DS: Yeah, sure.
[0:21:16.8] JR: Right? But it’s not actually driving your decisions about where you’re spending your professional time.
[0:21:23.6] DS: Yeah, yeah, and part of it is this idea of you know, do I have enough, right? I mean, my phone for the longest time, the hotspot was the verse from Timothy, I Timothy 6:6, it’s right here on my hotspot right now, which is, “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” So, I need, I think, that reminder that there is such a thing as enough. Daily bread is a reality of the kingdom that we can rely on, and too, there’s just a lot of ways to be compensated.
And there’s a lot of ways that we need daily bread, and it can be like this daily bread of kind of purpose, and the daily bread of humility. Teenagers are very good, I joke with people like, “I don’t need people to tell me I’m not cool,” right? Like, I’m not one of those online influencer guys who like, has, like their head gets so big they can’t fit through a door because, like, all I have to do is try to crack a joke in second hour, and I’m not that smart.
I’m not that funny, and “Mr. Stuart, can you please just not?” So, there’s just so many ways that this arrangement that I’m in right now compensates me.
[0:22:30.2] JR: Yeah, I love that multifaceted way that you think about compensation, that’s beautiful. It’s not just what’s in the bank accounts, what’s in the soul, what’s profitable for my soul? What’s conforming me to the image of Christ? What’s keeping me humble?
[0:22:44.0] DS: Yeah, Dallas Willard likes to say that the only thing that you get out of your life is who you become. That’s what you’re taking into the next phase of things. So, you know, that – and I like that because it is more accurate than you can’t take any of it.
[0:22:57.0] JR: That’s right, that’s right. That’s right.
[0:22:58.2] DS: Actually, we’ll take us with us, you know? And it’s, I think, going to be really helpful to take us into the presence of the Lord, right? Because a lot of the annoying stuff about us will, I think, cease to be a problem when we’re with Him, but certainly it will be nice to arrive there as far along in the way as we can go. It would be nice not just then, but certainly today, to advance in the way of Jesus.
[0:23:24.3] JR: For sure. That’s really good. Hey, we were talking before we started recording. I mentioned how much I love the first line of your bio. It says this: “Husband and father who refuses to sacrifice family on the altar of professional success.” Man, tell me more, and specifically like, what do you mean by that, but also like, what practical decisions have you had to make to ensure that you’re not gaining the world through your work by losing your family?
[0:23:49.9] DS: Yeah, that’s kind of the best way to approach that, I think, is very practically, what does it look like, because we can, you know, everyone with a spouse to what I just wrote, right? The proof is in the pudding. So, like I set, be home on time every week night is very important, not taking work home has been a critical discipline for me. I need that kind of, I wrote a blog article once about sand castle boundaries versus Himalaya boundaries.
You know, the Himalayas have been a boundary substantial enough to change the shape of world history. So, when you build those into your life, you can be confident that they’ll change the shape of your history, right? So, like you know, not having your work email on your phone is like a thing that you can do. It will help to prevent work from spreading into areas of life where you don’t want it to spread.
You know, lately, I’ve been thinking about the “Dad, will you play with me?” test, and that’s a good – that’s been a convicting line of thinking, you know? Am I bringing the work home when “Dad, will you play with me?” I’m just sort of instinctively answering, “Ah, no. I’m too tired. You know, I can’t” right? There again, I need to look at the balance, where am I biting off too much in work, because I do think that Jordan, especially in our time, there’s just this, it’s like efficiency kind of promises in all of our different ways of life is going to make us have to work less.
But it just means we try to tackle more, you know? And so, teaching is one of those professions that will just take as much as you’ll give it, writing, creating, everything.
[0:25:30.1] JR: A line, as you know, everything will take as much that we can give it.
[0:25:32.5] DS: It will. I think everything is like that. Everything is like that, youth sports will take as much as you’ll give it. Like, they’re just these ravenous things in life, so simple rules. Many years ago, I read a book, Simple Rules. I don’t even know, remember who wrote it, but that one really stuck with me, like be home by 5:00 every night is the thing that you can do, and then times in my life where I stick well to do that.
It goes better to not sacrifice my life on the altar of success. Don’t travel on the kid’s birthdays is another real basic one that I had to learn the hard way.
[0:26:02.7] JR: Ooh, I learned that one the hard way too. Look at that.
[0:26:04.9] DS: Yeah, you just – I mean, you’re done. You’re just like, “What did I just do?” That needs to not be a thing.
[0:26:09.4] JR: I did it once, and I justified it. This is the worst part, I justified it because I was like, “Well, she’s only turning two,” right?
[0:26:19.1] DS: Me too.
[0:26:19.5] JR: As if I wouldn’t want to be there for her second birthday, and my wife was like, “Yeah, not cool.” And so, now I have recurring blocks on my calendar of their birth – not that I’m going to forget about their birthdays, but so that my assistant and team knows that I don’t travel on those days. Here’s the deal, Dave, like by God’s grace, I’m pretty good at the legalistic outward boundaries.
Be done at 5:00, I can’t remember the last time I was not done working at 5:00. No email on my phone ever, it hasn’t been there forever. I’m good at that stuff. It’s harder for me the “Daddy, can you play with me?” test. That’s tough, like having enough energy at the end of the day to be not just there, but there-there. It sounds like you’re still working through that.
[0:27:08.0] DS: Yeah, and I do find Jordan, that typically it starts with the projects I say yes to a month ago, right? Like, that’s what leads me to the exhaustion I feel today. It starts with I really planned on that course that I released to do this, and it did that, and so now, I’m like, adjusting. It kind of starts with goals and aspirations, it starts basically with a, you know, in a man’s heart, he plans with the Lord to determine his steps, like paradox.
When we’re too heavy leaning on Dave’s planning his way, and not receptive enough to the Lord guiding his steps, when I’m too heavy on what can I do today to be productive, to be useful to this world versus daily bread, Father, Your name be hallowed, not Dave Stuart’s. It’s inner work as dispositional stuff, and it’s stuff I think that in His wisdom, He designed, you know, disciplines like sabbath to disrupt. Incredibly unique also amongst the different faiths, and then incredibly smart. It’s still –
[0:28:11.8] JR: Almost like it’s God’s wisdom.
[0:28:13.6] DS: Yeah, yeah, almost. Like, it’s like you all are going to struggle with this, so take a day.
[0:28:19.1] JR: That’s exactly right. I think God knew we’d struggle with it because He created the work to be good, right? It’s creationally good. He’s like, “Guys, this is going to be so good. This work is going to be so good, you’re going to love it so much that I’m going to have to force you to stop it, because if you don’t, you’re going to forget who’s making this world spin in the first place, and you’re going to burn yourself out, right?”
[0:28:41.7] DS: Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah, the rightly ordered heart, I think, is Augustine’s, you know, big thing. The disordered loves, that is, often why I fail the “Dad, can you play with me?” test, is disordered loves.
[0:28:57.4] JR: All right, this has been really good, Dave. We’ve talked a lot about how your faith is shaping what you do, how you do it. I’m going to ask one more broad question. I’m interested to see where you take it. Beyond what we’ve already discussed, how is the gospel shaping how you’re doing the work in that classroom behind you Monday through Friday?
[0:29:14.8] DS: I’ve been super thankful for a number of years now for just this simple thing that came to me one day when reading through Jesus going into the new and old wineskins thing, and it just suddenly occurred to me, like He’s always doing this. He does this in all three synoptics, the new and old wineskins, but He is always doing it in response to people, like critiquing the use of fasting amongst His disciples. Like, “Why aren’t you guys fasting?”
And I don’t know, it struck me that part of what Jesus is saying there is, you have to do things that makes sense. You should be doing things in a way that makes sense to do them, like bring common sense to fasting. Fasting, arguably the chief quality of fasting, the chief thing that discipline does is it teaches me to rely upon the Father. It teaches me that there is a substance even more important than food that my soul needs, and it can only be gotten from God. So, you know, my disciples aren’t fasting because they’re eating every day.
[0:30:13.6] JR: That’s right, they’re feasting.
[0:30:15.2] DS: There’s no sense to practice it right now. They will, though. So, I mean, the reason I bring that up, it sounds sort of like, not an answer, but I think with teaching, there really is. There are a lot of dogmatic approaches to teaching, just like there were dogmatic approaches to practicing the Jewish faith in Jesus’s time, just sort of traditions handed down from, you know, this school of education to their disciples.
There’s just a lot of stuff that’s just done because we do it, because we’ve always done it in teaching, and then there’s also like this whole account removing of like, “Let’s not do anything like we’ve ever done it. Let’s throw it all away.” And so, I think what the gospel really helps me to do is just say there are very reliable means through which human beings grow and transform, through which they can go from being at an A level to a C level, and advancing along through the alphabet in whatever you’re teaching.
So, you know, Jesus’s matter-of-fact approach, I think, is very intelligent, common-sense, deep-wisdom approach, reliant on the Father's approach to doing His work in His full humanity aspect of his self, like that really informed how I try to approach teaching. You know, another one would be let the children come. It’s so easy in this job because we’re all typically tasked with serving more students than you know, it kind of feels like we can.
There are just so many, and there are so many needs within those students. I mean, these students are – there’s one instance of each of my students that will ever happen in eternity, like there’s never been a kid like that before, there never will be again. They won’t even be like they are right now, again. So, there’s this like, infinite complexity that can become really overwhelming, and I think Jesus was probably like, take my awareness of that complexity and multiply it by infinity, and that was His.
So, I suspect, you know, confident He was often tempted by exhaustion and overwhelm. He says, “No, let the children come.” Like, the disciples are even aware. They say, “No-no.” [inaudible 0:32:14.8] “No, this, this is important, let them come.” And as a teacher, you can lean on the fact that Jesus doesn’t solve every problem that comes to him in all the masses, right? But He does what He can do.
He does what He can do, and He just trusts the Father to take care of a whole lot of the rest than the Father does. That’s what He’s been doing, that’s what He’ll continue to do.
[0:32:41.8] JR: That’s really good. That’s really good, man. Dave, I end every single episode of this podcast the same way. You got four quick questions for you. Number one, look ahead to the new earth, what job would you love for God to give you, free from the curse of sin?
[0:32:56.3] DS: I think, teacher. Yeah, I think somehow.
[0:32:59.3] JR: I hear that from most writers and teachers, like, “Yeah, I want to keep doing the thing.” That’s how I feel, I want to keep writing.
[0:33:04.7] DS: I mean, yeah. We’re never going to be infinite creatures; we’re going to last an infinite length of time, but we’re not going to be infinite. So, there’s going to be more to learn.
[0:33:12.4] JR: We’re not going to know everything.
[0:33:14.2] DS: No.
[0:33:15.7] JR: I want to go to a Dave’s tour class.
[0:33:17.5] DS: That’s cool, man, right? Likewise.
[0:33:19.3] JR: That sounds fun. That sounds really fun. Hey, if we opened up your Amazon order history, which books would we see you gifting most frequently to others?
[0:33:28.3] DS: Lately, there’s a Dallas Willard book that came out posthumously, it’s Scandal of the Kingdom.
[0:33:32.5] JR: Yeah, yeah.
[0:33:33.7] DS: I’m a big Willard –
[0:33:34.4] JR: Willard’s amazing.
[0:33:35.3] DS: Student, trying to immerse myself and him for a number of years now. So, Scandal of the Kingdom is short, accessible, compared to Divine Conspiracy. And then Lewis, Screwtape Letters, I did a reread last summer, and started telling. Interestingly, I have a lot of teenagers now that are coming to me and asking these deep questions about faith, like, after school and before, and some, like, given these hungry minds, some of these books, because you know, they’re asking me.
[0:34:03.1] JR: Screwtape holds up.
[0:34:04.4] DS: Screwtape holds up, dude.
[0:34:05.5] JR: Man, it’s huge.
[0:34:06.6] DS: That might as well been written last year.
[0:34:09.6] JR: It is remarkably timely.
[0:34:11.1] DS: It’s wild. Yes, it is insane.
[0:34:13.4] JR: It is remarkably done. It’s so freaking good. Dave, who do you want to hear on this podcast, talking about how the gospel is shaping the work they do in the world?
[0:34:21.9] DS: The first guy to disciple me, Trent Gladstone, he’s a real estate agent in Baltimore, and dude taught me a ton. So, doesn’t have any book to his name, but Trent Gladstone is a – he is a realtor, and so much more.
[0:34:35.7] JR: Man, connect me with Trent, I’d love to talk to him.
[0:34:37.9] DS: All right, all right, will do.
[0:34:38.9] JR: We’re almost 300 episodes deep into this thing, we’ve never had a realtor. How have we –
[0:34:44.8] DS: I looked, man, I know.
[0:34:45.4] JR: How have we missed that?
[0:34:46.5] DS: Because I was thinking about this question, and I’m like, “Okay, you know, there’s a lot of people been on here, but no, I agree.
[0:34:51.3] JR: That’s a great answer.
[0:34:53.3] DS: I think he would be fascinating.
[0:34:54.0] JR: That’s a great answer. All right, especially since we’re going to be building houses and dwelling in them, see Isaiah 65 on the New Earth, that would be interesting to talk about. All right, Dave, we talked about a lot of different things on this episode. What’s one thing you want to reiterate to our listeners before we sign off?
[0:35:08.0] DS: I think like, we’re all teachers. The great commission, make disciplines, baptize them in the trinitarian reality, and teach them how to obey the things that you’ve said, right? So, we all, to a degree, are in this work, this work of teaching, and does not need to be fancy or amazing. I mean, I think about the prayer, Jordan, that you prayed over us before we went live. Feeble and instructive efforts, undertaking where the heart of faith can produce, things that lasts a lot longer than our lifetimes on this side of glory.
[0:35:40.8] JR: Man, Dave, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you’re doing, brother, for the glory of God and the good of others and the good of those students that you're serving. Man, thank you, man, thank you just for the beautiful language you put to this work that God has called us to, and for the wonderful ways in which you’re serving those young men and women in your classroom and man, I am so excited to keep up with you and follow your work. Hey, is DaveStuartJr.com the best place for our listeners to do that?
[0:36:08.7] DS: Yup. Yup, that would be the best place to get an idea of the things I think about.
[0:36:13.1] JR: I love it, man, I love your mind, I look forward to reading more of it. Thanks for spending time with us today.
[0:36:18.2] DS: Thank you, Jordan, I appreciate you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:36:20.5] JR: Hey, if you love that episode as much as I did, do me a huge favor and go leave a review of this podcast wherever you’re listening, Apple, Spotify. Leave us a five-star review, tell us what specifically you’re loving about the podcast, so we can double down on it. Thank you guys so much for listening, I’ll see you next week.
[END]