The curriculum is changing

I was teaching the short story “The Nose,” by the Russian writer Gogol, in a college literature class. In it one of the characters, a barber, begins his day with a breakfast of bread, onions, and salt.

Bread, onions, and salt? “Who eats such a breakfast?” asked a student. I explained that during the Depression, I could remember people eating bread with anything that might give it flavor. Radish, cucumber, or tomato sandwiches were common. Meat sandwiches were rare. Lard or syrup sandwiches were not unheard of. Bread and onions sounded possible to me. The student was reading the nineteenth-century story from his perspective of the twentieth century – onions and bread need hamburger, mustard, and some cheese in between. He and Gogol were working from two frames of reference.

Another two incidents. In one, three women my age, all children during the 1930s, worried over the waste of food in their own children’s homes. Platefuls of food were being dumped because it was not quite to the grandchild’s liking.

The other incident was a casual discussion at lunch about the large quantity of food being served us at a regular meeting of older adults. Huge helpings of everything filled our plates, even though we are usually the ones who ask for a “senior plate.” Someone mentioned an older women who never left home without a Ziploc bag in her purse and another the man who went from table to table at some luncheons, advising, “Take home all leftovers – they’ll just be trashed.”

Were these people sitting at my table poor? Not at all. Were they greedy? I don’t think so. I looked at the monster brownie on the dessert plate before me, cut off a corner to eat, and wrapped the rest in a napkin to take home. My neighbor did likewise. It just didn’t make sense to have it thrown out because we couldn’t eat it all. We had grown up with a different frame of reference and were acting accordingly, even if manners dictated otherwise.

People live by what they have been taught to believe is necessary and important. We then accept new facts and new experiences only if they fit our frame of reference or worldview. Changes come with difficulty. But sometimes a paradigm shift – a change in worldviews – moves through society. Then such people must change their thinking also or be left sitting on the sidelines.

The industrial revolution was a major shift in people’s thinking, as was the more recent shift to a high-tech information age, with the avalanche of information coming at us daily in many forms.

These paradigm shifts sometimes take us by surprise. Other times they creep up. I remember that, at the beginning of this revolution (not so long ago), I bought a reel-to-reel tape recorder despite the salesman’s advice that this would soon become obsolete equipment. I couldn’t shift that fast, I told myself. What if the electronic stuff doesn’t last? I’d have wasted my hard-earned money. My tape recorder has rested in a cupboard corner now almost since the month I bought it. I wasn’t ready for the electronic revolution. Nor am I ready for super-computer systems with modems and much, much more.

Letting Go

When Jesus taught the people, he was aiming for a paradigm shift, a change in people’s way of looking at life. He wanted to cut people loose from their foundations in the Law, not just to add bits of information for them to stuff into holes in their current worldview. He was saying to the crowds before him, “Here’s a brand-new way of looking at life – a way of forgiveness and grace and love. But it means you’ll have to let go of the law.”

For the Jews, that meant a complete shake-up in their thinking. And letting go of traditional thinking is one of the most difficult things to do. The religious leaders of his time couldn’t let go; they had too much invested in the way things had always been done.

It’s not unusual for the members of one congregation to live unknowingly in two theological worlds, the one group adhering to a traditional conservative way of looking at the Scriptures, the other ready to check out new paths of thought. Then they wonder why they are shouting at one another but not getting through.

New academic scholarship and archaeological findings about the Bible and about human behavior have carried one group along into acceptance of new thinking. The others are still deeply rooted in teaching they have accepted with comfort for decades. For example, one group may accept the Bible as a system of hierarchies, or a chain of command, in which God, Christ, angels, men, women, children, government and church leaders all find their precise pecking order. Any other view of the Bible doesn’t make sense to them.

Another group may read the Bible from the frame of reference that at various times in biblical history God broke through to humanity, reestablishing and reinforcing, not hierarchies, but equality among humankind. To return to a hierarchical view seems like a return to the Dark Ages.

Some people, including older adults, pride themselves on being the only ones who still cling to God’s truth. They show great resistance to change. They operate defensively and alienatingly. An older adult in an adult Bible class insists the King James Version is the one to use. “They don’t come any better,” he argues.

Sorting and Sifting

Each day I grow older, I tell myself that if I want to survive I’ve got to keep sorting and sifting how what I believe relates to my daily life because that’s where the biggest changes are taking place. My mother experienced tremendous changes from the simple rural life in the Russian steppes to a high-rise senior citizen center in a large metropolis. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” wrote the apostle Paul to the Philippian church. Mother did just that.

At times I was amazed at how easily she adapted with grace and compassion to what was going on around her and even to the modern lifestyles of family members. She didn’t always understand with was happening, but she tried. If she could change, why should we of my generation who have experienced the Depression always respond as if the essence of that time still flows through our veins?

Like most people, I usually have reasons for responding as I do. Sometimes the basis for that reason is well supported with facts and organized in my mind; other times it’s fuzzy. But I am bullheaded enough to believe that if I work through the jumble, it will make sense. My life and behavior are rooted in a worldview I have gleaned from a lifetime of experience, thinking, and study.

But I worry about my blind spots. Can an older adult change? Should an older adult change? Psychologists suggest that in the first half of life our goals are mostly personal and social – finding a vocation and partner, figuring out one’s contribution to society, establishing financial security. When one has come to some understanding of this part of one’s existence, and as one realizes humans are actually mortal (friends, parents, even children die), there is a change to seeking wisdom rather than power, writes Carl Jung.

Robertson Davies adds that this change to seeking wisdom does not make one an old man or an old woman. “What will make [the older adult] an old person is a frightened clinging to the values of the first half of life. The values that are proper and all-absorbing during the first half of life will not sustain a [person] during the second half” (“The Writer’s Conscience,” Saturday Review, March 18, 1978). He writes about the “shriveled Peters Pans” who dare not be their age. Outlook on life should match position in life.

I see Davies as meaning that, as I grow older, I may need to redefine what it means to be a contributing adult. I may need to change my script and move from one way of thinking that I have held dear for decades to another that takes into consideration changes in culture.

Turning Around

To change our thinking is hard. It requires conversion, metanoia, turning around.

I don’t like change, any kind. I don’t like it when my routine changes, as when I forget to set the alarm and sleep in. Getting up late upsets me because I don’t get started on the new day the usual way. I may have to cut out a cup of coffee or reading the paper. I don’t like it when people do things differently. To my own dismay, I mutter bad words to myself when I have to look for the paper down the walk instead of in its usual place in front of the screen door. “Must be a new paper carrier . . . what an irresponsible person . . . and no plastic wrapper.”

We grow when we deliberately examine our own belief system brought together after years of living, listening, and watching others.

Yes, we always learn our theology well. And to change in any respect seems a small rebellion. Yet respectful dissent, even doubt or change in theology should be viewed, not as a disloyal challenge to the Bible, but as a necessary part of our growth in understanding.

To grow older is to change.

Katie Funk Wiebe has written or edited 18 books. She is professor emeritus of Tabor College and attends First Mennonite Brethren Church in Wichita, Kansas. This article is excerpted from a chapter by the same name in Border Crossing: A Spiritual Journey (Cascadia Publishing House, rev. ed. 2002). Used by permission.