No Gold Stars

Today what strikes me most about the readings is that all of them contain a prophet, disconcerted that the world is (or might) make fun of them for their prophecy.

Ezekiel 2:2-5 -- God explaining that they might not come to heel but you are to go to them anyway.
Psalm 123 -- Looking up to God for deliverance from the world's cruelty to the righteous.  No answer in the psalm itself either.
2 Cor 12: 7-10 -- What St. Paul describes sounds primary internal, but he talks about hardships and persecutions to much at the end that I wonder.
Mark 6: 1-6 -- Even Jesus looks in dismay (if not actual surprise) at His hometown's petulant reaction to His teachings.

There's this very stubborn idea that I occasionally try to fight in my students.  The idea that there shouldn't be any cost imposed on them for doing the right thing.

What this looks like in a school setting, most of the time, is the student who "feels bad about" keeping the extra points a teacher accidentally gave them on a test.  And then being shocked -- shocked! -- if a teacher adjusts the grader lower rather than saying, "You can keep the points for your honesty!"

More extreme versions of this are students announcing that they were sick as a reason they shouldn't have a major project be late despite it being a 2 week assignment or that they have other commitments so it shouldn't be counted against them that they didn't show up to a rehearsal or a meeting.  Not recognizing "other commitments" as a choice they made.

It looks like a mythologies class project I ran that posed the students with a moral choice.  And in an attempt to make it real, I gave the students who volunteered to be sacrificed for the rest of the group (It was a Theseus and the Minotaur story) a 0.  They and their parents were apoplectic at the thought of me "punishing" them for "making the right decision."  Which it wasn't, by the way.  Decidedly not the most moral choice on offer to the group.

Even the half a day of classes I let the students think they were getting a 0 for a minor grade was treated as an epic issue of unfairness.  That they had made a "moral choice" and weren't receiving a gold star from the world.

I don't run that class anymore, for a lot of reasons, but I think about that moment all the time.  Every time a moment like it happens.

When young people throw a fit (in one form or another) because they have a negative outcome from doing the right thing.  Because consequences aren't negated by morality.  Because the world laughs at them for being prophets.  Because people sneer at them for doing what's right.  Because sometimes there's no gold star for doing God's will.

And I think how many people never grow out of that.  Never stop expecting there to be no consequences if they're doing what's right.  As if the martyrs didn't have consequences.  As if every apostle but John wasn't executed, most VERY brutally.  As if half the saints of the Catholic Church didn't suffer horribly in this life for the path they chose.

On my other blog, I've written extensively about how very very tacky this attitude looks on adults who manage to convince themselves that not getting their way amounts to oppression or losing a battle / people disagreeing with you / people making fun of you constitutes a systemic bias or unbelievably unfair situation.  Even a coordinated attack.

When the truth is, the Bible warned us that people tend to sneer at prophets.  Or think they're loony.  Or just have "better" things to do.

And that even when they believe, sometimes that just makes everyone more hostile to their message.  Because the saints and the prophets didn't appear when we deserved gold stars.  And they didn't get any either.