When Over-Responding is Just Right
By Denny Wayman

Even a cursory study of the Gospels reveals that Jesus often used what educators call “teachable moments.” Like a master teacher who uses the whole of a student’s environment to accomplish his lesson, Jesus regularly took what was happening around Him and taught principles which would be difficult to assimilate in verbal form alone. The question this raises is whether Jesus manipulated situations to create crises so His people could learn difficult lessons, or whether Jesus took the inevitable crises of a fallen world and redeemed them both individually and educationally. Although individuals may answer this differently, educational psychology has increasingly asserted that it is not the manipulated lesson which is effective, but rather the emergent or even chaotic lessons which accomplish a sustained change in students.

The second response identified by Rea is to “opportunely use teachable moments.” Although no longer ignoring the crisis in a person’s life, the focus is still not on the person but rather on how this crisis can be used to accomplish a parental, pastoral or educational purpose. In this response, the goal is to get the person to understand what the parent, pastor or teacher thinks is important and can result in the person feeling manipulated or even used, as his or her pain becomes a tool in the hands of the mentor. Resistance to such a lesson is strong, as the person avoids the opportunistic use of his or her crisis by others, however well-meaning they might be.

The third response is perhaps the one which the thoughtful parent, pastor or teacher might feel is the most comfortable, but it lacks the dynamic we will observe in the fourth. It is the decision to be “sustainably poised for teachable moments.” Shifting our focus from the lesson desired to be taught, this response moves toward a mutual experience of discovery. The one in crisis and the one who comes alongside are now partners in the experience of understanding how God is at work in this moment. The pain and struggle are not short-circuited by pat answers, nor are they used for accomplishing some predetermined lesson believed to be important by the parent, pastor or teacher. Instead, the pain is validated, the struggle is shared and the exploration of God’s truths is a joint experience. In this response, both the person in crisis and the parent, pastor or teacher are participants in deciding where to turn for answers, with both becoming empowered by the process as well as by mutually discovered resolutions.

Surprisingly, this process of mutual discovery is not as effective in producing life change as the fourth and final response presented by Rea, where we “over-respond to teachable moments.” The use of the descriptor “over-respond” implies that the parent, pastor or teacher has stepped over a line and left behind a predetermined curriculum. This is in fact true. Recent understandings of chaos theory reveal the dynamic behind the method often used by Jesus when He told parables not as simple answers but as life-expanding dilemmas. No longer focusing on a lesson to be taught or a resolution to be discovered, this method impacts the development of what educational psychologists call the “self” and Jesus would call the “soul.” Maturing the self or soul, such that the person becomes able to handle not only this crisis but also future crises, is the goal of the over-responding mentor.

Although other pedagogical methods are appropriate at times when an individual is not in crisis and the teaching of God’s truths requires a curriculum with a more controlled experience, such as in a classroom or a sermon, a person in crisis has entered into the chaos of life. Such chaos is best understood by the use of “chaos theory” as it provides a systemic description of a crisis moment. Stepping over the line into crisis with the person, the parent, pastor or teacher recognizes this as a prime moment in both of their lives. The slightest shift in the cognitive, emotional or moral system of the person’s life can have a profound impact on the rest of his or her life.

Called the “butterfly effect” in which chaos theory has noted that everything in life is so interconnected that the flutter of a butterfly’s wings on one side of the planet can cause a typhoon on the other, life-change does not occur because of a crisis but because of the over-response of the person to the crisis, both for good or for ill. The parent, pastor or teacher comes alongside to provide stability during the crisis experience. With trust in God and trust in the person in crisis, the mentor interacts with the person in a way that produces a synergistic power greater than either can create individually. As the Holy Spirit comes alongside this union, then the souls of both experience dynamic growth.

The fact that crises are important in the developing life of a Christian is shown by recent developments in educational psychology. Building on the understandings of chaos theory in the other sciences, this systemic descriptor provides the window to understanding the method God uses to create mature human beings with souls ready for eternity.