Waking Up to Humanity
Do you remember when you were a child, and you thought teachers had it all together? They were knowledgeable and experienced adults, and as a result, they were a core authority in our young lives. As a child, I assumed all teachers were moral, ethical, and good.
Then, I got older and worked at a school. I realized that teachers were human and did not have it all together, a realization that felt like waking up in The Matrix. The world I thought I knew was not real. These adults didn’t know what they were doing most of the time. Teachers could be biased and unfair. They had their vices and issues they struggled with at home and work. They each lived their nuanced love lives that worked or didn’t work out. Some of them drank and smoked a lot. I discovered that schools were miniature empires that could be just as political as our federal government, sometimes run like a dictatorship. I also saw that the teaching philosophy changed about every ten years when a long-held belief about how children learn was disproven or challenged or social and political beliefs influenced the classroom. I grew even more disenchanted when I learned about the inequity of our educational systems and the school-to-prison pipeline.
And yet, I clearly remember the concern and care of my fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Robinson. In a school with many misfits, he had the toughest of the fourth-grade classes. My own home life was falling apart after my dad left our family, and although I’m sure Mr. Robinson didn’t have it all together, he offered me care and compassion during that time in my life. I also remember Mrs. Anderson, my high school art teacher, who pulled me aside because some of my artwork had caused her to worry about me. My art was a little raw with the deep-seated anger and pain I felt as a high schooler. She cared enough to pull me aside, share her concerns, and offer ways she could help me in a difficult time in my life through art. My mother was an educator for forty years and was an incredible light in a broken system, but like all teachers, she wasn’t perfect either.
The lesson is this: We can still work to bring hope and light in a broken world with broken systems created by flawed humans. As a child, I thought adults knew what they were doing and that the systems they built always worked. As I got older, I became passionate about justice and fighting against these broken systems. Initially, I lived in an either-or paradigm. I raged against the machine and sincerely believed that burning it all down was the solution and that those who led the systems that were broken in this world were evil. I realized that my perspective was turning me into what I was fighting against. I was just the other side of the same coin. If the enemy were self-righteous and justified their actions, I would do the opposite, and yet I found myself just as self-righteous and justifying my actions but for what I believed was the better cause. There had to be a better way. As I have matured, the reality of a both/and perspective has helped me walk the line between self-righteousness and cynicism. Teachers are not all good, but they aren’t all bad, either. In other words, they are human. The educational system may be broken, but some educators fight daily for a better world for their students.
Since 2020, many parts of our society have been challenged, revealing our system’s failures and profound inadequacies. Perspectives have shifted. People have sought to fix or fill in the cracks and fissures in many of the social structures in our country. Our health care, educational and religious institutions, local and federal governments, financial and environmental systems, and democracy are straining or already broken.
In some ways, this has always been the reality of our world, but a global pandemic revealed these problems with our systems (granted, many could see them before 2020), and this heightened moment divided us in very personal ways. Our relationships with some friends and family members have even been challenged or broken as we take in and try to process the information and disinformation that help us make sense of everything. This season, filled with intense pressures, has formed and deformed us.
Think about the relationships you’ve lost or that have been severely strained since 2020. Take a moment and recall the anger, disappointment, confusion, cynicism, and anxiety you’ve experienced in recent years. How have those feelings shaped you? How have you dealt with the resulting changes? Have you created an echo chamber and surrounded yourself with people who only believe what you believe? Have you cut yourself off from others? Do you feel like you are becoming more of who you were created to be or less? Do you even know who that person is? Have you lost hope and landed on the path of self-preservation?
My guess is that something inside you tells you there is, and perhaps even yearns for, another way. Something gnaws at you, refusing to accept that this is what life is like now. My friend, I’m here to tell you that you’re right! I’ve discovered that hope can be found in embracing the tension of life rather than chasing false dichotomies that bring a sense of safety and belonging but detach us from who we were created to be. As a follower of Christ, I have seen the institutions that profess to believe what I believe continue to create division as they try to figure out how to survive and maintain power “in the name of Jesus.” It saddens me; however, just like with our educational systems, I believe there is a hopeful movement that can bring healing and light to every aspect of this hurt and broken world. The answer lies in what I call the “Radical Middle.”
By embracing tension and wrestling with truth, I have found a way of being that has helped me become more of who I was created to be and find a renewed sense of hope. This hope keeps me from feeling overwhelmed by the issues in our world and instead helps me focus on becoming a force to bring good into it.
Taken from “Embrace the Tension” by Tommy Nixon. ©2026 by Thomas Joel Nixon. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
