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Monday October 18, 2004 Volume VI Number 42

You find yourself on the floor again, a grown man graying at the temples, observing every move.  These little ones pursue the adventure of discovery, learning by touching, feeling, holding, looking.  It has a fascination all its own.  The child has no capacity for the discernment of moral choice – the whole world is open season.  It’s only Mommy and Daddy who, in the observing, point out the different between the acceptable and the unacceptable.  “That’s a no-no,” the child will hear.  Maybe he’ll pay attention.  Maybe not.  If there’s silence from the parent (or the grandparent) than, I guess, it’s assumed OK. 

Let the exploration continue.

The game of peek-a-boo illustrates a fascinating phenomenon: the child seems to believe that when he finds a hiding place, if only to cover his eyes, he has in fact – disappeared.  Little Kenny, now some twenty months, will hide behind say, a vase, and it’s as though he’s become invisible.  He pops his head out from behind with a big smile in his eyes, and presto, “There he is!” we all proclaim, as though he’s materialized ex nihilo (out of nothing).  He does it again.  And again.  We all clap and sound relieved – the lost has been found.  The unseen becomes visible.

You realize that the child’s eyes are his window on reality.  What he sees is real.  What he can’t see isn’t there.  It will be a while before he understands that the Earth revolves around the Sun, not him.  But for now, that’s OK, because as far as Grandpa is concerned, he is the center of the universe.  He’ll grow out of it soon enough.

All of this is reflected in the work of Swiss child psychologist, the father of developmental theory, Jean Piaget.  After years of study, he discerned four stages in the cognitive development of children.  His work has influenced educators and therapists for decades.  It takes awhile for a child to move from the concrete world he can see and touch and feel to the more abstract, where he can comprehend ideas, solve problems, catch the meaning of formulas and use language to build sentences.  And once a child grasps ideas in the abstract, it takes even more time to connect those two.  The bridge between abstract thought and the world of reality takes time and care to build. 

Not every one gets there.

* * * * * * *

Pastor Todd left his ministry, discouraged. 

Barely thirty years of age, he decided to launch a new career.  He enrolled in a graduate program for a degree in developmental psychology.  The whole field fascinated him.  He studied the work of the Swiss biologist turned psychologist, Jean Piaget.  He didn’t anticipate where his journey would lead him.  The insights he gained would not only send him back to pastoral ministry – but would ignite a passion that remains to this very day.

What captured his imagination most was that bridge – from cognitive to concrete.  First he asked some questions: how is it that children grasp abstract thought at all?  Once that happens, how and when can that child connect the concepts to the real world of time and space?  His wife Julie, an educator herself, shared his curiosity.  Together, they worked with their own children to cultivate and nurture that connection.  They came to understand that for awhile, a child will have difficulty.  Piaget documented his findings.  You must not expect too much too soon.  You must create the environment for children to grow and to discover.  But the connectedness comes in stages.  Give it time.

Todd and Julie ran their own experiment.  About the time their child first learned simple math utilizing the symbols we call numbers, they tested Piaget’s stages of development.  When their daughter saw the numbers on the page – a ten and a seven, with a dash in between, she immediately knew the answer.

“10 – 7 = _____” was written on the flash card for the child to see.      

“What’s the answer?” Mom asked.

“THREE!” she cried.  And everyone cheered. 

“That’s right!”

Then Julie took another approach.  This time, she put ten jacks on the floor.  (Kacie loved to play with jacks.)  Mom said, “OK Kacie, how many jacks are there?”

Kacie counted one by one – “Ten!”

“That’s right!” Mom affirmed.  “Now, cover your eyes up.”  And Kacie placed her little hands obediently over her eyes.  “No peeking!”  Kacie giggled.

Julie took three jacks from the floor, and hid them behind her back.

“Alright, Kacie, you can open your eyes.  Now, count the jacks again.”

The little girl counted out seven.

“Now – how many jacks did mommy take away?   I’ve got them in my hand behind my back.  How many are in my hand?”

Kacie looked puzzled.  She’s very bright.  But this time, she just couldn’t come up with the answer.  It didn’t make any sense to her at all.  She was confused.

Piaget was right, thought Julie.  Todd agreed.

The former Pastor Todd, now a graduate student in developmental psychology, thought hard about the implications.  Kacie could do the math in the abstract.  She had memorized the math tables, and from flash cards, gave the right answers every time.  But at this stage of development, she could not make the connection between the symbolic numbers on the flash cards and the number of jacks on the floor. 

“I realized, in a moment’s inspiration, that what I saw in our little girl was what I had experienced in my Christian life,” he proclaimed in an “a-hah” all his own.

As he tells the story now, with a high degree of conviction and with Piaget’s help, Todd has come to realize that while you can learn principles and ideas and stories and formulas as a child, you may never take the next step.  Ideas can remain in the abstract, and never make their way into the context of one’s life.  You can solve the problem posed by a flash card, but remain clueless in the presence of jacks on the floor. 

Piaget calls it contextualization.  Contextualization is one of the most critical processes in healthy human development, Todd discovered in the classroom of graduate school.

Put more simply, what you can process in your head may never make its way into your heart.  What might be a brilliant intellectual exercise may never become a way of life.  The mental games we play may remain only that, and never impact our real world in time and space.  We may embrace a philosophy that never becomes a part of our personal history.  What we know of doctrine may never infiltrate our practice.  It’s a monstrous disconnect that Todd fully believes today has paralyzed Christians everywhere.

Chief among them, himself, he says now.

It was a paradigm shift he could not have anticipated.  He grew up in the home of a pastor and dutifully memorized the books of the Bible and countless passages and Sunday School stories and as a high school student learned all the tenants of Orthodoxy.  He could smell heresy a mile away.  He was a star pupil in the presence of Christian flash cards.

But there was a missing piece.  A critical piece.  It created such a profound emptiness, that it left him tired, confused, frustrated, and looking for any alternative to pastoral ministry he could find.

It wasn’t until he met some guys who taught him how to build that bridge.  They taught him that his faith, while it existed in his mind in living color in the abstract, was meant to be lived out in the context of real life - real issues - here and now decision making.  That God is real in the present moment - and if in this one, the next one, too.

These guys taught him that when you’re thirsty, its one thing to know about a water well somewhere out there.  It’s quite another to find it and then drop your bucket into the cool clean water, lift it to the surface and dip your cup and take a long drink.

Drink he did.

It changed his life.

So he ended up back in the pastorate.  But now things are different.  He’s not content with knowledge.  He’s got a passion for wisdom.  He never stops asking – are we just talkin’ about Jesus?  Or are we walking with Jesus?  Are we simply filling in the blanks?  Or are we putting it to work?  Are we content to just talk?  Or are we determined to live?

These are good questions.  They are life sustaining questions.

Who’d a thought they’d come from Piaget?

* * * * * * *

It’s Monday morning.  You are a leader.

You know how I feel about grandparenthood.  I’ve got a new mission now.  That little boy’s gunna watch his grandpa.  As he grows, he’ll learn in the abstract.  Knowing his parents, I’m convinced he will be exceptionally bright, as will be his little brother and all the other grandkids yet to arrive.  I’ll applaud his ability to quickly run through the flash cards with all the right answers.

But you know I’ll want more for him.  I’ll want him to find that bridge.  I’ll probably not call it contextualization.  But that’s what I’ll be lookin’ for.  I’ll want him and his generation to find it, too.  We call it truth.  Truth isn’t something we think about, or talk about, or write about, or read about.  Real truth works.

So I look forward to the day that connection gets made between my grandson’s head and his heart.

That will be the best occasion of all for a high five.

And I guess the best way for me to contribute to his own discovery of it is, well, to live it out myself.

Come to think of it - that’s what I want for you, too.

Posted in Valley Center, California

© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2004

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