Chesterton begins with our lives in the world. He talks about the businessman who rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, saying “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.” With this statement, Chesterton sets one of the central themes of the chapter. When we are young, we are full of mystery, be it the young philanthropist who thinks he can save the world, or the child who looks for the elves who keep taking their binkies. To the young, the world is full of wonder, possibility, and ideals. There is nothing that cannot be fixed, nothing that cannot be overcome. Even death to my three year old is “going to see God.” What could be better than that?

Then we get on with our lives. We are forced to leave behind the youthful wonder of the world and accept “reality.” In this world, people are forced to move from the idealism of their youth to the “reality” of being a grown up. Such a difficult thing to bestow upon young people! Teaching young idealists that they will NOT change the world, telling our children that magic and elves and fairies don’t exist, are heart breaking affairs. The world squashes out of us any sense of hope outside of rationale, and any dreams beyond “the possible.” What a sad day it is when we damn ourselves to an understanding of life that includes only birth, work, what little we can achieve on earth, and then death – passing on what we have acquired to our children. Yet this is rational, this is being a grown up. Chesterton claims that “we have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.”

Chesterton reminds us that this drudgery need not be our final understanding. We can come back to a youthful world of magic, wonder, and ideals, a place that Chesterton called “Elfland.” He claimed that he learned the spirit of its laws before he could speak, and he would retain them when he was too old to write. It was, to him, a certain way of looking at life, “which was created…by the fairy tales.” In Elfland, the impossible is possible, mystery still exists, wonder fills the world, and we can once again believe in magic.

Not the kind of magic, of course, practiced in dark rooms with a pentagram and candles and such. Rather the kind of magic that helps us understand our place in a big and scary world, one that gives us hope even in the darkest hour. It is this magic that makes us realize that everything is going to be okay. A magic that slowly but undeniably changes us into better men and women, helping us to learn to love and serve in defiance of our selfishness. A magic that takes care of our families — regardless of financial or political turbulence. A magic that allows us to reach heights of accomplishment far outside of the realm of ordinary possibility. It is magical to know I have Someone to talk to when I am lonely and scared, Someone to look to when I don’t know what course of action to take. And it is magic to know that at the end of all times, everything is going to be exactly as it should be, and everything that happens until then is just details.

I used to dream of being a white knight and fighting evil dragons to save those in need, a super hero who defends the weak against a super-villain. At some point I “grew up” and forgot that dream. Who was I to make a difference? But now, through knowledge gained by faith, I know that the ancient war against evil is reality, and I join the fight on the side of all that is good and pure to rescue those who truly need help .

When we recover this magic and mystery, we no longer have to live by rational thinking and our puny understanding of possibility. We can understand our lives in light of the Creator behind the creation, the Christ behind our existence. Chesterton says, “In short, I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.” We are children who have been adopted and made Holy, or separated for a purpose in this world. We are a people who did everything wrong, who have been picked up, cleaned off, and have been made right. We can kneel and thank God, for we know that we are more than an organism on a rock, more than a person born of chance and human will. We can overflow with thankfulness for everything that has been given, for we see the world as it truly is: full of wonder and magic.

In this time of crisis and war, life pressures and church politics, it is hard to dig our heels in and remember who God is, who we are, and what we are supposed to be doing. It seems that the gateway to Elfland is blocked by a flaming sword, and we are stuck out in the cold of harsh reality of life. I, for one, need to remember the magic of my childhood – playing with elves and fighting dragons – for this is why I was called.

This book is about practitioners – architects, engineers, psychotherapists, and others – and how they perform their work. Schön’s main assertion is about a new type of thinking, what he calls reflection-in-action. It is this type of thinking that I believe will help Bible teachers become much more effective, and reflective, in our effort to help others find Christ.

Schön begins by explaining a vast change in the professions beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s. “The professions are in the midst of a crisis of confidence and legitimacy…the professions themselves, the long-standing professional claim to a monopoly of knowledge and social control is challenged.” Put bluntly, once doctors, lawyers and professionals were seen as all knowing. But now, with the increase in knowledge for common people and growing arguments in the field, they have lost this status. Schön stated that the age of “technical rationality,” or the thinking that professional activity consists in instrumental problem solving made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique, is ending. In other words, the notion that every problem is a neat package that can be solved through equations, research, and an existing body of knowledge is over.

Let me give an example of the end of “technical rationality.” During the 70s and before, you may remember going to a doctor, and him (usually a him, at that point in history) giving you medication for this illness or that. It didn’t matter what he gave you or how much, you took it. We trusted their opinion and advice without question. Now, however, most of us will go into the doctor’s office with some theory about what we have (we looked it up on the internet according to our symptoms), we have some idea what medications we are willing to take, and for the most part we can tell our doctors what we want and don’t want. And this is not just limited to medicine. This end to technical rationality can also be seen in law, construction, architecture, and so on. For good or ill, practitioners have lost their stranglehold on the world and power is much more evenly divided.

Schön explains that with every practice, there is a high ground and a swampy lowland. The high ground is “where practitioners can make effective use of research based theory and technique.” Those who dwell here are devoted to an image of solid professional competence and are fearful of entering a world in which do not know. This high ground, Schön asserts, often contains problems of little importance. The swampy lowland, on the other hand, is “where situations are confusing messes incapable of a technical solution.” Professionals who dwell in the swampy lowlands face the crucially important problems of the world. They are willing to forsake their places of importance, and often describe their methods of inquiry as “experience, trials and error, intuition, and muddling through.”

The training that many practitioners receive in college is no longer adequate if they wish to get to the swampy lowlands of practice. Schön speaks about a new kind of knowledge professionals need, a reflection-in-action. A kind of thinking that is “implicit in the artistic, intuitive processes which some practitioners do bring to situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict.” Much like a good jazz musician manifests a feel for the music as they make on the spot adjustments to the sounds they hear, practitioners who use this type of thinking make judgments about the best course of action second by second. “As a practitioner experiences many variations of a small number of types of cases… He develops a repertoire of expectations, images, and techniques. He learns what to look for and how to respond to what he finds…thereby conferring upon him and his clients the benefits of specialization.” Reflection-in-action is central to the art through which practitioners sometimes cope with the troublesome “divergent” situations of practice.

So what does this have to do with teaching the Bible? Are we practitioners? In a sense, we are. We have a practice to teach others the Word of God and do so in ways that they can best learn, accept, and thrive in. The easiest way of teaching the Bible is to get a question sheet, write down the answers we learn, and then transfer our knowledge about the passage to those who are willing to listen. “Good” Bible students listen and take notes and then write a testimony. “Not so good” (never bad) Bible students question the answers, won’t write notes, won’t write testimonies, and so on. This is, in essence, a form of technical rationality. We know the answers, we have a beeline to God through His word and through our ready-made question sheets. We tell them the answers and as soon as they respond to the answers we give them, they are growing. This is truly the “high ground” of Bible study. The Bible students of yore looked forward to earning their titles, loved attention by senior leaders, and could look forward to a life of leadership as defined in the past.

But, in the famous words of Bob Dylan, “The times they are a’ changing.” From what I have seen, the old ways are wearing thin and we can no longer rely on the high ground to help most people grow into Christian leaders. Many young people don’t want to earn a title, let alone use them. Many want little – or no – contact with leaders, and are much happier in the ministry if they have none. Moving into the swampy lowlands seems an integral part of helping the new generation. The new generation wants to be heard, and it takes time and effort to understand them and the way they think. It takes careful listening on the part of both the teacher and the student in every Bible study. Gone are the days of telling people to write a testimony, and them doing it without question. Guilt rarely works, and telling people they need to repent eventually turns into a “white noise.” Now, more then ever, Bible students need to understand the explicit value in everything they do, or they will not want to do it.

I don’t claim that this is a positive change, nor a negative one. Nor am I making any judgments about what is done by anyone currently, or what was done in the past. I know for a fact that some Bible teachers have taught in this “reflection-in-action” way for many years, as I have been cared for by some of them. I am also not calling for comprehensive changes in the way things are done, simply a call to discuss this new view toward the work we are doing. I am calling for us to understand the complexity of each person, and their life situation, and their emotional and intellectual state, and to love and serve them accordingly.

The Law of Undulation is explained as the peaks and troughs humanity experiences in every area of our lives, such as our work, friends and, most importantly, our relationship with God. Peak times are characterized by feelings of richness and liveliness, where everything is new and exciting. Troughs are full of numbness and poverty. Humans are by nature unstable and, according to Lewis, this roller coaster of feelings is the “nearest approach to constancy” that we will ever have.

Specifically, Lewis talks about the difference between our initial Christian experience vs. our ongoing spiritual lives. Uncle Screwtape states that God initially sets us “off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation.” Later, however, our spiritual life changes as we begin experience difficulties. Screwtape says that God “withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.”

In short, we begin our Christian life in the “honeymoon phase.” Our first love for God is all-encompassing and seems that it will carry us through to eternity. Later, however, it seems that God is nowhere to be found and we must keep being Christian regardless of our feelings. It is during these emotional troughs that Satan frequently attacks. He attacks our body, usually with lust and sexual temptation, where we take the pleasures “which God has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden.” And he attacks our mind, “making us doubt whether the first days of Christianity were not, perhaps, a little excessive.”

I think it is safe to say that every Christian experiences this undulation. In my early walk with Christ, I remember praying for God to prove his existence by getting me a Toyota hippie van (no comments please). A few weeks later, I found one for $100 (true story). I remember feeling God’s presence in every area of my life, as if completely surrounded by his love at all times. Many of my friends were using terms like “Ned Flanders” or “Bible thumper” to explain me, I was proud of it. I was even honored to be cleaning church toilets — for Jesus!

Now, it is fifteen years later. I have made many decisions of faith that have steered my life this way and that, and I have reaped the benefits of many of those good decisions. Yet no matter how much God has done for me, I still doubt Him on occasion. Sometimes, I can’t even remember why I am doing basic things like writing testimonies or doing daily devotionals. It is at these times when acts which used to bring me joy lose their fervor, and I am left wanting, sad, and alone.

My adventure through getting a doctorate has been especially trying at times. Last semester, I was studying for the last, and most difficult, exam of my last semester. For the first time since I became a Christian, I doubted God’s presence. Sure, I often feel as though God is gone, but I still know He is there. But this time I actually thought He was not with me anymore. I began to think my WHOLE grad school experience was me walking out on a limb without His holy presence protecting me. This was the most frightened I have been since I became a Christian.

So what are we supposed to do about this? How can we manage this fundamental tension? We are human, so we have extreme highs and lows. And we are Christian, so we must serve God regardless of how we are thinking or feeling at the time. In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis offers a few hints that I find helpful about how to endure the troughs.

First of all, we need to know WHY God is letting this happen to us. Screwtape tells his nephew, “Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” This means that God is training us to be more like Christ at these times. He allows us to understand something of what it felt like when He was alone on the cross, so that we can grow up in our spiritual lives. Our fear and feelings are not unvarnished reality. And God has a plan behind all of it. This reminds me of Joseph, who didn’t understand why he was a slave or prisoner. And Job, whose whole life was taken away. And the Apostle Paul, who was beaten, jailed, and shipwrecked. Each one of these men were trained through these hard times and made much greater than they would have been.

Second, we need to seek help from those who understand our condition. Screwtape recommends his nephew to keep his patient out of the way of experienced Christians who will offer up passages that will help him in his hour of need. Verses like Matthew 11:28-29 or Exodus 14:13-14 give us hope when we are most vulnerable. Christians who are not accustomed to troughs need to find someone they can talk to and seek help from.

Knowing that we will surely experience this Law of Undulation, we can use our peak times to prepare for the troughs. We all need to come together as the Body of Christ and reach out for help or offer help to those in need.

What about you? Have you experienced this Law? Is there a particular Bible verse or passage that has helped you in times of fear or doubt? Have you been helped out of a trough by a brother or sister in Christ?