An Ill-Fitting Shoe Requires Us to Hack off a Toe

I don’t think anything can quite prepare one for the horror of reading the true Grimm Cinderella story. Our blissful babes are treated to a sanitised version where the stepsisters try in vain to squeeze their feet into the beautiful glass slipper, visions of a fairytale ending spurring them on. We recoil in shock as the original Grimm story confronts us with sisters who are so desperate to prove themselves as the worthy wearer that they hack parts of their feet off in order to cram them into the slipper.

The maiden cut the toe off, forced the foot into the shoe, swallowed the pain, and went out to the King’s son. He took her on his horse as his bride, and rode away with her… Then he looked at her foot and saw how the blood was streaming from it. He turned his horse round and took the false bride home again….

Why could make these women so desperate? Desire. Hunger. The mean step-sister reframed as the wife of the future king. Mean triumphs; poor loses; the prince is a fool to be pitied. The wrong character ends up in the wrong story if this succeeds.?

Have you ever entered the wrong room and found yourself unwittingly with the wrong people? Have you accidentally joined a conversation and found yourself out of sync with its narrative? Have you ever arrived at a dress-up party in the wrong costume? Dislocated. Out of alignment. Confused. Disjointed.

I am wrestling with this feeling as I strive in my context to authentically imbue a Kingdom-shaping Christian education for shalom in an increasingly hostile broader context. We inhabit a world that spins a compelling narrative. A narrative that is forceful, engaging, enticing, and believable. A narrative that tells me to look after number one. A narrative that tells me to take control, be who I want to be, seize the day, and win at all costs. A narrative that perpetuates a sense of fear and victimhood and surreptitiously curls me inward upon myself. It is so easy to listen to that haunting tune. Lovingly it caresses my ear, lulling me and deadening my senses. “It is all about you.”

There are two shoes from which to choose. The one that treads the time-honoured trail of truth and the other that would require me to hack off a toe to wear it. The thing is, the authentic one sometimes looks like I’m wearing Grandma’s brogues at the ball. Old. Out of fashion. A bit laughable. Obviously out of place. Not with the times. The other choice is a glass slipper. Slender, beautiful, eyecatchingly lovely. But inauthentic. A shimmering mirror that beguilingly refracts the truth.

A place where my brogues might appear dowdy and even ridiculous is in that most public place of work. Many would say that my shoes have no place there, that these should only be worn privately. However, the twentieth-century martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, (1979) asserted in his book, Cost of Discipleship, that rather than living like the rest of the world, fashioning life on the status quo, we are called to model our whole way of life on the incarnational, sacrificial life of Jesus. Smith (2009) further concurs, challenging me that “Jesus is our exemplar of what it looks like to fulfill the cultural mandate. And he shows us what that looks like when the world is broken and violent: the shape of such image-bearing will be cruciform” (p. 163).

So what might it look like to consider wearing my brogues at work? Even when my workplace is a Christian school? Even more, what does it look like when my role is in leadership and my desire is to see our students equipped as disciples of Christ and our teachers modelling such a life? What does it look like when the very narrative of school is antithetical to the cost of discipleship? When the story is about desire, future happiness, and a solid career that will provide a good life in a world that is unstable and unpredictable. When the story is about climbing the ladder, competition, and self-promotion.

If Bonhoeffer’s definition of discipleship is correct, it looks like kingdom-shaping, where individually and collectively, people and their associated communities are about sacrificially being shaped by the reign of God, and purposed towards instilling that reign of God in the world. Taking every opportunity to work fervently towards the abundant flourishing of life through selfless acts of restoration in a fractured and groaning world. This has personal and communal implications. It requires that personally and collectively we see our imperative as about God’s kingdom, rather than building our own kingdoms. It requires me to understand that I am sent, in the same way as Jesus was sent, into the context of my school, to live a sacrificial life that incarnationally follows Christ. That in the not knowing and the difficulties of the ‘now but not yet’, I approach my role with faith in the biblical narrative, hope in its ultimate fulfilment, and love. Love for God and love for others.

Collectively, as a school, it requires a reframing of purpose. One that is aligned with biblical truth. Where we understand that our learners are not called to be good Christian versions of everyone else, clambering for security in a world that is unstable and increasingly foreign. Where we understand that our narrative arc is altogether different from the one that is presented in our news, social media, and the curriculum. Walter Brueggeman (2017) helpfully frames two narratives. One based on endless produce and an insatiable appetite for more, and the other on an epistemology of inheritance. “If the land is possession, then the proper way of life is to acquire more. If the land is inheritance, then the proper way of life is to enhance the neighbourhood and the extended family so that all members may enjoy the good produce of the land” (p 38).

The Lord’s prayer invites us to pray Your kingdom come; Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. A kingdom-shaping view of life is therefore anchored in the narrative that we are God’s people, in God’s place under God’s rule (Goldsworthy, 2001) and that shalom is a beautiful symphony, each instrument of creation playing its redemptive part, notes harmoniously aligned and glorifying the composer’s intentions.

If the learners who attend Christian schools are viewed as bearers of God’s image, created to be fruitful and multiply, to take Eden which was situated in the east, and push it out so that the whole earth might be cultivated, how might that reframe not only what we do at a Christian school but how we approach it and why we do it? If learners are attending Christian schools so that they are equipped to steward their inheritance, tending it in order to be a blessing to others and to represent the King, how might that transform our approach to our relationships, discipline, and learning? How might it influence the way that I as a leader am sent, daily into this community? We must wrestle vigorously and meaningfully with these questions if we are to avoid hacking off our toe in order to force our foot into a paradigm that is antithetical to biblical truth and, ultimately, end up in the wrong story.

References:

Bonhoeffer, D. (1979). The Cost of Discipleship. New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co.

Brueggeman, W. (2017). Sabbath as resistance. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.

Goldsworthy, G. (2001). The Goldsworthy trilogy: Gospel and kingdom, Gospel and wisdom, the Gospel in revelation. Carlisle, CA: Paternoster Publishing.

Smith, J. K. (2009). Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, worldview and cultural formation: Volume 1 of cultural liturgies. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.