Starting the Discussion

père lachaise, originally uploaded by Samuel Boulitreau.

In my family, we didn’t merely talk at the dinner table—we discussed and debated.

After grace was said and the food was passed around, the conversation would start innocently enough with, “How was your day at school?” However, after a few minutes of hearing the details of three children’s experiences at school, my father would earnestly begin his “lesson.”

My father is not a professional educator. He's a technical school graduate who completed his apprenticeship as a tool and die maker after spending 4 years in the US Navy during the mid 1960’s. But he has loved history and valued learning for as long as I can remember.

Back to the “lesson.” Whether it was inspired by either something we children had recounted earlier, something on the news, or something he had been mulling over, my father always had a lesson. Something to teach. A method for stretching our minds. A plan to teach us critical thinking.

Often it began with an open-ended question, which led to more questions from us, then answers (or more questions) from my father. Sometimes these questions led to heated debates between us children, many of which unsettled my mother, the family “peacemaker.”

The mental "calisthenics" might also include a little physical exercise. During a discussion, if we asked where a country was or what a word meant, we never got a direct answer. Instead, we were instructed to “go get the globe” or “go find the dictionary.” After we retrieved said item, my father would encourage us to find the answer ourselves, helping us only if we were stumped. Then back to the discussion at hand, with my father continuing the mental workouts.

And it still continues today. If a meal is being served, a discussion is brewing. My father may not start the deliberation, but he has taught his children well enough how to start a thought-provoking conversation on their own. (Which can make holiday gatherings a bit "interesting.")

I realize that those dialogues shaped both my mind and my soul. The questions my father raised, though rarely theological in nature, made me pursue truth and evaluate those who were said to speak the truth.

It's not been an easy journey, this pursuit of truth, but it has lead me to draw this conclusion:

we must better understand what it means to live by God's grace.

I know I don't completely understand His grace, much less how to live under its influence. But I hope that starting this discussion about God's grace will enable both myself and my readers to better understand it and live under its influence.