The School of Hard Knocks

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! – James 1:22a (The Message)

There seems to be a loss of connection between what student nurses are taught and what they need to know when working in hospital wards. Research shows that these students find it difficult to bring together and make sense of their theory (school of nursing) and their practice (hospital ward). This gap between theory and practice is not a situation confined to social work and nursing. The same problem besets those who work in education or many other professions, such as medicine, law enforcement, and the church.

One way to prevent the development of a theory/practice gap is to have the nursing teachers give up a period of instruction in the school, and begin training nursing students in the wards on the very first day. To avoid a similar problem with ministers, students of theology should begin their course of study with work in a church along with the academic instruction.

The very word “theology” has been used more than once as a pejorative word meaning irrelevant. Arguments put forward are often dismissed as “mere theology”: that is, the arguments in the speaker’s mind did not connect with the practical situation. Theology in the mind of a secular society has come to stand for irrelevant theory, just as rhetoric now means irrelevant speech.

The beginning of this gap between theory and practice lies far back in history, and it was certainly an issue in the very early church. The Apostle James took to task those who emphasized faith at the expense of works. Both faith and works, he points out, belong to one another:

“Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! …this kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.” (James 1: 22,27)

Perhaps this very problem is what Jesus addressed when He prayed “I’m not asking that you (God the Father) take them out of the world but that you guard them from the Evil One. They are no more defined by the world than I am defined by the world. Make them holy – consecrated – with the truth; your word is consecrating truth. In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world.”

Notice that He didn’t just leave us with theory (truth), but with instruction that theory leads immediately to mission? Not just words, but also works.