Gentle Warning: This letter shall and will be understood only by students who have studied at UTC* at some point in time. Other readers are requested not to jump to any quick conclusions or criticize any or all of those concerned with this piece of work.
Dear UTC faculty members: Madams, and Sirs,
All of us enter UTC with a basic bachelor's degree being a requirement. It basically means we've been through kindergarten, school, and some sort of college experience. We've been with teachers who beat us up, threw chalk pieces at us, favored some of us over the others, and took us by the hand right from the vowel sounds up to the most complicated integration and differentiation. Yet, when we stepped onto this prestigious institution, the first thing you made us realize was this: We know nothing!!
To begin with, you literally taught us A, B, C, D of English because our previous education had to be remedied. For those of us who don’t know what “remedial” (in "Remedial English Course") means, it means 'cure' or 'medicine'. We, therefore, started off with being cured!
All of us came to UTC because of a call. Within a few days we wondered if the actual word was “call” or “fall”! We thought we knew the Bible in and out after so much of teaching and instruction from our parents and our teachers all our lives. But you said, "Listen, child, the Bible is definitely not what you think it is." So we obliged. We took up Hebrew, Greek, Claus Westermann, Walter Brueggemann, John D. Crossan, Postcolonial, Socio-Scientific, ethnography, ... (dot dot dot) and then came Theology.
"Theology is the 'queen' (pun intended in pronunciation), of all subjects. Thus said the famous Indian Christian theologian, 'Karl Barth!'". While we were still trying to figure out what we were up to, wondering “Isn’t theology just about the Bible?”, we had these souls twisting our minds saying, "You may be morally correct, but Ethically wrong." By this time we were already so confused that we began to go back to our roots. We did History.
From the Church fathers (who never really took advice from their mothers) to the subaltern historiographies, our minds were blown by the complexity of our world. Then again, at least one thing we were sure of was the fact that Jesus, the historic face of our faith, told us to go into the entire world and do mission. Those few words, the great commission, were so pregnant with meaning that you decided to introduce it to us through a new impressive word, “Missiology”. You taught us a lot, but we must confess that we only grasped two words. “MISSIO DEI!”
The enormity of politics that points to why we have so many religional, regional, cultural, and denominational divisions amongst ourselves is mind boggling. This enlightenment came about with our orientation to different religions. From "I am that I am (YaHWeH), we were exposed to "aham brahmashmi" (I AM GOD). After a taste of interreligious dialogue, you told us, it all comes down to being a shepherd. "Pastoral Care is at the very core of what you are called to do", you said. And guess what? We realized that we can never give Pastoral care and Counseling if we didn't meet this famous guy, the one and only Sigmund Freud!
Yes, it is all about Christian Education and Ministry to the margins. It is definitely all about how well we can communicate this! And finally, you taught us that all this will fall out of place if we remained gender biased as said by our very own Elisabeth (Germans don't use "z") Schussler Fiorenza!
Respected teachers, We know that you do not agree with each other on various grounds. But, that actually works out for the best of us. We have been eating a lot of different fruits from each one of you. To us, it has always been delicious fruit salad! We may have never said this. But, you have taught us what nobody else could have ever taught us. Your lives have been a blessing to each one of us and we thank God for that.
Each of us today, the students of UTC, like to echo the words of the famous mystic poet and saint Kabir,
"The river that flows in you also flows in me."
Thank you, teachers. We love you.
Happy Teachers' Day!
*The United Theological College is an Ecumenical Christian Theological Seminary situated in Bengaluru, India and has been nurturing and producing Church leaders in India and abroad since 1910. The College offers courses in Biblical Studies (Old Testament and New Testament); Theology and Ethics; History of Christianity; Religion, Culture & Society; Christian Ministry; Mission & Ecumenics; Communication; Women's Studies; and English.
Comments
Post a Comment