I taught math for 44 years (I’m hoping St. Peter will give me extra credit for that), and over those years I had many students come to my office for help. If a student asked for help on a specific topic or help overcoming a particular weakness, it was relatively easy to find a way to improve their situation. We could work some problems together, talk about the reasons for what we were doing in class, or identify weaknesses in the student’s background on which to work. Sometimes it might mean getting a tutor or having the student study with another class member. These students would usually wind up succeeding, if not excelling, in the course.

The majority of the time, however, it was clear that the students hadn’t been as diligent in doing their work as they should have. Often this was due to the usual reasons: missing class, personal problems, distracting activities taking most of their time, a lack of industriousness, or a dislike of math. I would hear comments like, “Math was easy for me in high school;” “I didn’t have to work hard at math in high school;” “You either get math or you don’t;” or “I had a GOOD math teacher in high school. I always got A s.”

There was a subgroup of students, however, who were generally hard-working but just couldn’t get themselves to study math. They would say things like, “I don’t know how to get started;” or, “I’m just no good at math.” I just read the best answer to that in a book by popular mystery writer Karin Slaughter. One of the characters in the book is described by, “She had never been good at math. Or at least she’d never tried to be, which is the same thing.” Early on in my career I realized that most of these students were afraid to fail. Our students were good students who had done very well in high school, and this was the first time they had faced real difficulty; to them anything less than an A or B was failure. They couldn’t bring themselves to work hard, because subconsciously they wanted to use the excuse, “Yes, I failed (at least in their own eyes), but I didn’t really fail, because I didn’t try.” To help these students I had to convince them to have faith, faith in themselves and faith that work and effort do pay off. I never tried to deny that math was hard; in fact, I said that it was hard for everyone, including me. With help these students almost always improved.

We face a similar situation in our religious lives. We find that we can’t live the lives we feel we should. No matter how hard we try and no matter how hard we work at it, it seems impossible, because it is. Luther’s revelation was that we are not saved by works but rather by faith alone. Life is not a math class where hard work is the key to success; accepting God’s freely given Grace is the key. Oftentimes we are like my students who were afraid to fail; we let guilt and helplessness incapacitate us and keep us from His Grace. God’s love for us is unconditional, not dependent on our works. Like Luther we need to realize that we receive God’s Grace through faith alone.

Jim