Teaching for discipleship requires two hands. With one hand we comfort, with the other we confront. Using both hands carefully, we have the potential to provide a sturdy, trustworthy place where young people can do the difficult and intimate work of examining their attitudes, values, personal aspirations, and the needs of the larger world.

Are you a comfort-handed or confrontation-handed religious educator? Or do you teach with both hands?

The hand of comfort affirms the adolescent paradox of knowing what’s right but not doing what’s best. The hand of comfort is needed when a young person struggles with the tension between self-interest and the interests of others. The hand of comfort reconciles the flawed human condition with a student’s deeper desire to do good. The hand of comfort calms storms, provides a second chance, represents hope, and offers grace.

Yet when we, as religious educators, rely too much on the hand of comfort, we end up providing tacit approval for the unexamined life. Without knowing it, we can foster mediocrity or apathy, and prevent students from establishing a clear-eyed perspective on how their actions and attitudes affect others. We never turn up the heat.

The hand of confrontation is necessary to stop hurtful words and actions as well as inappropriate attitudes. Sometimes the hand of confrontation helps a young person awaken, take stock, and assess. Sometimes it is necessary to use the hand of confrontation in order to drive young people out of their minds—so they can consider the minds of others, the mind of Christ, the mind of the Church. Yet when we, as religious educators, rely too much on the hand of confrontation, we can cultivate an oppositional relationship between young people and ourselves. We can unintentionally create a classroom culture in which conversation is reduced to “selling and telling”—or eliminated completely.

The proper use of either hand or both hands is a spiritual matter, not easily explained or prescribed. It requires that we come to the balcony and, as reflective practioners, seek the wisdom of the ratio. The wisdom of the ratio bears more fruit than either/or thinking. When it comes to using both hands, the wisdom lies in determining when and how much to use the hand of comfort and the hand of confrontation.

The power of each hand can have a highly formative effect on young people.

So…are you a comfort-handed or confrontation-handed religious educator? Or do you teach with both hands?