Getting Values off the Wall

There was a time when this painting by John Everett Millais hung on classroom walls. A leathery sailor astride a beam has captured the imagination of two young lads with his tales of adventure on the high seas. One of them was to set sail and become famous as an adult adventurer - Sir Walter Raleigh. It’s a timeless image of a storyteller setting fire to the hearts of a new generation eye to eye, mind to mind and heart to heart.
 
As I handed the story of Jesus to a tradie with a young family a couple of weeks ago, he accepted it a bit off-handedly with words I’ve heard many times in my life, “Yeah well religion’s a good way to give your kids values.” There was more wisdom in what he said than he probably realised.

The findings of a well-researched Wellbeing Index surprisingly confirmed that in secular Australia, people with a more spiritual orientation, tended to score higher than those with a ‘God-free’ outlook. They had more purpose, self-esteem, satisfaction with achievements and a greater sense of place in their community. They were also more likely to care and give generously. I’ve met some who were more sacrificial and more adventurous too.
 
I was curious when I read the recently published World Happiness Report. Finland has held first place for the past seven years followed by other Nordic countries. It struck me that one obvious reason was that the enduring values contained in the Bible and in particular, those modelled by Jesus, were deeply embedded in their cultures. Australia has slipped to number eleven.
 
The Index found that engaging in benevolent acts and expecting kindness from others, both matter at the level of individual happiness. Historian Tom Holland has traced the habit of outgoing charity in the Western world back to the transformation of the hard-nosed Roman Empire by the teachings of Jesus. Single-handed, Jesus gave the world a moral vocabulary to live by.
 
If you walk into any school across Australia these days, I guarantee you’ll see a list of values painted in bright colours on the wall like Respect, Cooperation, Responsibility, Care, Inclusion. After fifty years in the classroom, looking into faces aged from five to seventy-five, the question I ask myself as a teacher is, “How in the world do I shift static aspirations fixed on classroom walls, to being active ingredients in the daily lives of my students?”
 
This is mission critical to the future of our country. Investment in creating social capital pays dividends by producing people ready to give something positive back.
 
Experience has taught me that the age-old business of storytelling is one of the surest ways to skill new generations. I know deep down that I absorbed values from being plunged into the lives of good people who changed our world by doing stuff that counted. Along with my mentors, their life stories were stored in my inner gallery as heroes to copy. I was one of those wide-eyed boys drinking in the old salts’ yarns!
 
The fresh findings of these analysts inspire me to keep at the job of gathering and telling stories of genuine goodness and robust kindness that have shaped Australia. On my website theoutbackhistorian.com.au, you will find an assortment of amazing yarns about men and women who lived out lives that should stir all of us. The ball is in your court. Please use them to people the inner libraries of your children and friends. Don’t let them lie idle – be like that sailor in the painting. Infect the lives of those around by recounting the stories of authentic faith adventurers!
 
I wanted my tradie friend to realise that, more than anything, it’s the personal encounter with Jesus himself that unleashes the power to bring those aspirational values off the wall and into our daily walk and talk.