Hi all. I apologize for how long it has been. I’ve been insanely busy with school. In fact, right now, I should be reading the last 60 pages of a biography on Andrew Jackson and then starting the 5 page paper I have to write over it. Did I mention that it’s all due tomorrow at 12:30?
All right…I know that as Christians, we’re called to be compassionate and merciful to others. But that definitely doesn’t mean allowing ourselves to be taken advantage of. We have to draw the line somewhere. The Bible teaches “tough love” in a few places, such as the “spare the rod, spoil the child” proverb. But how do you know where compassion and mercy end and tough love begins?
I guess I’m looking for Biblical reassurance that I’m doing the right thing by not giving someone my notes. Last semester, a girl in my French classes missed around 3 weeks. When she got back, the professor volunteered me to help her out. She came over and told me an elaborate story about why she’d been missing class, as well as her elaborate life story. I thought that some of those things could happen to one person, but it didn’t seem likely that all of those things would happen to one person. This semester, the same girl is in my French class. This time, she’s missed 7 weeks of class, only coming to take her midterm. It has been discussed that there’s really no way for her to pass the class at this point. Anyway, she called me this morning, asking for help. After making a quick call to the professor, I told the girl that she should talk to him.
I avoided her today in class by constantly being involved in conversations with other people. And I feel a little crummy about it, but I was worried that I wouldn’t know the right way to handle it if she asked me point blank to my face for help. It’s not as though she said my name or said something directly to me and I ignored it; I just made sure I was always otherwise engaged.
Did I do the right thing?
My roommate is another source of aggravation, but a good friend challenged me to go this past weekend without talking about my roommate. I thought that was interesting because I don’t usually talk about my roommate with my parents. Anyway, I didn’t talk about the roommate this weekend and I felt really good. I’m thinking of making it a standard practice over the next 25 days.
That’s all for now. I need to work on that biography. Hopefully things will soon calm down and I’ll be able to write more regularly.
You are completely in the right by directing her to the professor and not helping her. There comes a time when people need to stop relying on others to bail them out and stand up and help themselves.
Sounds like you totally did the right thing. I’d have done the same. It’s not your fault the girl is not responsible and you shouldn’t have to take on the impossible task of catching her up in the course; it’s just not going to happen.
I would think that if this young lady was really all that concerned about her schooling she would have contacted her professors and worked out something with them because she knew she was going to be out of class for an extended period of time. You are correct when it comes to tough love but because we are a compassionate people we want to help out wherever we can. Now the bible does speak of the brother that sins against us 70 x 7 in a single day and if he comes and asks for forgiveness we are to forgive them, but I am not sure that means we need to BAIL them out if they show no signs of actually repenting.
When it comes to school work or life there are some things individuals need to do for themselves but I am afraid we are fast becoming a land of dependents and not independents. I see way too many people quitting on life and expecting their classmates (fellow citizens) to bail them out because they really did not FEEL like doing the work needed to accomplish their goals.
I would ask this young lady what exactly she plans on accomplishing with her constant absences. I would think she would be doing herself a bigger favor by taking a semester or two off until she got her act together and could concentrate on her studies or whatever it is she wants to do with her life.
Of course these comments are only generalized because I do not know this young ladies ACTUAL circumstances but I feel like you she is asking you to carry too much of her load and from the sounds of things you have enough on your plate to handle at the moment.
I do not know if this helps or not.
But I would suggest you simply pray about it and then do whatever you feel led of God to do, that way you would not be sinning against God. 