This is a talk I have been asked to give to a small group of HSC students, to remind them of the realities of life and that the HSC isn't the end of the world, pass or fail.
More to life than ATAR
Time must be just flying for you guys. You might even be thinking, “I shouldn't have come here, I should be studying.” I can tell you, having spent the last couple of weeks in a school staff room, that your teachers are flapping around trying to do everything they can to make sure you have as many resources at your disposal as possible. You guys are their number 1 priority. Right now, you have probably spent about 10% of your whole life being told that the most important thing in the world is the HSC. And that's if no one mentioned it to you before year 11. The HSC is like a finish line, but instead of a ribbon to run through marking the end, it is a large, heavy curtain, so that you can't see anything on the other side of it. Here you are, running towards that curtain, and since it's so big, since it's really all you can see, and since it's getting closer, it becomes more and more important. Occasionally, people appear from the other side of that curtain – parents, teachers, newspaper reporters, politicians – and they all seem to say the same thing: that this is so important, that it is a once in a lifetime thing, that this will shape your future.
What I'm here to do tonight is bring a little bit of reality into those comments. I want to shine a light onto that curtain, so that you can see through it and realise that it's not the life and death event that it can be made out to be. I could tell you this in any number of ways. I could tell you that while school helps you work out what you can do for a job, it's not simply all about making you an employment machine (school is about making people well-rounded informed citizens, if you didn't know). I could tell you that modern education theory thinks that measuring students against the results of their peers is one of the least effective ways of measuring ability. If I wanted to be really cynical, I could tell you that the HSC is a political construct made to try and explain why we don't have enough university places for all the people who want to study. I could tell you about the number of university and other tertiary institutions in Australia that don't even look at your ATAR – they prefer to interview you, look at your community involvement, see an example of your work.
Perhaps even just hearing some of those things makes you feel better. But I'm not going to explore them in any great depth, because while there might be truth in all of them, they still don't give you a real understanding of where the HSC fits into life. The HSC is one of many times in your life where you will face the concept of pursuing excellence. But the problem we face today is that we've forgotten what excellence really is! I don't know what happened exactly, but one day the western world woke up and decided that excellence was something we achieve, something we do. We thought, “Hey, you know I bet we can measure excellence by looking at what people achieve, and how they perform on a test!” Whoever came up with that idea just missed the mark by a mile. But you can understand their thinking. In modern times, we like to be able to measure things, to quantify, to rank, to rate, to put values on things. It helps us to have control over things, because it means we can put them in their place, and feel comfortable knowing where they are. We even do this with other people – we want to be able to label them, measure them, rank them so that we can happily say, “This person is smarter, this person stronger, this person prettier, this person faster.”
But how often do we think about what happens next? When you say, “This person is stronger,” then how does the person next to them feel? But you say, “Oh, that's okay, you're smarter.” Now both feel bad – one's dumb and one's weak. Not only that, but the next person isn't as strong or as smart as either, or as pretty, or as fast. You don't want to tell them they are less valuable, but what do you say? “Don't worry, I'm sure you are good at something.” Oh, great. That's really what you want to hear. So what happens now? People become afraid of doing things if they can't achieve at the highest level. Failure becomes something to be feared, and so it becomes something to be avoided – you can't fail if you don't try. This apathy towards achievement is the result for people who are average in a world where excellence is measured externally. It stifles any chance they had of doing their best, because their best isn't good enough – only the best is good enough.
Thank God that's not true. No matter how much society tells us that excellence can be measured or achieved or performed, it's just not true. You know why? Because excellence isn't something to do. Excellence is something to be. The person who was excellence itself, who shows us how to be excellent, is Jesus. You might say he did some great things. But his excellence wasn't a function of what he did – even great things like healings, miracles, teaching the truth. No, his excellence was a matter of his closeness to God. Jesus was God, and so he was excellent. He followed God's path totally, never straying from it, and so he was excellent. Now you might be thinking that's all well and good, but Jesus never had to do the HSC. But that doesn't mean he never faced a situation where he was called to pursue excellence. When Jesus was sat before a group of hateful priests, when he was cast before a Roman governor, when people were calling for his blood, for his death, he could have told them he was God. God's voice could have boomed out of heaven and claimed him as his own. It had several times before. He says he could have summoned a legion of angels to his aid, to prove his excellence by doing something – a healing or a miracle - but he didn't. He let them lead him to a hill, nail him to a cross, and execute him publicly and shamefully. He didn't do it so people would think better of him. He didn't do it because it was a good career move. He didn't do it because it made him a better person. He did it because it was what God wanted, and that, I tell you, is pursuing excellence.
The HSC stands before you as a moment in your life that marks a pursuing of excellence. But you must measure your success in that pursuit properly. If you ace physics, chemistry and maths, get an ATAR in the top 0.1 percentile of the state, get into Medicine at one of Sydney's prestigious universities, and become a world class surgeon, but do not help the poor and needy, you have failed to pursue excellence. If you blitz your exams, gain a scholarship into law, and become a barrister working in the highest court in the land, but do not seek justice for those who don't have it, you have failed. If you become a top research scientist, and discover a cure for cancer, or AIDS, but you are not walking humbly with God, you've failed. It goes against everything we're ever told, but it's the truth – excellence is how close to God we are, not how much we do. It's a condition of the heart, not a list of actions we take. Anything we do, we can only achieve with God's strength anyway. He wants us to know him, to love him, and to serve him. That is excellence in the eyes of God. That is the path Jesus trod.
The truth is you don't need to do the HSC to please God. In fact, doing it to further your position in life is exactly the opposite of what God calls us to. That attitude of self-centredness is the very core of a failed life before God. It is that failure in all of us Jesus came and died for – to free us from our own failure, and to give us his status of excellence before God, so that our relationship with God might be unspoiled, so that we can then choose to serve him.
You can serve God as faithfully as a doctor or a dancer, a scientist or a service station attendant, a lawyer or a lollipop lady. What does God want of you, today? In this next couple of months? Breathe a sigh of relief, because he doesn't demand the best. He just wants your best. He knows who you are, he loves you for who you are, and he expects only for you to give back to him what he has given you. That is the excellence God demands. He knows what you're good at, and if you trust him, he will lead you to use it. But you have to know him, and trust him. The only way to do that is through Jesus, God as a man. Accept what God has done for you, and you can really pursue excellence in your life – excellence in serving God. To live any other way, ultimately, is to fail. But if you ask God to accept you, your successes and your failings, he will. And he will count you as excellent as Jesus, if you accept that you can't find excellence without him. Let me finish by praying for you guys for the next couple of months.
Our Lord God, help these guys pursue excellence in whatever you equip them to do. Help them to see through the curtain of the HSC, and understand that what matters to you isn't passing or failing, but knowing you, loving you and serving you wherever they are. Help them to do that during this HSC by giving them keen minds, discipline, and a closeness to you. Amen
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