Skip to main content

Prideful Students Make for Horrible Teachers

Below is a post I made to my fifth online class I am currently teaching. I felt it necessary because the thoughts have been building up within me. I know what it is like to have become a learner again. I try to keep this mentality in life: with my wife, my kids, my coworkers, my students, my fellow Jesus followers, and with those in the world. Remaining a life-long learner is so important, even critical.

I would love your response. Pick a point of contention and give me some feedback or even pushback. Either way, I want to learn from you.

>>>>>>>
This could be you. One of the things I remember in going back to school for my 2nd masters and then my doctorate is the feeling of angst in that first class. It took a couple sessions for me to remember that I was not a teacher but a student. I needed to come down from my being a teacher for many years and sit again with a humble mind and heart to learn from those who have given their lives to study and know what it is they are teaching. This might not be you ... yet. 

One of the things that is easy to miss, and I say easy because most of my students are guilty of doing this. I could be wrong, but what it seems like to me is that either they are not doing the reading and think it acceptable to just ramble their own thoughts on the topic "just to get the work done and turn it in" and then fight me for a good grade; OR they do the reading but 1) do not either know how to synthesize what they have read enough to engage their minds to learn and assimilate the truth into themselves and then once it has been actualized within, restate in their own words what they now believe (from their upgraded self & mind), or 2) they don't like what they read for whatever reason and still just give me what they want to. 

This is not called learning. 

There is minimal skill applied here. 

God is worthy of much more. 

We need to be growing from who we were into who God has predestined us to be = conformed into the image of His Son. 

God loves you and accepted you where you were, but he also loves you too much to leave you there. We will not grow unless we are challenged. Even a seed must sprout and use energy to lift the ground off its head to emerge onto the scene. My fear for my students is that they will not become good students and therefore know how to lead others in being good students either. 

The reading for ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION is one instance where the above has taken place with several of you. You have given me what you think it means. It does not mean Jesus. It does not mean sinless. It does not mean that someone has arrived at a position where they cannot sin nor be tempted to sin. If these are found in your definitions or posts or papers, it can only mean that the wrong ways of learning as a student above ... is you. 

Become a good student. I beg you, we need good leaders today who have paid the price to do the hard work of sitting still, thinking, and learning from THE teacher of all teachers, and through His servants the truth that has always been and always will be. For the sake of the next generation, I beg you, be a LIFELONG learner! ALways stay humble, never become a know-it-all, Lord over others sort of person. Stay real and relational and a lover of all people because you are a continual learner of Jesus. 

If the above is you, please stop. Stop trying to teach me and the others in your class and instead be a learner with us. Share what you are learning. I challenge you to take this time you are having now in this course to invest in being a humble learner. 

Popular posts from this blog

"Just Thinking About Jesus"

I was wondering today about how I could start meaningful, spiritual conversations with others whom I know are not Christians but perhaps once were. I wondered how I would come across if I was deep in thought and he or she asked me, "What are you so deep in thought about?" and I replied, "I was just thinking about Jesus." I wouldn't want it to be annoying, just bridging. I was reading over an article adapted from The Evangelism Study Bible, that explored responding to people who have had a bad experience with Christianity. I found their five reminders worth repeating and good for keeping in the back of your mind, once practiced in your "holy imagination" (aka, spiritual reflection). 1. Don't be defensive. Remembering that it isn't so much that you do not agree, but HOW you disagree that will stick in their minds when they walk away. Take into yourself their comments as if you were the one who did them wrong and then reflect it back to the...

What if Metallica Came to YOUR Church?

A reaction to John Van Sloten's, The Day Metallica Came To Church: Searching For The Everywhere God in Everything ,  2010. This book caused me to rethink some of my foundational theologies, specifically Creation and the Fall. If God created us in His image and declared His creation as ‘very good’, what consequences did the sin of Adam and Eve have upon us? How deep does it go? I have some very strong thinking patterns that hold everything as either good or bad, God’s or Satan’s, black or white. This either/or (dualistic?) outlook doesn’t leave room for the mysterious. But what if all of these things were meant to lead me to something more? What if I always stopped short because I was led to believe that when I came to a certain point I had arrived—mission complete--stop here and move on to another subject? And what if that wasn't true? I was challenged by the thought of how God speaks to us outside of the Bible. I have believed that God speaks to me through many things (...

Are Teens Living an Avatar Existence in our Matrix World?

What if teens today are living out their lives in a somewhat Matrix existence? A false reality where the "adult world" that is seen and lived in by adults is participated in by their sending a 'surrogate avatar' out into it everyday while their 'real body' is kept in an underground world. This makes sense. The world the next generation has been handed by adults of the past 2-3 generations has not been a very safe one at all. What is seen on the outside is never the "real"--it hasn't been the real in the former generations for decades! All that is cared about is the self--and we have become very adept at self-preservation. But I wonder if this isn't just a deception of the Enemy? If we are creating a lifestyle of fake-living, how can the next generation be real? They would be cast to the sidelines until they wised up on how to live with us--in a fake, covered up manner. But learned they have! 2 nd life living among our teens is n...

Family Time Videos