I just want to make a comment on how the “bentness of our nature” can be seenw hen we are teaching someone. When you are in a position of authority you are so vulnerable. Everyone sees your mistakes and shortcomings. Every single word of yours is subject to strictest scrutiny. You cannot unspeak it. You have to explain yourself away or lose your face. So what can be done about it?
I think that there are 2 main options with multiple “in-between” sections.
1) to know it all on the subject.
2) to put up with the idea that you do not and cannot know everything on a given subject and ask others, other people’s opinion, to learn together with them in the process so to speak.
I think that the higher the class: secondary school, college, university – the higher the expectation of the staff, that their teachers are real “Copnehagens” in their areas that they are professionals, who only lack shining halos around their heads. That is wrong. Noone is. The higher the ladder one climbs, the more he understands how little yet does he know. In the primary school, yes, the teacher is looked upon as a know-it-all-person. Those from the 10th or 12th grade at the same time understand the limitations of their teachers. They see that knowledge itself is a shaky thing. High school professor is not a “google” or “wikipedia”. He knows only that much as he was taught by other profs. In other words they understand the limitations of their teacher.
Now the question is whether they would answer that limitation with love or with scorn? Will they pick on their teacher, or will they cover that with love? And after all will the teacher be that open and vulnerable with them to say that he doesn’t claim to know-it-all on his subject.
So out of all this thoughts I want to leave two thoughts:
Firstly every professor has to study hard in order to be able to teach others.
Secondly, he himself should see his bentness, shortcomings and limitations and to reveal those to students if he sees that profitable from the academic standpoint of view. Without the planned vulnerability there is no real attachment to students and giving them something more than just mere encyclopedic knowledge. For wisdom is not in mere knowledge of events and facts but knowing how to apply those and look at those through the right pair of glasses. Yes, I would be super-opinionated here – through a Christian worldview glasses.
The best example as a teacher to me would be Christ Jesus. He always revealed Himself to those people, to whom he thought it was a right thing to open himself. Nicodemus, woman at the well, three closest disciples, Mary who came to the tomb of Christ – all of them benefited from Christ’s revealing Himself to them. Yet at other times Jesus taught HIs disciples not to through pearls before swines and he
That’s my insight on studies today.
May God’s Peace be with all His people.
2 Those who walk uprightly
enter into peace;
they find rest as they lie in death.
20 But the wicked are like the tossing sea,
which cannot rest,
whose waves cast up mire and mud.
21 “There is no peace,” says my God, “for the wicked.” (Isa.57:2,20,21)