Teaching

My brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment. James 3.1

I love to teach. I remember the day 38 years ago when I knew I was a teaching. I was in military training (ROTC) and Widener College (now University) in Chester, PA in the US. This by the way is the same place where I was saved. 

As part of our advanced training we had to teach a class. I taught on the various types or mortar rounds.  A mortar is an artillery piece that fires explosive rounds of various kinds. I studied all about them and could still tell you about several of the rounds. I was scared to death before hand, but once I got up there I knew I had found my calling. I loved it. I didn’t even mind watching the videotape we  were recorded on. The only points I lost were because I let the turned pages of my notes flop over the podium instead of folding them under. 

I started teaching immediately. The leader of the Inter-varsity Christian Fellowship offered me a chance to teach a Bible study. And that was it – I was hooked. I have been teaching for about 40 years now and still love it. 

But with the joy of teaching comes an awesome responsibility. A teacher is held accountable for what he teaches and that is a ‘stricter judgement.’ While teaching is a great ambition and there is a sense where we are all to teach by example we all need to remember how awesome the task is and not be too quick to teach what we do not know. I think it also reminds us, since we are going to be held accountable that we only teach ‘this sayeth the Lord’ and never ‘thus sayeth Roger.’ No teacher likes to mis-teach their students, no real teacher that is. But it is even more important and more eternal consequence if we mis-teach God’s word for then we have mislead others into spiritual error. 

I am glad for a loving and patient God. I look back to some of the nonsense I preached and taught (I wonder why we don’t say preached and teached or taught and praught) I am embarrassed. I have asked God (and some of those I taught) to forgive me for preaching my agenda or preaching what I heard without studying it myself. 

I can’t fix that any more than I have tried to do, but I can seek God’s help to remember the heavy responsibility for what I teach and see that it always lines up with His word.