Teacher

Teacher

By Michael Kay

Copyright 2013 Michael Kay

Smashwords Tenth Edition

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Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter One, A through C

Chapter Two, D through F

Chapter Three, G through I

Chapter Four, J through L

Chapter Five, M through O

Chapter Six, P through S

Chapter Seven, T

Chapter Eight, U through W

Preface

A good professor is not the same as a good teacher. Good professors are researchers, and they usually have a natural command of a subject. Many of the profs I had, could not understand a good question; they never had any. It all made sense. They just understood the material. But not everyone has a natural ability to understand electricity. It is hard to explain to someone who has never struggled with Calculus, why you are struggling with it. How do you teach Calculus to an idiot, when the math comes easy? I think God made good teachers a little dumb. He wanted them to struggle with learning. With the struggle comes patience, and the ability to communicate a subject a variety of ways. The B and C student, who worked hard, is usually the best teacher. Their mind couldn’t easily grasp the concepts being communicated. That’s good for the rest of us.

When it has come to my faith, I have had to struggle with the material at times. This book represents that struggle. Over time, I have collected these struggles in notebooks, and the sidemargins of my Bible and other books. I decided to put them in one place for others to benefit. Many of these topics are just random thoughts on a subject. Many of them come from working at a college and a church.

If you have a subject or question, it will be found alphabetically. My college, and the church I attend, is mostly made up of younger people who struggle with identity, their faith, and their place in the world – as I did. I want to help with some of that. So, some topics may appear juvenile. I cover sex at length, because many young people have questions about their chastity. I have also addressed some paradoxes in scripture, because younger people have the courage to point out that the Bible doesn’t make sense all the time. The old tend to be more content with their doubt than the young. As least I am. And many of the topics simply deal with practical matters and attitudes.

Most of us are not theologians. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t take a stab at the meaning of life, and the weird things that come with it. I was given the party line on most subjects relating to my faith when I had questions, which is something I wanted to rectify with those that come after me. Doctrine is a good thing, but when it leaves you empty, maybe God is telling you to look a little more. My searching is for those that are in the position I was in when I was 11, scratching my head, and trying to figure out the world. I hope you are helped by my search for answers.

Back to the top

Chapter One

From Afraid of the Dark to Credit Cards

Afraid of the Dark

My son came out of his room last night while I was reading in my comfy chair. He looked a little scared. I picked him up and began to rock him. When we are little, we have such a confidence, and awareness of something other than the three dimensions that we inhabit. A grown up telling you not to be afraid of the dark is irrelevant when you are sure that there is something in that room besides balls and teddy bears. As a child, we have a sense of the intangible.

What are we made of? There are two theological views that I have ascribed to at times: One, is the trichotomist view, which states that we are three parts: body, soul and spirit. Two, is the dichotomist view, which says that our existence is made up of two things: body and spirit. I am not going to speculate on the rightness or wrongness of either of these views. Instead, I am making an argument for the intangible. We are something other than body.

Why are we so sure that there is nothing in that room? Maybe my son, who has not been spoiled by the real world, is smarter than me. Childlike faith. We understand it completely when we are a child. It is the motion that propels our 3 year old mind away from people that we don’t like for some reason, and causes us to quickly escape a house that is empty when we are the last ones to leave – there has to be something in there pursuing us.

As we grow our senses dull, but all of us remember the confidence in the intangible that we retained in our youth. Maybe we have lost our faith, and have come to believe the lie – that there is nothing in that room but teddy bears and balls. How surprising it will be to some adults, who finally close their eyes to this world, to find out that there really was something in the dark to be afraid of.

Advice Giving

Do not give advice based only on your failures, but give it based on the evidence presented to you. Otherwise, your wisdom will only be biased towards trying to fix your own failures, instead of using your failures to guide someone correctly.

Animals

Both the Garden of Eden, and Nebuchadnezzar’s descent into madness, teach us that as we become more obedient to our flesh, we become more animalistic than human. In the Garden, man was supposed to have dominion over the animals. We see this order reversed when Eve takes the fruit, and then gives it to her husband. Adam blames Eve, who in turn, blames the serpent. Blame is really a confession of control. Whenever we say it was, his fault or her fault, or the snake made me do it, we are saying that the they was in control of the outcome. Since the blame finally rested on the serpent, the serpent received dominion. All disobedience in scripture seems to result in some animal taking control: Serpent, Balaam’s donkey, Nebuchadnezzar becoming wild, and the Dragon in Revelation. The appetite is the god of the animal; a slave master that feels natural, and cannot be disobeyed. The human separates himself from the animals not by being able to say yes to his flesh, but by being able to say no.

Appetites

People are often surprised by the behavior of certain characters in the bible. I don’t see why. The characters are often doing the same things that we would have done -- had we been in the situation. For example, it is considered strange that Esau would trade his birthright for his stomach; however I don’t know many people, in my generation, who have kept their virginity for marriage. Most would say that they wanted to, but their hunger at the time was too great to hold on to the promise. Esau just got really hungry. Similarly, we find it strange that Lot’s wife would look back after specifically being told not to; however, viewing the destruction of others is a difficult fleshly appetite to not indulge. I have spent much time behind a slow ring of cars just to discover that the traffic jam is nothing more than everyone pausing in their day to enjoy the wreck on the side of the road. As a church we hold boys accountable for their fleshly addiction to pornography, but pornography is more than just sex. Lust is lust regardless of how the indulgence is met. A family sitting around the TV, watching a reality program about the abuse of others, is no less pornography than the hormone driven teenager; it is just in a different form. At least he has a good excuse, his sex drive is raging and naked women are attractive. What is our excuse? We will be held accountable for all lusts of the eye. After all, the first one had nothing to do with sex. It had to do with knowledge, which is probably the most destructive of all lusts, for knowledge will destroy the one who does not have the wisdom to know what to do with it. The knowledge Eve acquired -- we have been paying for ever since.

Apologetics

Don’t argue with people. Tell them what happened to you.

Attraction

If you want God’s attention, it makes better sense to become attracted to things he is attracted to, than it is to just be attracted to him. This makes sense really by watching the way of a man trying to catch a wife. Men will spend countless hours, and money, trying to demonstrate how much they love a woman; buying her flowers, taking her to the movies and so forth; but none of these things will make as much difference as finding out what she loves, and learning how to begin to love it. So, if you want a girl to take notice of you, don’t take notice of her, but rather, begin to take notice of shoes. The consequence of this will be that she will find you interesting, which is your goal anyway. She knows you like her, but getting her to like you is a totally different undertaking.

So it is with the Lord. Cornelius wasn’t particularly looking for Christ, but because he found the poor to be worth his time and attention, Christ came looking for him, because to Jesus, the poor are valuable.

Authenticity

I overhear conversations in church about someone being fake. What does that mean? All of us are fake in a sense, but some of us are genuinely fake (really trying) while others are deceptively fake (want to be viewed as really trying). For example, someone may say, I don’t feel like forgiving that person, and I don’t want to be fake and pretend like everything is okay. This would be calling the feeling of forgiveness to be genuine, and feeling to be basis for all authentic action within the faith.

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 3:6, that it is God who makes things grow. We must be about the discipline of walking in faith, and over time, God will produce in us the feelings that we seek after. Authenticity is more about giving a sincere effort, rather than producing the experience. If we give a true effort in our spirit, then over time, authenticity will be produced from this discipline. (Hebrews 12:11) We are being fake when we do this. Fake to our flesh. It is the flesh that demands