James on Teachers

Posted by on July 26, 2010

This morn­ing I had James 1:19 come to mind:

This you know, my beloved brethren. But every­one must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger;

The rea­son James 1:19 came to mind was because over the past few days, I have been dig­ging through online debates between Chris­tians and athe­ists (or agnos­tics, but mostly athe­ists), and have been extremely dis­ap­pointed with the char­ac­ter and tone of those debates by the pro­fessed Chris­t­ian side. To be sure, there is a def­i­nite and notice­able zeal for truth, though this zeal — a desire to defend the faith, or win, or defeat an oppo­nent, I’m not sure — is over­shad­owed by the fact that it is overly force­ful. I imag­ine it’s very off-putting to would be observers and par­tic­i­pants, at least it is in my case. That is what brings me to James.

In James 3:1 we read, “Not many of you should become teach­ers, my broth­ers and sis­ters, because you know that we will be judged more strictly”. I’m not sure James could have been more clear — teach­ers are judged to a higher stan­dard. That should be a scary real­ity to any­one who fan­cies them­selves a ‘teacher’ or an ‘apol­o­gist’ or what­ever else. There is cer­tainly a place for being firm and res­olute, but last time I checked that did not allow for one to lack class.

Scrip­ture tends to empha­size the “tam­ing of the tongue” and I think such words are wisely heeded. How we frame our responses to oth­ers is in itself, incred­i­bly impor­tant. If any­one read­ing this desires to be a teacher, preacher, apol­o­gist, etc. then they had bet­ter be sure to be extremely care­ful with their words. A good answer deliv­ered with sar­casm, arro­gance and con­ceit may as well never have been said.

Related posts:

  1. Book Review: A Mil­lion Ways to Die by Rick James
  2. Women as pas­tors, or teachers.
  3. Book Review: The Mak­ing of an Athe­ist by James Spiegel
  4. Book Review: Get­ting the Ref­or­ma­tion Wrong by James Payton

Category: Theology

Comments
2 Responses to “James on Teachers”
  1. Dominique Ourlin says:
    August 21, 2010 at 8:32 pm

    I couldn’t agree with you more. I have strug­gled with this many times through the years. I think we are often more con­cerned about prov­ing we are right than demon­strat­ing or reflect­ing some­thing of the char­ac­ter of Christ.

    I am really impressed by your research and com­ments on your web­site. Keep up the good work! See you tomor­row in church?

    DO

  2. Jeremy says:
    August 21, 2010 at 10:57 pm

    To add to the post — I had a brief exchange with one of the peo­ple who ‘inspired’ me to write this post, and you’re right when you say that we can often be more con­cerned with prov­ing our­selves right, than with reflect­ing Christ. A strug­gle I too admit to having.

    Actu­ally, I think I would go so far as to say that this ‘quest for being right’ will even­tu­ally taint how we respond in most every sit­u­a­tion (i.e. by han­dling crit­i­cism with sar­casm, rude­ness, etc).

    Thanks for the kind com­ments, will be see­ing me in church… Nice and early…