be ready

 Many years ago, a fellow church member approached me and said that if he studied the Bible as much as I did and the pastor, it would mess up his mind. I can't remember if I even had a response. Maybe I could have thought...”are you saying that my mind is messed up?” I don't know how much Bible study he thought I did, but it wasn't like I spent many hours a day studying it. Usually, I spent a lot of time trying to think through issues I was confronted with, and I read portions of books that addressed issues I was thinking about (by people I would both agree with and disagree with). I had a lot of time to think, because for many years, I did factory work that was very monotonous, standing at the end of a conveyor, stacking automotive parts—for many hours every day.

I have taught adult Sunday School from my early 20's into my 60's, and I had to put some effort into knowing what I was going to talk about in my class. I did have a tendency to pick some difficult topics. I need to understand things and know what I am talking about. A pastor from the same church once called me to his office and said: “Jason, tell us what you know, not what you don't know.” He must have heard me teaching on a difficult topic, and thought I wasn't well enough prepared. I'm sure that he was correct about that. Obviously, I've never forgot what he said.

I remember at the same church on a Sunday night I was doing the speaking, and I was teaching on regeneration. We had a visitor that night, who had family members in the church. I and the pastor went to visit him one night. He just kind of unleashed anger on me for teaching on such a topic. He claimed that he didn't think his parents understood what I was talking about, and even he, an elder in his church, didn't understand what I was talking about. I was just a little surprised and wasn't sure how to respond. (My pastor actually got emotional about it and defended our teaching.) Maybe I made it too complicated; I don't know. 

Maybe it seems arrogant to others to try to understand and have an answer for the things the Bible addresses. I know there are things that I work at trying to understand that others say they just aren't interested. I've had people say or indicate to me that they just aren't interested in prophecy. I guess I understand that, but I am very interested in those things.  A family member once told me that he wasn’t interested in prophecy, but he must have changed his mind later, because I sent him a book on a particular topic, and a few years later, he sent the book back to me, but it was an updated version of the book, not the same copy.