Your Human Limits - 11
The Elder is merely God's creature, a drop in God's 'time and space' sea.
So, as a teacher, you will be tempted by selfishness and self-deception. These are inexcusable ways you become an impediment between the congregation and God. And I mean you can be a real, every day, dastardly obstacle.
However, your sin is not the only obstacle to your teaching. You will also find yourself greatly restrained by the limits God has placed on you as a mere human.
For example, your knowledge will never be exhaustive. It will always be partial.
Whether you attend a denominational seminary where course work was chosen for you based on the flavor of the seminary’s tradition, or if you’ve been free-lancing your way, like a bee, from one interesting theologian to another, still there will be many things you will never learn or even have heard of. I’ve been a Christian for over 40-years and two of my favorite theologians I just met in the last three years: Harry Blamires1 and Cornelis Van der Waal.2
They are both deceased. I only met them through their books.
My point is: your knowledge is only a patch cut from a large swath.
Further, as a teacher you will need to learn that there is only so much time in a day. There is only so much time in your life. And it takes time to live and study and provide for a family and work a job and talk with people and prepare manuscripts, and on and on. You will never accomplish all there is to do.
There is, also, only so much space in one man’s heart and mind. Each of us will learn some things and forget them. Other things you will have to relearn, because you were taught wrong. And there will always be better teachers and deeper thinkers.
In the movie Hoosiers, about a high school basketball team, a new coach arrives to teach the young men how to become a great team. They played some good basketball prior to his arrival, but they were deficient as a team. The coach arrived with high level experience, but because of bad life decisions he had to take this lesser coaching, and teaching job, in an Indiana high school. The character is Coach Norman Dale, and he is played by Gene Hackman. I bring the movie up because at one heated point during practice, Coach Dale said something that would give his players perspective, if they listened to him. He said, "I’ve forgotten more about this game than you’ll ever know." Classic!
This comment by Coach Dale makes me think about the massive amount of things I’ve forgotten. Imagine, in paradise, if everything you ever learned and forgot had returned to you memory and was crystal clear again to you? Will we possess such clarity in heaven? Of course, our knowledge will still not be exhaustive. We are not God. But our minds will be made whole, which could mean you won't have forgotten anything any longer.3
So no, teacher, your knowledge will never be exhaustive. You will only be able to offer small morsels to your congregation. They will be important morsels, but they will not be sufficient to meet every learner’s need.
There will be things you will want to study, and plan into your calendar, and preach, but then you will become too old or you will die before you get to it. You might have good intentions to write articles and books too, but it could be that crickets will chirp and jump past your grave before you put pen to paper.
It is to be expected. You are only human. God has not made you superhuman.
He has made you an individual man - with feet of clay - and placed you in a particular spot to do His particular kingdom work. Most humans will not even know you exist. What’s more, those who do know about you will forget much of what you said and did. Your name might not even be remembered within a generation or two.
But that’s OK. Ponder it, so that it adds to your humility.
The question for you is, “How can I learn the things God wants me to learn and pass it on to the people He has put in my life? How can I work effectively to lead people within my generation, and be a benefit to those who will come after? How can I effectively add my work as a pastor/elder to the building up of Christ’s Church in history?”
Your life is short. Your knowledge is severely limited. You won’t travel the world. God will feed you with a dropper, enough to sustain you for His purposes and His people’s benefit. Some of the best resources will be hidden from you.
And, thankfully, you will walk paths others have worn down for you before you showed up. You might think it’s OK to walk past books written by unacknowledged thinkers. You might shrug them off as irrelevant. I suggest that some of them you should stop and read. They might be deep in the woods and off the main roads, but there are some jewels. Be cautious, but not threatened. Some thinkers were not recognized as important until after they died.
Finally, God is pleased that you are a drop in the sea, for you serve His purpose; and that is what He wants; it is the greatest good. You’re a drop, but an important drop and a necessary part of God’s sea.
Harry Blamires was an English theologian, literary critic, and novelist known for his works on Christian thought and literature, including The Christian Mind. That was such a great book, same with his book Heaven & Hell, that I purchased seven other books Blamires has written.
Cornelis Van der Waal was a South African Reformed theologian and pastor, recognized for his contributions to biblical theology and his work on covenant theology. The book Van der Waal wrote that I liked a lot was called, The World Our Home: Christians Between Creation and Recreation.
It is reminiscent of Paul’s comment, in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”