I have long been frustrated at experts who cannot teach well because they know too much, are overly enchanted by their subject matter, and don’t have the ability (or sense) to discriminate between all that they know and what student needs to know. The most handy example of this for me is IT people who try to show tech-idiots like me how to use new software or new equipment. But the problem shows up in our field(s), too, and becomes even more egregious because of the gravity of our subject matter. I have seen it in teaching labs where masters level students have to practice teaching and perpetually “overteach;” everything they know is of enormous significance to them and they take an almost compulsively dumptruck approach. Then, we become more than poor teachers; we become condescending and cynical toward those teach because we perceive them to be superficial or in some way “they just don’t get it”. As educators we face constant pressures, both internal and external, to have things figured out and get past the scandal of our own unknowing. When we accept and respond to those pressures (and I sure do) we fall prey to the very vice and disconnectedness that you and Lewis describe. Only when we own and teach through our own unknowing can what we do know have any real significance.

Thanks for the insightful and prophetic reminder, brother!

Worship leaders have a teaching responsibility as well, something you and I talked about often. Any ideas for how this might apply there?

I love this. When reading it I guess I was drawn more towards thinking of teaching in church rather than academically but I wonder whether all to often, we get preachers and teachers teaching (as lewis puts it) “what is understood already” and failing to dig deeper and answer the questions that continue to go unanswered in the church.

Equally perhaps sometimes we go too far in trying to answer the ‘unanswered’ and fail to teach the basics…its a fascinating balance.

As I prepare this the last couple of weeks before I begin teaching one of the hermeneutics sections for beginning students at Denver Seminary, I find myself struggling as an educator at exactly this point. I have been a teacher for many years in other contexts and I recognize the dynamic you described all too well. Some call it teaching “from the 60,000 foot level.” One thing I have learned is the conclusion you reached: I have learned to love my students more than I love the approval of others for putting everything together and tying really nice bows. I have learned that “love covers a multitude of [pedagogical] sin.”

Thanks for the reminder, my friend. As I go over the PowerPoint slides and try to fine-tune the presentations to include the latest developments in hermeneutics and face the temptation each day to unload the whole dump-truck—because I find it exciting and because, in the final analysis, it is important—I will keep your ruminations in mind and try to listen carefully to what’s going on in them before answering questions that aren’t being asked.

The other thing I have realized anew in these intensely frustrating recent exchanges with Brett is that teaching hermeneutics entails first doing theology. It has come upon me with ever increasing weight that even though I “just” teach hermeneutics, I end up nonetheless being a theological educator, and that carries proportionally weighty responsibility (Jas 3:1) . . . yet another source of humility for those who, like me, are so prone to abide in that rarefied atmosphere at 60,000 feet. I’m so thankful for the faithful men around me who have committed to “sanctified heel-grabbing” and keep pulling my feet back down to earth each time my theological hot-air balloon begins to gain upward momentum. And this theological educator is all the better for it.