I remember sitting on his bed, right in the middle, thumbing through the silver-edged pages of my new NIV Bible with the navy blue cover. It was my first Bible ever.
"How does it work?" I asked.
"What do you mean?" he answered.
"Well, what does everything mean? How is it laid out? How do you find things in it?"
He took my Bible from me and sat at the edge of the bed. I moved in close enough that I felt the warmth of my own breath on his shoulder.
"See, this is the New Testament. It's mostly about Jesus, His life and His teachings," he said. "It starts with Matthew," he continued, thumbing through towards Mark and onward. "Then you have Mark, Luke and John. They're all versions of Jesus' life."
He explained it section by section and sometimes book by book, and showed me how the numbers worked too. I think a part of him was beyond surprised at how little I knew about it, and the other part of him thought my enthusiasm wasn't authentic.
Regardless, that was my first taste of my first Bible ever.
I would listen to sermons online from the Bible belt and the pastors would often refer to stories in the Bible vaguely, saying, "Remember the story about [insert Bible character]? We all know what happened there, right?" But I didn't. It made it really hard to feel included when even alone, in the comfort of my own home, I felt like a Bibley virgin, pausing the sermon every few minutes while flipping frantically back and forth trying to find the back stories to which he was referring.
Another church I found, which is in North Carolina, was different. They wanted to appeal to doubters and seekers like me.
"Turn to Matthew," the pastor would say at the beginning of a sermon. "It's the first book of the New Testament." That alone grabbed me.
And then it got more complicated. "Turn to Haggai. It's one of the last books in the Old Testament. Most of you probably didn't even know it existed until today."
He'd go through the book verse by verse, defining all of the words that any good Christian should already know by now, and that form of inclusive preaching reached me at a fundamental level and also made me aware that even the most seemingly religious person often had no idea either, but was too prideful to say so for fear that they'd be perceived as a bad Christian or something similar.
The good teachers teach for their students, not for themselves. They exude a passion and a yearning to spread knowledge rather than to prove they're of superior faculties. I was so fortunate to have had the opportunity to begin my learning equipped with the most awesome, passionate teachers who really love God and taught through that love rather than through the self-proclaimed righteousness that causes so many close-to-home religious missions to fail miserably.
If it's not about who knows more about God and therefore, who is the better Christian, then it becomes about teaching each other how to love the way Jesus commanded. It becomes about helping each other become stronger in our faith rather than stepping on others, priding ourselves in our superior salvation.
If believing in Jesus is enough for salvation, then we should just help each other learn why. It's not a contest. The measure of a man shouldn't be how many hymns he knows or how much scripture he's read, but how much Jesus he has actually spread.
When a friend of mine who is in ministry suggested that I start my own church, I scoffed at the idea. I still consider myself to be a complete novice when it comes to religion, religious history and so on. But I do try to spread Jesus as often as I can. I try to spread the Gospel to those around me who misunderstand it and those who have preconceived notions about it which are negative and basically unfounded, despite them being so widespread and considered the truth about religion.
I do talk about Jesus often, and I try hard to keep it positive and easy too. If I see a window, I peer into it instead of throwing Bibles through it and yelling things about hellfire and salvation. All I want is for their mind's door to open a crack. That's all it took for me. And the generosity, enthusiasm and love that was shown to me by my Christian teachers did the rest.
I just wish more people taught Jesus the way Jesus did rather than hiding Jesus in elitism, cliques and religiosity.
I wish more people, believers and non, had the opportunity to learn and to awaken their soul that I had.
ETA: June 3, 2009- How coincidental is it that Mark Driscoll tweeted this short article on teaching today? :D
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