It’s May and time to work on final exams. Writing exams is a challenge. You can spend a little time writing the test but those kind usually take a lot of time to grade. If you spend a lot of time preparing the exam, grading can be swift and efficient. Exams have to be fair. It is easy to fill them with obscure things you said during the semester. The challenge is to find the essential details of a class that hopefully you were sure to have emphasized. I have heard profs say, “I taught it but they just didn’t get it.” My response is, “If they didn’t get it, you didn’t teach it.” Teaching isn’t merely mentioning something. Teaching is making ideas understandable and memorable.
Sometimes I am frustrated with sermons most of us can’t understand. Now I understand that I am not the brightest guy on the block but neither am I the slowest. I’m quite average and I figure if I can’t get it most of the congregation didn’t get it. I am frustrated because the Gospel is NOT complicated. It is true, as Peter said, some of the things Paul said were difficult to grasp; however, the basics are graspable by children. Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in systematic theology to get that.
There is a final exam for all of us regarding salvation. The questions are not secret. Number one – Do you love Jesus? Number two – Did you ask for forgiveness? Number one is natural if you said “yes” to number two. It seems like a no-brainer. I have a couple of students in my classes who are poor test-takers. I know they know the material but they seem to have a brain freeze when I give them an exam. So I take them aside and ask them to tell me the answers and they can. Jesus is like that. He is so anxious for all of us to pass He will do anything even it is reading our minds. He knows our hearts. By the way, this is a pass/fail exam. There are no grades.
Written by Roger Bothwell on May 1, 2014
Spring of Life, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org