I was once privileged to have teachers of varying abilities. Some of them were enthusiastic about what they were doing that it reflected in the way they taught us. You could literally see their pain as they try to salvage the conditions of those that were bodily present but never learnt a thing. They cried, (and sincerely we assumed it was), wolf. We thought that their dilemma was uncalled for. We thought they had lost it and turned to determine wielding the cane as their panacea. How wrong we had been all along and never knew. We were wise in foolishness and accused the wise ones of folly. 

  The short account I artlessly delivered to you is just a preface to a little hazy discussion I intend that we would have. 

  Jesus is our teacher. Honestly speaking, he had the first set of Christians directly under his tutelage but coincidentally, just like my teacher, he had occasions where he was completely dissatisfied with the “never-learning” life of his students that he had to boldly say to them, “until now, una never sabi this mata”. He expected to have a group of forever improving students, the kind you can call polymaths or savants considering how much of himself he had invested in them. He had taught them by one of the best teaching methods, Guided Inquiry, when he looked back and saw that the Lecture Method he employed in teaching them back at the mount had little or no effect. His long but punchy lecture only got them cheering him on but when he rested his case, the only thing they went home with was his authoritative tone while delivering the lecture; they went home with no new lesson learnt, defeating the Instructional Objectives  of the Emeritus Professor.

So, he did a kind of sifting to reduce the class size of his disciples and as you know, “many were called but only few (the twelve) survived the screening”, to be taught to teach. After the programme had ended and Jesus made up his mind to retire from teaching undergraduate students, he told them to go scouting for students from all over the world and make sure that they were taught pass the fundamentals of our faith.

Many enthusiasts ran into the street preaching from “hear-say” the truth they never had as a reality. Technicians like the Seven Sons of Sceva also joined the mob only to get embarrassed by stubborn, masked reagents. Other people he really never commissioned took it upon themselves to become his marketers (though they never studied marketing), selling his goods to the public; painting the wrong picture as they were already outdated in terms of the new breakthrough in Heaven’s Education. In case you still want to doubt, when you cross the bridge ask Bro. Apollos who boldly and accurately taught the old Research Method. Well don’t be too quick to condemn the actions of that loving brother, we were all at that same level and if people like Priscilla and Aquila who proved that they have been taught by Jesus by not shushing us but patiently updating us never came to our resources, we would have continued on the woolgathering venture. They understood what Jesus implied when he said that those who are not against him are actually for him. They remembered how patient and loving Jesus has always been when it comes to the ministry of putting us right in the face of misconceptions.

And sorry, Paul, aka The Killer, saw that too. Believe it or not, it’s stale news telling you that Paul persecuted the Church because he was “law-loving” thinking that he was “God-loving”. So, the next time an opportunity came to show how abreast he was with the new spiritual law and his deeper revelation, he told little Tim to stay back and help people like me that might be walking straight into cuddle-sac of endless philosophizing to see their pit falls; not because he wanted them to be downgraded before their students nor to get more highly placed. He just wanted to show his love. He could not afford to sit on a professorial seat of Jesus Culture and watch the doctorate degree holders stuck at the point of no promotion courtesy of the wrong theories they kept on quoting in their works. He wanted to make sure they were sound spiritually in terms of insight, so that their students would not be academically poisoned. But I doubt if the aim of our correction is to promote faith from a pure heart or just to prove a point and get others defaced. Either ways, teachers beware.