My dream started in the middle of a story. It was like opening a book in the middle or walking in on a movie half over. I was striding down the corridor of a high school headed for the principal’s office to introduce myself as a new teacher. I remember thinking that it’s important to walk with confidence around all these young people and not look like a lost puppy. Inside the school office, clusters of people milled around, working, talking, waiting. I finally located the principal’s office and wound up interrupting the man himself who was talking with another man. “How can I help you?” he said, all business. I said, “I wanted to introduce myself. I’m a new teacher.” “Well,” he said, “we don’t mind this preaching silliness….” I was stunned. His remark caught me off guard. Apparently, in my dream I was a teacher during the week and pastored churches after hours and on weekend. That, incidentally, was precisely my plan back in 1961 when, as a college senior majoring in history, God called me into the ministry.
Obviously, the principal in my dream had no use for preachers and spiritual matters. I said to him, “Well, sir, right now, I’m doing this education silliness. You know, this silliness called teaching.” Even in my dreams, I have a smart mouth.
Nothing further was said and I woke up. For the first time in memory, I could recall every detail of the dream. It was as vivid as though I had just lived it. “What was that all about,” I wondered. I lay in bed reflecting on all those godly men and women who teach school and put up with the harassment of unthinking and uncaring colleagues who scoff at religion and take every opportunity to put them down. These persecuted believers do not pop off in response the way I did in my dream. Most of them endure it and go on and do their best work. Some serve in high school and others teach in college. I do not have a clue what it feels like to live their lives. No one in the circles I travel in harasses me that way.
I take this as a reminder to pray for the teachers today, especially those serving in environments hostile to the Christian faith. God bless you, friend. Hang in there. Give it your best. “Do not be weary in well doing. In due season you shall reap, if you faint not.” (Galatians 6:9)
But let us pray for the students, too. When my friend Milton was working on his doctorate at the University of Alabama a generation ago, the professor walked into the room one morning, looked over the class, and said, apropos to nothing, “Washed in the blood of the Lamb! Whoever heard of such foolishness!” Now, Milton was a born-again layman who frequently led worship music in Baptist churches. He even led congregations to sing the kind of hymns that so infuriated the professor. One of them goes
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
O precious is the flow that makes me white as snow,
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
When Milton told me that experience, he said, “I was offended by such ignorance and mean-spiritedness from the professor. But don’t think for a moment I was going to challenge him. I was in that class for one reason—I had to have it to graduate. I sat there like a coward and let him scoff at my faith. He finally wound down and changed the subject. I finished the course, received my degree, and got on with my life.”
I do not know the name of that professor, but I’ve been a little angry at him for his bullying tactics ever since. He took unfair advantage of his captive audience to slander the Christian faith. You do not have to be Sigmund Freud to conclude the man was struggling with his own issues and this was his way of lashing out at the Man of Galilee who would not go away, who loved him in spite of his unbelief, and who wanted only to bless him with love and forgiveness and wholeness.
In such instances, silence from believers in the class is the right response. It is not cowardice; it’s wisdom. After all, the professor was on his home turf. He ruled in that classroom as a little Hitler. He would have scoffed at this too, but the Lord Jesus has a word to believers who find themselves in such situations. “Do not cast your pearls before swine. They will trample them under foot.” (Matthew 7:6) Some people cannot receive the gospel. We do them no favor and the Lord no service by preaching to the hostile. “A fool does not delight in understanding,” according to Proverbs 18:2, “but only in revealing his own mind.”
William Barclay writes, “It is impossible to talk to some people about Jesus Christ. Their insensitiveness, their moral blindness, their intellectual pride, their cynical mockery, the tarnishing film, may make them impervious to words about Christ. But it is always possible to show men Christ….”
Let the believer live a godly life of high integrity and sweet reasonableness before the world. Let him/her pray passionately for scoffing friends, for the time when they shall be open to God’s truth. Let them be ready with a solid witness for the Lord Jesus.
It may well be that the scoffer is actually searching for someone to demonstrate the character and faithfulness of Jesus Christ as a condition to their own coming to know Him. The good news is we do not have to answer every question he raises. To introduce a friend to Jesus, the one essential is that we truly know Him ourselves and have had our life radically transformed by Him.
We were doing witness training in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and one night sent the trainees out to share their faith door to door. One of them, a tiny white-haired grandmother, knocked at the door of a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, and after a cordial visit and discussion, prayed with him to receive Christ as his Savior. She did not approach him as an intellectual, but as a child who needed to know the Father’s undying love and the Savior’s redeeming power. That’s how it’s done, and that is the direction we should pray. Jesus said, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it at all.” (Luke 18:7)