False teaching should make us mad. It should make us indignant for God’s glory and the souls of the lost. But does it ever cause us to mourn? If we felt this kind of grief, how would that change our words and actions towards false teachers? Perhaps we’d be better proclaimers of the truth they need.

Each of us is faced with decisions in life, and the hardest ones often involve people we love and know to be faithful. But have you ever felt this tension between Bible teachers you know and love? How do we discern what’s true even among the best of Bible teachers?

Rich theology with it’s complex history has been abridged to memes, social media captions, and slogans. What was once discussed and believed from thorough exegesis and study can be summed up in pithy sentences on graphics. What took some years of study, question-asking, and many books from a variety of libraries to understand, others today can learn in thirty minutes listening to a podcast or two minutes scanning an article. While there are good things to be taken from these, I wonder if we’ve forsaken anything for them.

When we spend too much time in our own heads, thinking about all that’s wrong and going wrong, our worlds magnify themselves beyond their true size. While it’s valid to mourn and to acknowledge these difficulties, I’m seeing that sometimes what we really need is to take a step back and see how big creation is.

God commands us to be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger—we are to study God’s Word with eagerness, patience, and diligence before teaching it to others, and accept what it teaches us rather than rebel in anger. Unsure how to do that? Here are a few steps you can take each time you prepare to teach on a passage of Scripture.

My theology-loving friend, I want to warn you of the same pride that could grow inside of you as you grow in knowledge. When we are not using our theology to love and serve God and those he has placed around us, our knowledge could be our downfall.