This professor randomly “cold calls” on students during class. Students must attend class and stay awake. They must all be prepared and ready to speak to the topic at any moment on any of the topics covered.
Is this scary? Do students dread the class? On the contrary. Students love it. The class is oversubscribed. Everyone in the class is involved and committed to the class and to learning. There is no waste.
The professor in my freshman chemistry class should have been so cool. Of course, 350 students in a large lecture hall renders such intimacy impossible. I had mistakenly pledged a fraternity that year. (If you haven’t figured out from my writing that my lack of social awareness should have precluded any such idea, well, then I have not revealed enough of myself.) We were encouraged to hang out with “pledge brothers” wherever we were. One of the guys was a ringleader type who invented a crude religion during the lectures instead of paying attention and being invested in the course. I got better grades when I left the fraternity and actually studied with a small group.
Thinking of these teaching and learning styles, I realized that Jesus was a hard A. He also asked hard questions seemingly at random. Even when you were positive of the right answer, say quoting from Scripture, he’d prove you wrong. He took a harder stance, often turning the answer upside down from cultural knowledge.
It pays to be awake when we study the words and actions of Jesus—as well as the words of Paul and James and John—for those times when they upset our preconceived ideas and teach us a new way of seeing the world and others.
We need to be prepared. That means reading and reflecting and observing.
Faith Venture 
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