When I get carried away with my own gifts I can often forget to love

Without wanting to sound too pretentious, I have a gift of teaching. It is my job for a start, as I am a university professor, and by all accounts from students and colleagues, I teach pretty well. I also love studying and writing, and have a strong desire to explain and help people understand hard to grasp ideas and beliefs; and, moreover, I have strong desire to explain ideas and beliefs which seek to challenge and deepen our responses and attitudes to life and to God.  However, in my motivation to teach in this way, and to do it well, there is a subtle sin which finds its way in, without me frequently being that aware of it. This lack of awareness is because, as my enthusiasm for exercising this gift gets a hold, I can get carried away with it all. So, I end-up seeking to pursue and explain the alternative position relentlessly, always seeing the counter-argument, and pushing the other person often too hard, and sometimes into a corner. The sin is that in the meantime, I forget to love, and fail to get alongside the other and strengthen her, and then I forget how to simply listen to the view of the other deeply and without looking for a counter-response. Ironically, I also then fail to learn, which is, of course, fatal for a teacher! I am now reminded by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1, that for all the gifts I may have in teaching, that without love ‘I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.’

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