Why People Teach with Fiction

Yesterday I wrote about fiction in teaching.  Why are people so inclined to use the assumption and the addition to facts when they are teaching something like the Bible?  My experience, personally when I was younger and now as I continue to watch, is that people can't handle the implications of the fact; feel that they have to say something about everything; can't handle not knowing; or often, they just want to hear themselves talk.

Take for example the Scripture that reads, "Confess your sins to one another so that you may find peace and be healed."  As a dear friend, Joel Goddard, is prone to say, "Do you believe the Bible? Yes?  Then why do you have a problem with this action?"  The implications of confession to others is that they know everything about us and there are many people who abuse knowledge.  If the teacher teaches this truth, then he must be totally transparent in all of his successes and failures.  Most teachers don't think they can keep their job if they are flawed or know the greater truth that they should have mastered what they are teaching - so, they have to adapt this Scripture to something like, "Well not everything needs to be confessed but rather..."  The truth is that if we are really "brothers and sisters", all on the same team, all redeemed by the same Savior, all unworthy of the grace that we have found and all for one, then who cares who knows what about whom.  It makes us stronger, gives people the opportunity to cover our weakness, instruct us and pray for us.  Alas, we may find healing for our souls.

In the feeling that they have to have an answer category, fall all developing teachers.  In fact, every great teacher has been in this category.  Free yourself!  Teachers don't always have to talk or to know everything.  You cannot know everything.  Questions will get asked that you will have to say, "I don't know but I will learn."  The teacher who has trouble accepting this will certainly fall in the next category - "I just can't handle not knowing - I have to know!"  Sorry, no one will really ever understand how Creation happened or why gravity is gravity or why the electron is the electron.  There are times when the answer "we will never know unless the Author tells us" is perfectly acceptable.  If God didn't write it down in the Bible, then how can you with assumption and addition make it clear to someone else.  There are things that with our current fact base we simply will not know and that is okay.

The most annoying category of fiction laid over fact in teaching is the person who really just likes to hear himself talk.  Granted these people can be found speaking only truths and are just as annoying - but, when they are doing their "listen to me, I am speaking, I know something, I can say something, I can create something someone else hasn't said" routine and using fiction, it is embarassing.

Are there other reasons that people teach fiction as an addition or from an assumption?  I am sure there are.  How does this apply to leadership?  Leaders need to be comfortable in their skins.  We are leaders but we are constantly growing.  The only way that you can always have a ready answer for your followers, emerging leaders, and support staff is if you have a lame staff.  Don't be offended; just think about it.  If you are a truly awesome leader, then you are going to try to collect and develop the best people on the planet and they are going to push you.  Some will know more about things than you will ever know.  Better get comfortable letting them be better than you.  The leaders that you grow up (don't you want them to be excellent) will begin to challenge you and you will go to new places with them.  Better get comfortable being transparent.  If your staff and leaders are capable, you can be a humble, tremendous leader based on fact that doesn't have to know everything for the team to succeed or you can be an insecure, fearful, controlling leader who will in the end only keep a lame staff or worse will cripple a potentially great staff.

And don't forget - if you have to manipulate and use fiction to soften the implications of fact then you may not be living the life that is required of a leader.  Leaders must master the skills and life lessons before they can lead people to master those skills or lead those who have mastered those skills already.