Welcoming Correction as a Disciple of Christ Podcast Episode

Proverbs 12:1 Whosoever loveth instruction, loveth knowledge. And so welcoming that instruction, welcoming that correction and loving it and realizing it as believers, that we’re on this sanctification journey for a long time and to be willing to grow into that space and to love that instruction and correction is powerful.

Very good to have everyone along here as we kick off a new year, 2025, to join me here in this conversation. Isaac Funk is here. Katie Miller is here. Welcome to both of you. Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here. I’ve stacked the room with teachers. And that’s intentional for our topic here today.

Isaac, we do a fair amount of work in the discipleship area. And I have found as a teacher myself, and as I really think about my role as a teacher and students’ roles as students, I find a great deal of overlap and really healthy informants to the discipled life. If I’m a disciple, I need to know what that means and how then to live well it.

So, does that setup make sense? Absolutely. When I am teaching in front of a classroom with students, the students expect something from me, they expect learning, they expect knowledge, they expect something from their teacher. So, I think in this formation space, I feel like a disciple. To go from what it means to be a student to a disciple, I have to think about the learning piece that I don’t want to lose. When you think of the 12 disciples. If we use that as an example, there was definitely a piece where they had to continually be that student. I know. I really appreciate that. And that idea of expecting. You mentioned the students expect some things.

I think that squarely hits what we’re talking about here for them to have an expectation means that they understand their role. Now, what it is that they expect might be where you drill into that. But let me give you an example where I think sometimes, we expect a certain thing, but we don’t live well with that expectation.

Alright, so a little confession here. I’m going to the dentist, okay. Here is an individual who’s taking charge of my dental health and wants to do that. So, my expectation is for him to service my dental health. But yet when he asks me if I’m flossing, I am like, yes, but yes is a very stretched yes.

You know what I’m saying? Because the expectation of his or her flossing is very different than potentially the performance. I’m just all rascals here. I don’t want to really tell him the truth. To say that I floss is a huge over embellishment. I would be closer to the truth if I just said no, but I don’t tell him no. Because, you know, once or twice I do.

My point is, at that moment, as a patient to the doctor, I’m not completely forthright with the questions that he asks. Now we could go on and on about this. I’m sure all doctors ask us to fill out that form. Do you exercise? How many of us over embellish our exercising to the man or woman who really needs to know the truth because they have our health at best interest.

Do you see what I’m saying here? The expectations that I have of this person to service my health and yet I don’t live in that office. The best that I should be doing is being forthright and honest for him or her to do that job. That’s the genesis of the conversation I want to have here. We can do that as disciples as well.

Yes, I’m a disciple, but am I living as a disciple with the correct expectations? Am I leaning into those expectations with forthrightness and vulnerability because if I’m going to get the best medical care, I’ve got to live well in that space. Does that ring true? Yeah, I think to your point, to be a disciple at its most basic level is to be a student. That is what it was in Jesus’ day. If you were a disciple of someone, you were their student, you were learning from them how to live your life, which means the life that you were currently living wasn’t the life that you were intending to live forever, that you were on this journey of change, of growth.

And so, in order to go on that journey of growth with your master, you had to be taught some things, and they had to know who you are now and where your growth edge is. Where do we need to move from here? And it’s the same as the mindset of a patient going into the doctor’s office, as you said. I need to know where I am now, so I know how to get where I need to be. The same as a student in the classroom. Yeah, all of that shares a really common denominator, which is really transparency. You know, this is where I am right now, and I have a vision of where I’m going.

So, is it safe to say, Matt, then, you were very much corrected? We are, when we go to the doctor’s office or as we spiritually grow, we are being corrected. We are being formed in a different direction than where we were going. And what’s the underlying fear behind us not answering those questions at the doctor or dentist’s office correctly?

Why do we not live in that space? Why do we not floss, in your example? Why do we not go into those spiritual places? Well, I can tell you why I don’t floss. That’s not a reason to tell them. Why do I not tell them that I don’t floss? What if I answer the dentist and I say, I don’t floss. There’s something in me that I feel like I’m not a good person anymore.

Yeah, you kind of twinge. You actually start equating it with your identity and you start valuing yourself differently perhaps. There’s like an emotional immaturity there perhaps. Like, I can’t handle not being right or not being seen as valuable, being seen as a healthy person.

And so, I feel like that’s a shame message that comes in when we get corrected oftentimes. So, we hide that bit because we equate that with our identity. Whereas if I just see myself as this is just who I am, we’re all on this trajectory of growth. We’re all learning as disciples of Jesus, how to be more like him from the inside out. Then if we have that mindset, and I can say, of course, I don’t floss and whatever spiritual parallel we want to draw there.

And that’s who I am, but I know that I am in the presence of Christ and he’s my teacher and he’s going to help me through it. Yes. Isaac, I love that. And so really, you’re building a case that there is a level of maturity, emotional maturity, just in order to engage in the discipleship space well.

I do think as believers, it is important not to equate our value, our worth with our action in a space like Isaac just gave. But I do think with age and with experience come areas where we still need to grow. We still need to be that student sitting at a desk. I still need to have that posture of a student.

I still need to have that posture of a learner, of growth and so forth. And so, I appreciate the examples given and I appreciate them. Just like, what is the fear? Is it the fear of rejection? Is it the fear of equating something with my identity or with my value? Is it the fear of what others will think because I don’t, you know, insert whatever? I do think sometimes correction seems hard when I feel like I am being corrected. What is the fear that’s speaking to me through that correction, through that growth? I think we should talk about that.

I want to grab onto something you mentioned just in passing. The situation is a student sitting in the seat just being there in the presence of the teacher or being in the doctor’s chair. It’s better to be there with a bad habit of not flossing, than not showing up at all to the dentist’s office. Yes. Right. And when it comes to being a disciple, it’s not about perfection. It’s about progress. And so, you can always be in the presence of the Savior, in the presence of our teacher, Jesus.

That’s better to be broken and in his presence, to be wrong and in his presence because you’re safe there. And it is better to grow in that space than to just remove yourself entirely from it, which is the temptation that faces us when there is something wrong and we isolate. Sure. Absolutely. There is this hey, you’re wrong in this area. You’re receiving correction. There is this temptation to pull away, to draw away.

I’d love to tell a story about a student who I just encountered this semester in the class that I teach at the local college and a little bit to your point. The student is a Ukrainian refugee, older than the median age of all the other non-traditional freshmen in college, okay? He brings in maturity and a good understanding of who he is in this place, recognizing that he needed to learn the material and didn’t know it. So, he was the master of wrong answers. When I would ask a question, I would get his hand in the air, and he would offer very often a wrong answer to the question.

For which I would then tell him and the rest of the students, that is the most brilliant wrong answer that I’ve heard. And in fact, we’re going to learn three things from your wrong answer. And this was a huge paradigm shift for the whole class. Now, his wrong answer was probably the wrong answer in everybody else’s heads, but they didn’t want to offer that wrong answer.

Why? Because they didn’t want, back to your point, Isaac, to be seen as stupid. Now, I can think of no better place to be stupid but in the classroom. Just like there’s no better place to be sick than in the physician’s office. But we act like we’re not. And if we don’t act like we are in need of Jesus, then in discipleship, we’re not going to make the gains.

And so, very often he would offer this wrong answer. And I would thank him for the wrong answer. And he would light up and smile like, I’m so glad I contributed this. And it got to the point that in the classroom, I would ask the class, what do you all have to say to Roman right now?

And they said, thank you, Roman. Because his wrong answer illuminated so much. I’ve taught for over 20 years, and this is the first semester where the mantra in the classroom was, wrong answers are better than right answers, because we learn more from them. And that did so much in providing a space for learners in permission to be stupid.

I just graded final exams, and you want to take a guess on whose answers demonstrated the most in depth growth and understanding? Thank you. Roman’s among a few others. He embraced that moment and that correction to your point, right? As only instructive and healthy and helpful like yes, that’s what I’m here for.

I love that story. He understood his identity as a student. He’s like, this is what I’m here for and I wonder if the cultural component you mentioned, Matt, is what made that super unique. It had to have been because I’m guessing he continued to ask or offer wrong answers throughout the semester and was not afraid of rejection, was not afraid of what others thought.

He was there to simply be a student, be in the presence, to grow and to learn. Corrections oftentimes create the most growth. And he probably just had this underlying understanding as well. Everybody else in this room is in the same boat that I’m in. We’re all in the classroom together. And so, it’s okay if I look stupid.

They’re stupid, too. We all have wrong answers. Alright, so take that to the discipleship space. Because we are cagey, right? And we do posture ourselves. We saw that in the twelve disciples, didn’t we? Oh, yeah. This idea that I know, and he doesn’t. And then we have Peter who got it. Don’t you think Peter got the discipleship space maybe better than the others?

Peter got it. But Peter had to welcome correction. Oh, yeah. Intently. Well, I identify with Peter a lot. I feel like I’m kind of a Peter, an up and a down, a woo and a dah. You know, the one example in Matthew 16 specifically when he is getting all excited. He can’t believe Christ is going to suffer. The words there is he’s strongly passionate about Christ’s proclamation of suffering.

Like, you can’t do that. This is not going to happen. And just as strongly, what does Christ do? He strongly corrects him using words like, get behind me, Satan. Yeah. Like, this is not right, you are wrong, Peter. I love your passion, and I love what you think. But that’s not what’s going to happen here, and you need to be corrected.

And Peter did not shrink away from that moment and say, okay, I’m not going to say anything from now on. Right. Which many of us do when we get wounded by correction or those types of things, we’re like, okay, fine. Yeah. I won’t say anything. Right. As if that was the ultimate test. Shut down. We feel shut down.

In the classroom, when I ask a question, that’s not the ultimate test. The final exam is the ultimate test. Roman understood that. Oh, this is a question? Okay. There’s a ton of freedom here to be wrong. I just am so thankful for Peter’s wrong answers. Yes. Because we’ve been so instructed by them. And the other ones too. He had the hardest rebuke for stepping out of the boat. Right. But the other ones just didn’t even do it. But they didn’t step out of the boat. Right. And they didn’t speak up about, you know, I don’t really want you to suffer, Christ. This isn’t right. You know, he was ready to go to bat.

And then think about who Peter became. Right. After the death and resurrection, Jesus spent time with Peter, walking him through some things after he denied him. And Jesus said, I’m going to do this. Let’s talk about this, let’s learn from this. And then Peter becomes a massive pillar in the church.

And you read in his letters where he actually outlines this process of growth where he’s like, I experienced going from complete lunacy, whatever, to who I am now. Transformation. He has this path of transformation. That was only available to him and is available to us from this place of being open to wrong answers and being corrected.

That gives me heart. That gives me courage to continually to be passionate. Even when I don’t want to welcome correction. If I’m honest with myself, I would rather be perfect. I would rather have all the choices laid out for me well and do it right a hundred percent of the time, but I know in that correction that rock, that piece of my heart is continually getting chiseled and grown. Katie, I think you hinted at something very powerful. I forgot your phrase about who I’m going to become or something like that. That is very much Roman in my classroom who had a vision for who he was becoming. He knew where this class fit in his portfolio of classes that he needed to take.

And so, he didn’t evaluate himself based on his current location, but his vision. And he saw the current location to be a steppingstone, a necessary steppingstone to whom he was becoming. And that’s really important too, having a vision for when I just got corrected. Well, I’m so glad because that’s getting to me to where I want to go, as opposed to having a mindset that says, I have arrived and am in need of no correction and I hope I don’t get corrected. That presupposes that we’re perfect. Am I right about that? I think the other tendency for humans is to justify it or blame shift it or create something from that correction that likely is not there.

Peter took that correction. Did he have a pity party? Potentially, but he grew from it, right? He showed us that growth is possible from correction. Did he welcome it as in the welcome correction word? Yeah, probably not. Probably not necessarily right away, but over time.

It shouldn’t be fun, right? It should be a little hard. But the presence piece, he still continued. He still kept going. And that’s what I do love about him. His passion did not wane after each correction. Suppose we were people who welcomed correction. Just try that on for size.

That’s what I’m asking of every student in my classroom. That’s what every doctor is asking for in their patient. That’s what every therapist is asking of their client. And yet in these places, we want all of the transformation without that. And I think what we’re missing, Matt, is that was the very message of Jesus.

When he said to come and follow me, he meant come and be my disciple, which was just understood in that way. Come and receive correction. Come and grow. Yeah. And I just don’t think we see our lives with that status of being his student. Come and experience a life of repentance. Yes. Right. But what I found is that in my own life, there are like a lot of things in me that still need worked out, but I’m still actually wrong about a lot of things.

You may not know that about me, but I’m wrong about a lot of things. Yes. And I need to know what those things are, and I need to understand my life is to uncover those things and to make them right in the presence of the Master Teacher who is Jesus. When I think of welcoming correction, I asked myself a couple of questions.

I asked myself, you know, when is the last time I needed correction? How did or do I take it? Like what is my human nature default or how do I instantly react to show my true heart? And then, are there people in my life who speak loving correction? I think that’s hard. Who are those people in my life who aren’t just, yes, Katie.

Back to the point, if we were a people who welcomed correction, it would go both ways. It would. And as I’ve thought about what makes criticism and correction difficult for me to absorb, is I very quickly go to a place of regret. Correct. Like you mean I’ve had that backwards?

I’ve raised my kids with that paradigm. What? You mean that wasn’t the best way to do this thing? I’ve just lived my marriage for 20 years like this. You see what I’m saying? Yeah. And that is sometimes what we push against. And that’s why I would contend that young people often have more of a healthy mindset towards correction than old people.

I mean, my six-year-old gets corrected multiple times a day. That’s just like she gets up in the morning and that is life for her. But I can go weeks without correction. Right? I fall out of practice as an adult because correction is not a part of my world in the way I think. Kids do. Every teenager is like, man, it’s just non-stop.

There’s a way for that to go really wrong too, you know, in the way that corrections are given to a teenager or to a kid can easily result in a condemnation sort of thing. Yeah, an attitude that then drives them away rather than brings in. So, Isaac, let’s talk then. I think a linchpin in this whole thing is understanding a good view of God. And I’ll preface this. I’ll start this by going back to Roman in the classroom and this has been my big aha.

I’ve taught for 20 years but I learned this semester how important it is to meet a wrong answer with a smile and not a scowl. Because as a teacher, sometimes I want to hear the right answers because it makes me feel good. It reflects on the identity. And so, when I hear a wrong answer, I can be like, really? Very, very bad move as an educator. You shut it down big time. But what I learned is to smile with wrong answers, welcome wrong answers, and guess what? Wrong answers started to surface, and learning began to happen. This goes to our image of God, right? How does God view my wrong answers? How does God view our wrong answers?

Opportunities to meet us. I think this was, yeah, one of the primary roles that Jesus had was one of teacher and surely, he was other things, but as you just said, a teacher’s work is to work with what is unformed, what is wrong, and then to form that into something good, something beautiful. He wasn’t frightened by it. I was just thinking this morning as I was contemplating this discussion is how can I expect myself not to have a good number of wrong answers when I’m not God? Like there’s an awful lot of people who aren’t God. There’s only one. I think the Christian faith is a seeking faith. Jesus uses that language, seek ye first the kingdom of God and the goodness and righteousness that characterize his kingdom.

You’re seeking that. You haven’t found it. In fact, once you’re a disciple, you’re still seeking that in every area of your life. You’ve not arrived. In fact, you’ll have all eternity to seek it out. And so, what does God think about wrong answers? I think he says, thank you for trying.

I want you to dust yourself off and learn from this and grow from this and try again. And thank you for trying. Now, what I wouldn’t want someone to take from this conversation is that wrong answers are what we’re going for. We want right answers, but in order to get to the right, so often we have to go through the wrong and we shouldn’t be afraid of going through that journey.

I really like that. And to both of your points, Isaac, you said he’s a teacher among other things. Christ is Savior. Christ is Lord. Christ is God, but we read as an identifier throughout the gospels, teacher. He’s understood to be a teacher. And if he is a teacher indeed, that means I am a student now. And if I am a student now, that means I have a role to play.

I have a posture with Jesus. I need to live into this place as a student. So, I would say any of the mindsets of being a student and having Jesus as our teacher require humility. And I think it’s no wonder why the Scriptures speak to that over and over again, that your only way forward with God is with humility.

It is this posturing of I am your student, and you are my Master, and I will learn from you. And God gives grace to those people. He gives his action, his work in those people, because he simply cannot work with those who have not put themselves in that position but are proud.

He resists them. There’s just no way he could work with that. The Scripture that speaks to me is the instruction or the correction piece. And that’s found in Proverbs 12, whosoever loves instruction, loves knowledge. And so welcoming that instruction, welcoming that correction and loving it and realizing as believers, that we’re on this sanctification journey for a long time, and to be willing to grow into that space and to love that instruction and correction is powerful.

Katie and Isaac, thank you. Thanks, each one for listening on. In 2025, maybe that’s a personal goal of mine, to live into my student role with Jesus. And floss! I’ll work on that too. Thanks everyone for being on. God bless you as you begin a new year. Thanks.