That One Time I Got "Called Out"

I have been re-reading Les Miserables, an immense work that took half of my junior year to read. In high school I would tote these huge books to class and immerse myself in them; somehow I never got in trouble for it. So I extended that practice into college, where I busied myself first semester reading biographies.

One of my largest classes (which were always the safest for reading, as they are rather like London and Paris for getting lost in the humanity) was a Personal Evangelism class that everyone at Liberty is required to take. Our teacher was Dr. Lovett, who I thought was rather stupid, as he started off every class with a, "Jesus is what?" to which the congregational response was "AWESOME!" Then he proceeded to go through (pretty much verbatim) the workbook he'd had us fill out for homework.

Being one of those visual learners who doesn't require an aural repetition to remember material, I sat low in my seat and took out my C.S. Lewis biography. Typically when I read, you can only rouse me by calling my name, but one day I felt a stirring around me and looked up. Dr. Lovett had made his way up to my row and was staring right at me. "Young lady, are you a Christian?"

I closed my book. "Yes."

"And do you not think this material is important?"

(We were studying what Baptists term "The Roman Road"-- a collection of verses taken from Romans which is used as a guide to salvation.) So of course my reply was that I did think what we were studying was important.

"Do you know it by heart?"

(Probably, but if I said yes he would ask me to go through it and I worried I would make a mistake.) "No."

"And do you have friends and family that don't know Jesus?"

"Of course."

"And have you shared the salvation of Jesus with all of them?"

Honestly, I was pretty sure I had, but my answer was again negative. I feared that I would come across as arrogant and then ignorant.

"Then I'm going to assume what you're reading is less important than what I am teaching."

I was actually at the point where Tolkien is talking to Lewis about Christianity, and I was gleaning quite a bit from that, but I agreed.

He finally resumed his "lecture," but for quite some time I was known as "That Girl Who Got Called Out in Evangelism." Husband heard about it, and asked me a few days later if I had been in that class. I think maybe I blushed, "I was the one he'd caught reading." I think that was when Johnathan realized I wasn't as good as he thought.