The Credentials Necessary to Drive a Golf Cart

The annual Bible lectureship at Freed-Hardeman University is one of the highlights of the year for Donna and me. We were pleased to learn that we were going to be able to attend in person once again this year. It was helpful that, during the height of the concerns over Covid, it was available online, but that’s just not the same as being there in person.

As is always the case, when we returned home, we had a lot of pleasant memories. There were interesting, informative, and challenging lessons. There was the opportunity to be with both of our children and all of our grandchildren (at least for a few of those days). There were a number of opportunities to reconnect with a lot of people of “like precious faith.” All in all, it was a tiring, but very, very rewarding week.

Most of the experiences and memories I had this year are very similar to those experienced in past years. There is one experience, however, that was unique. I hope I learned something from it.

As is always the case, the members of the “Freed-Hardeman family” go out of their way to help those who attend the lectureship to have a pleasant experience. They realize that, in some ways, all of the extra people being on campus can be somewhat of an imposition to the normal routine for the staff, faculty, and students. They do not merely make allowances for that, they provide ways to make the people to whom they refer as “guests” feel like welcomed guests.

One of the ways they do that is to provide transportation across the campus. There is the realization that there are people trying to get from one location on campus to another location in a relatively short amount of time in order to hear the lectures they would like to hear. I’m guessing that they also realize how valuable this service is to some of the attendees as they/we begin to age.

It was not unusual to see what to me resembles some sort of modified golf cart transporting four or five people from one place to another. What did strike me as unusual was the identity of one of the drivers I saw transporting people across campus.

I honestly did not notice at first who the “chauffeur” was. When I did take the time to look, though, I recognized him immediately.   

The driver of the golf cart was not a student who had been somehow pressed into service. Instead, the man helping people get around more easily was/is a professor of Biblical Studies at Freed-Hardeman. Most of what he teaches is on the graduate level.

I saw this man’s younger brother not long after this happened and told him what I had seen. I then added, “I guess that you have to have a Ph.D. to drive a golf cart, huh?”

I’ve done a lot of thinking about what I saw. I’ve done even more thinking about what I said. The brother knew (and I hope that you know) that I was joking when I made that observation. At the same time, I think that I may have unintentionally “swerved into” something really important that was modeled for me. I hope that I learned something from that experience. I’m also hoping that it might help all of us.

Obviously, it does not take a Ph.D. to operate a golf cart. All that it does take is a servant’s heart!

Our oldest grandson is taking a class in Hebrew taught by this professor. I hope that he learns a lot about that language. More importantly, I hope that he is seeing examples of what I saw. I hope that he’s seeing and appreciating the kind of heart this man has.  

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be around a person with a servant’s heart and little or no formal education than to be around a person who has degrees almost stacked on top of one another, but who thinks that the entire world revolves around him or her and that it is everybody else’s role to be a servant.

A man in a golf cart reminded me of the example and teaching of Somebody who said these words:

…You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (Matt. 20:25-28, ESV)

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AUTHOR: Jim Faughn