10 Things Religion Professors Wish Their Students Knew

10. We are people, too. 

9. We love questions. Each of us is a "geek" in our field, and we don't get to talk very often about the things that really interest us. Questions don't scare us; it's scarier when people don't have questions.

8. We see everything that happens in the classroom. You may think you're being subversively sneaky by texting underneath the desk, but it doesn't fool us.

7. We put our very souls into our lessons (well, some of us do). We put a lot of thought into not only what to say but how to say it. We spend a large portion of our time researching and then translating this research into language that students can understand. We try to make the content creative, engaging and interesting. You could even say that the final product is a piece of art that bears a part of our souls.

6. We take risks every single time we get in front of a class and start teaching. We risk messing up. We put our humor on the line. We worry whether our creative ideas will be effective.

5. We believe the risk is worth it.

4. We genuinely care. We want our students to succeed. We pray for you and ask that God will speak to you in ways that we cannot.

3. We find no greater joy than when a student "gets it." It could be evident from a submitted paper, a comment in class, or a personal email, but we love it when a student critically engages in a way that they maybe hadn't before.

2. We sometimes doubt ourselves at the end of the day. We wonder whether our efforts were truly worth it, whether it even mattered that we showed up to class that day. We worry whether we communicated clearly. We often secretly are dismayed with the thought that maybe weren't as inspiring as we had hoped to be.

1. Each and every day we stand back up in the classroom, we die to ourselves once again. We teach for our students, hoping that we can awaken them to the beauty and the awe of the Biblical narrative. We teach for ourselves, processing thoughts and ideas so that they become even deeper convictions within our own selves. And finally, we teach for God, hoping that somehow, someway, our Creator will find pleasure in our efforts and at the end of the day he will say to us, "You gave everything I gave you, and that is enough."