I have had many teachers, mentors, role models, and encouragements, too many for my mortal and feeble mind to recall. Many of my teachers I have never met — they were transferred to the Church Triumphant long before I was born or became aware of their work. I look forward to thanking them face to face someday. Others I have only known in passing. If I were to mention them, they would not know how great an impression they made on me or how profoundly their work has helped me. But there are certain foundational influences, teachers without whom we would be unprepared for everyone who came later. I have mentioned before that at this stage of my life, most of what I know about the Bible I did not learn from my parents. They could not teach me what they themselves did not know. But I would not have learned what I have learned without their influence. Their early impressions and instruction were formative for me in a way that enabled whatever good came later, and for that I am and always shall be grateful.
When I think of the men who taught me the most about the Bible, there are three names that come to mind. None of them taught me the theology I affirm today — and yet, in an important sense, that is exactly what they taught me. They gave me the foundational tools for reading, studying, and understanding the story of Scripture. They taught me to memorize God’s word. They taught me to recognize its structure, themes, and patterns. They reinforced what my parents had given me: a love for Scripture and an absolute confident in its inspired, inerrant, inescapable truth and authority. None of these men were Calvinists, and each of them were (or would have been) concerned that I became one. But I never would have gotten where I am today without them. It was believing, applying, and pursuing the faith and disciplines they taught me that led me to a covenantal understanding of redemption.
I learned on Friday that Bob Waldron had died. He died a week earlier, but I had not heard. I do not remember the last time I spoke to Brother Waldron, but it has been many years. I continued to listen to him from afar, to review the books he wrote with his sweet wife, and to apply the principles he taught to me, but it may have been close to twenty years since I saw him in person. He might be one of the men who would not recognize how great his influence on my life actually was, but he was inarguably the most foundational Bible teacher I ever had and, apart from Tom Holley, the greatest single influence in how I read, study, organize, and understand Scripture to this day.
I was in Brother Waldron’s orbit as a child. He and his wife visited my parents’ home, and I heard him preach in gospel meetings. It was not until I became a preacher that I really got to know him. He came to the Elliottsville Church of Christ, where his son and daughter-in-law were members, to preach a meeting while I was there, and I got to spend time with him. I had already been exposed to his “17 Bible Periods” approach to Bible study, and I recognized that this man knew the Bible story better than anyone I had ever met. He seemed to have vast portions of the Bible committed to memory. In my conversations with him during that meeting, I learned that it seemed that way because he actually did.
Bob Waldron showed me that the Bible is one, grand, interconnected story, a story of redemption that can be studied and understood as one text, one unfolding narrative, rather than merely as a collection of documents, verses, and disconnected pieces. He transformed the way I read Scripture, even now, and there is no doubt that his influence and methods enabled me to discover the patterns of redemptive history that later led to my embrace of a more covenantal and historical understanding of the faith. I am sure Brother Waldron would have wanted no credit for my departure from a tradition he (and I) loved, but it would be wicked not to acknowledge my debt to him. The “Bible Foundations” curriculum that I have taught for more than two decades is simply my adaptation and development of the system I learned from Brother Waldron. He helped me see the outline. He put all the puzzle pieces on the table and began to fit them together so that the image emerged. There were a few pieces I later had to spin in order to fit them in correctly, but the Lord used Brother Waldron to show me the big picture.
Bob Waldron was the first man to expose me to memorizing large sections of Scripture, the discipline of commiting entire Bible books to memory. He explained to me his method and the rationale behind it — memorizing entire epistles in order to meditate on them in a focused way, only to abandon the regular review necessary to retain perfect recitation in order to move on and learn another book in the same way. I remember thinking, then and for many years after, what a waste it seemed to spend so many hours memorizing a book only to forget it. I would do better than that. I would memorize books and review them every week, never forgetting any of the chapters I learned. I succeeded for a number of years, then my kids got older, my responsibilities in the church increased, and I got older too. I discovered that Brother Waldron was even wiser than I had recognized.
Bob Waldron never confronted me about my pride and self-righteousness, though I am confident he saw it. I know when and where he would have. He probably did not believe he had the kind of relationship with me to be able to address it that day. We were not close, though he always greeted me warmly and spoke to me kindly. But his demeanor, humility, and kindness in contrast to my foolishness and arrogance that day remains a painful indictment in my memory that prompts new repentance as often as I think of it. Whatever pharisaical attitudes I may have learned while in the Churches of Christ, I did not learn them from Brother Waldron. He was a gentle, godly man so far as I knew him, and I can only aspire to be more like him. I will never imagine that anything I believe today or will ever do can make me better than him.
Scripture commands us to honor our father and mother, and this has more to teach us than merely that we ought to take care of our biological parents in their old age. Robert Waldron probably did not know how profoundly he impacted my life. He might have thought we were only acquaintances. But he will always be a father in the faith to me. I thank God for him and that he has now entered into rest and the beginning of an eternal reward. –JME
