There are a few books on my shelves that I no longer agree with.
Some of them are filled with underlines and margin notes from years ago. At one point, I thought they had settled important questions. Today, I read those same pages differently.
I haven’t thrown the books away.
I simply recognize that I have changed.
We often celebrate certainty.
We admire people who speak with confidence and appear to have every answer neatly organized. By the way, I LOVE having answers! Conviction is important, especially in a culture where truth is frequently treated as negotiable. Christianity is not an invitation to perpetual uncertainty. There are truths worth defending, doctrines worth preserving, and convictions worth holding with courage…but conviction and teachability are not enemies.
In fact, they need each other.
Over the course of my life, I have been shaped by many different worlds.
The Army taught me discipline and responsibility.
Pastoral ministry taught me that people are rarely as simple as the situations they bring into your office.
Graduate school taught me how much I still had to learn.
Leading a university has shown me that every decision affects people whose circumstances I may not fully understand.
Global travel has challenged assumptions I didn’t even know I was carrying.
Each experience has forced me to revisit conclusions I once considered settled.
Not because truth changed, but because I did.
When I was in my 20s, I often looked for the fastest path to an answer.
Today, I find myself spending more time making sure I am asking the right question.
That shift has changed the way I engage the Bible, the way I listen, and the way I lead.
I have discovered that many disagreements are sustained less by bad intentions than by incomplete understanding. It is entirely possible to love Christ, believe the authority of the Bible, and still have something to learn.
Don’t forget, the 12 Apostles spent years walking beside Jesus. They listened to His teaching. They witnessed miracles. They asked questions…and they repeatedly misunderstood Him.
Sometimes they misunderstood because they lacked information.
Other times they misunderstood because they interpreted His words through expectations they already held. Jesus did not discard them because they misunderstood. He patiently continued shaping them.
Christian maturity is not measured by how quickly we reach every correct conclusion.
It is measured by our willingness to keep following Christ as He reshapes our understanding. Looking back, I am grateful for many people who disagreed with me graciously. Professors who challenged my arguments instead of simply correcting my conclusions. Friends who asked better questions than I was asking. Pastors who modeled humility alongside conviction. Students who forced me to reconsider whether I had explained something clearly enough.
One of the quiet temptations of leadership is believing that experience automatically makes us right.
Don’t get me wrong, experience is valuable, but it also has limitations.
Every leader develops blind spots. Every pastor has passages of scripture that remain difficult. Every scholar encounters questions that refuse easy answers.
Recognizing those realities is quite liberating.
I hope that five years from now I will read something I write today and realize there are places where I could have expressed an idea more clearly or understood an issue more completely. If that happens, I won’t consider those years wasted. I’ll be thankful that God was still teaching me.
The Christian life has never been about arriving at a point where we no longer need to learn. It is about following the One who continues to transform us.
Dr. Carlo A. Serrano, President