Congressman Gary Franks (R., Conn.) recalls one thing he learned in college that was not on the curriculum:

I remember taking copious notes and listening to everything the teacher had to say in preparation for my first test at Yale. I looked at the exam and saw it was everything I had studied. I wrote the answers to the three questions thinking, Boy, this is easy!

As we waited to get our tests back I was positive I’d get an A. Instead my grade was a C. Under it, in big red letters, was written, “I know what I said. What do you think?”

It was a valuable awakening. I realized that Yale did not simply want you to absorb ideas but to think about them and challenge them. It forced me to explore things from every possible angle, looking for aspects that might not be obvious at first but were helpful in developing a dialogue on an issue.

In the same way, it’s not enough to simply know what Jesus said and did; we must personally appropriate his finished work by deliberately putting our faith in Him.

Source: Reader’s Digest, June 1996, p. 33.