I remember the most important lesson he taught me about the Bible at Eden Christian College. We were studying Genesis, and a student asked a question about the six-day creation story. Mr. Dick replied that we shouldn't get too set in our interpretation of the six days since the Bible told us elsewhere that with God a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day. The creation days in Genesis might refer to epochs or they might be actual days.
At first I was suspicious of this perspective. I assumed that when the Bible said "day", it meant a 24-hour day. Why was this teacher making things more complicated and harder to understand? But as he continued to teach us week after week, his love for the Bible and his complete confidence in Scripture were confirmed again and again. I began to see that he wasn't making things more complicated; he was simply content to live with the awareness that some of God's ways were beyond our full comprehension.
I learned to be less threatened by new interpretations of familiar texts, to be more humble about my own viewpoints, and to trust the Bible even in places where I couldn't entirely understand it. This was an invaluable gift to me several years later in university, where I encountered a tidal wave of new perspectives. I didn't worry that each new change in my understanding would be the beginning of a loss of faith in the Bible; in fact, I began to find Scripture more fresh and alive than ever before. How grateful I am to the teacher who showed me the way.
Peter J. Dick was one of the kindest, most forgiving teachers I have ever had. Sometimes we thought he was too soft, too gullible, for we took advantage of him with our excuses and classroom pranks in a way we would never have dared with other teachers. But there were always glimpses of something else, hints that this was not naivete; and these glimpses only fit together into a full picture for me later when I became a teacher.
Yes, he was kind, and certainly he was forgiving. Sometimes you could sense that he even forgave us for whatever it was we were doing in the back of the classroom although he didn't know what it was. And he didn't demand to know, not because he was naive, but because he was wise enough not to turn everything into a battle. You don't have to correct every error or punish every misbehaviour. The wise teacher chooses the teachable moment, focusses on the significant flaw, and has an instinct for the life-giving correction. How grateful I am to have had a teacher who taught me to combine discipline with grace.
He was emotional. That usually embarrassed us. We were teenagers who had room in our lives only for our own surging emotions. The tears of an older man, deeply moved by something he had read, made us awkward and silent. We looked away.
But years later, when he came to me on several occasions with tears in his eyes and told me that he was proud of me and that he prayed for me, I cherished his open love, his deep well of affection. He didn't hide his tear-filled eyes. He wasn't embarrassed by them. How fortunate I am that I had a teacher and later a friend who taught me that honest emotion is a gift we offer each other.
That pride in his students was a special treasure which he and a few of my other teachers gave to us. Many people in his generation feared pride so much that they were reluctant to compliment others for fear that these compliments would become the fertile and fatal seedbeds of arrogance and self-centredness. But he was a humble man who was proud of others. We were energized by his pride and guided by his humility.
He set high standards and introduced us to wonderful choral music. I remember one year in the music festival when we were singing an a cappella anthem by Bach. The pianist played the opening chord for us to get our notes, and the adjudicator smiled. He told us later that he hadn't yet turned to our music when the chord was played, but he recognized it immediately as Bach, and he commended our conductor and us for singing such high quality music.
Sometimes we didn't sing the high quality music as well as it deserved, but then Mr. Dick was charitable. He once directed our high school choir in the "Hallelujah" by Beethoven. Some sections of the choir got lost in the middle, and as choir members buried their eyes in the music, trying to find a familiar clue, they became desperate; the pace accelerated against Mr. Dick's most valiant efforts to rein us in. Few of us saw his desperate gestures, his exaggerated beating of the proper tempo. When we got to the last few bars, we all seemed to find our proper places and paces again, and we ended with an unwarranted surge of volume and gusto, as if to say, "We did it, we made it, here we are, it's over!" He later told us that he had probably made an error in not rehearsing the piece with us enough. He didn't blame us, but took the responsibility himself.
Last July, at the 50th anniversary of Eden, I told a story about a high school German class taught by Peter Dick. The student giving the oral presentation that day had written an English essay about his car, his "hot rod", and then had translated it literally and hilariously into German, word by improbable word. I gave the audience some samples of the absurd translations, and told them how we had roared with laughter, and how I remembered our teacher, Mr. Dick, standing at the side of the room, tears streaming from his eyes in laughter.
After the anniversary service, Mr. Dick greeted me and thanked me very humbly for my comments about him. Then, with a slight twinkle in his eyes he leaned toward me and quietly corrected my version of the title of the student's presentation. He remembered. He still enjoyed it. And he still was gracious in correcting his students.
James Pankratz