Clearing Up Misconceptions

I think one of the services Christians in the academic world can contribute is to clarify misconceptions about the Christian faith. This opportunity comes about because

1. We're forced to deal with our own misconceptions if we're going to pursue our faith & scholarship faithfully, and
2. We're often given the opportunities to do so in situations we encounter every day.

Take, for example, my introductory physics class last Friday. Fridays in this class are somewhat lighthearted; the students work problems at the board and, time permitting, I answer questions from the week. We got onto the topic of living in a universe with dimensions that we can't see, and I made reference to A. Square in Flatland.

A. Square, I explained, is a square living in a two-dimensional universe who becomes persecuted by Flatland's intellectual/religious authorities for claiming that there is a third dimension that they are incapable of seeing. He knows of this third dimension because he has been visited by a strange being that calls himself a "sphere" that exists in a three-dimensional world.

One of the students commented that A. Square, therefore, is a lot like Jesus.

I said that I understood what the student was trying to say, but expressed my hesitation to agree. I said that a better comparison would be Galileo or Copernicus, and that I didn't think that Jesus was a good comparison, because Jesus did not so much claim to have a revelation as he did claim to be the revelation.

Did the student understand my clarification? I'm not sure. Will it drive him to seek out Jesus as a unique authority on life? I don't know. But I do think it's neat that Christian faculty have opportunities like that.

What are similar opportunities that you've experienced? How has God used them?