Ideas That Have Ruined Me: Criticality and Doubt

1.5 weeks without a post? Beginning a sentence--nay, a blog entry--with a number? It must be mid-term...

I posted earlier that one of the ideas that have ruined me is the importance of criticality and doubt in thinking.

I discovered this importance in Pascal's reason-based doubt-proof-submission paradigm outlined in the Pensees. He argues that reason employs the tactics of doubt (trying to disprove something that seems dubious or potentially dangerous to believe - the tool of the skeptic), proof (trying to concretely and inescapably affirm something that seems intuitively reasonable or advantageous to believe - the tool of the mathematician), and submission (accepting a truth by faith - the tool of the theist); to abandon one or two of these tools would result in philosophical shipwreck.

(Note: Given this scheme, "doubt" is not equivalent to "unbelief"---which the Bible identifies as the root of all sin---but simply a questioning of validity. A Christian would certainly want to "doubt" a heretical statement, in that sense. It's more closely akin to modern-day "critical thinking.")

What has struck me as I thought about this paradigm over the last few years is that I have neglected the discipline of doubt for most of my life. (I always dreaded those "critical thinking" questions in English class growing up.)

Now, I can't stop questioning ideas, be they about physics, theology, or how to best carry my books on my way to class!

Even this week, I've spent a good three hours brain-dead over how to prove to my class a simple physics principle used in every introductory textbook. (I'm omitting the particular details here partly out of a desire for relevance and partly out of embarrassment.) I keep reexamining the argument critically, and can't seem to escape!

But this is where the submission comes in: Because of God's commitment to me, I believe I will escape the circle of doubt. (Well, at least over important things; I suppose it doesn't matter if I swim in doubt over unimportant things. --> There - I doubted my own statement again!)

Which tool of Pascal's trifecta have you ignored? Which have you overused?

Ideas That Have Ruined Me - Follow-Up on "Going to Heaven"

I mentioned last week that I've been ruined by the idea that Christians spend eternity on the new earth, and that God comes to us (rather than us leaving a doomed world behind to float in the clouds). A related idea that has also ruined me (though not in my original list) is the thought that I honestly don't know what an unfallen world would look like.
We often make comments that suggest we do know what the restored creation will look like:


"I can't wait 'til heaven, when I'll be talented enough to sing," I read a friend's post on facebook once.


"I can't wait 'til God tells me everything I've ever wanted to know and I can understand it instantaneously," I've often said.


And my personal favorite was R. C. Sproul's off-handed comment in a video I once saw: "Entropy is a great little result of the Fall."

It amazes me that we are so self-derogatory that we think that what we perceive to be insufficient talent is a consequence of our sinfulness, or that having to learn is a mark of imperfection. If even God is described as "learning" in the Bible (yes, I'm aware of the danger of taking such verses out of context, and that's not what I'm doing here--hence the quotation marks), why should our process of learning be a source of shame?

[And I'm still trying to understand how the integral of (1/T) with respect to Q (because that's what entropy is) could be a result of sin... I suspect Dr. Sproul was simply reaching for an illustration.]

What aspects of human life (or the universe in general) do you often attribute to the Fall? Is it necessarily so?

Ideas That Have Ruined Me: "Going to Heaven"

I blame Andy Crouch for forever ruining my ability to not cringe when Christians refer to what will happen when they "go to heaven."

It was while reading his discussion in Culture Making of the end of the narrative in Revelation that it first really struck me that the end of the story takes place on the renewed earth, complete with a renewed city, renewed trees, gates leading out into the big wide world and letting the nations--still identified as nations--enter. It is to this renewed earth, John describes, that heaven comes down. At the end of the story, then, we don't go up to spend eternity with God in heaven; He comes down to spend eternity with us on earth.

I also blame Andy Crouch for the number of times I've kicked myself that I didn't see this sooner. After all, that's the story of the entire Bible! In Genesis 2 & 3, God comes down to visit Adam & Eve--they don't have to leave the earth behind. In John 1, Jesus comes and "pitches His tent with us" (literal wording for "dwelt among us").

So, why, I've wondered for the last couple years, do we sing so much about what will happen "when we all get to heaven," and how "this world has nothing for me," or even, "this world is not my home?" Granted: The second is likely referring to the world as the system of sin that governs human culture (at least, that's how I sing it--but even then, Crouch argues, we still need culture), but when I hear statements like the third, I can't help but conclude that the writer somehow thinks that this big 6000-km-radius ball of mostly molten iron with a surface gravitational acceleration of 32 ft/s^2 and atmosphere of primarily nitrogen is the wrong place for us. "This is my Father's world"--I want to shout--"and it's also mine!"

This earth is our home--and it will be, for all eternity. That's what makes it so amazing that God would move heaven here to be with us.

Granted, if you see me in church, I'll still sing most of the lines about "heaven," but only because "new earth" just doesn't fit rhythmically.  :-P

Ideas That Have Ruined Me

Below is a list of ideas that have "ruined" me--i.e., ideas that have forever altered my way of perceiving and thinking about the world around me and how I interact with others' perceptions and thoughts. I hope to write more about each in the coming weeks.

1. At the end of the Bible's story, believers spend eternity on the renewed earth, not "in heaven." This has forever changed my reaction to much Christian music and thinking.
2. The importance of criticality and doubt in thinking, thanks to Pascal's reason-based doubt-proof-submission paradigm.
3. "All truth is God's truth," thanks to Calvin.
4. "Calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we do, everything we are, and everything we have is invested with a special dynamism and devotion lived out as a response to His summons," thanks to Os Guinness. (My apologies if the wording is out of order, as I'm writing from memory.)
5. "An intellectual is someone who loves ideas... A Christian intellectual is [one who does so] to the glory of God," thanks to James Sire.
6. "Learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks," thanks to Herbert Simon. In my mind, this idea has spent the last six months in an intergalactic collision with the idea that the way we "do church" is not specifically prescribed in either the Old or New Testament.

What ideas have "ruined" you?

A Shift in Focus

When we read the greatest commandment ("You will love the Lord your God will all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength," as quoted by Jesus), we usually tend to put the emphasis on the four "all"s. God deserves the complete dedication of our entire being, the commandment says.


Meditating on this commandment in this way has helped me immensely in my walk with God. But I think we can also gain a lot of insight by focusing on the "your"s.


I am called to love God with my heart, with my mind, with my soul, and with my strength. I don't need someone else's heart, mind, soul, or strength. Though God knows I wish I had them, I don't need someone else's emotional intelligence or expressiveness, or someone else's intellectual capability and fortitude, or someone else's endurance and threshold for pain. I can love God in the way that He wants with what makes me who I am.

(Someone might argue that the "you" in this verse is plural, intended for God's people as a whole, and that I'm letting American individualism creep into my thinking. I think the commandment applies in both the singular and plural sense. I wonder, after all, how the second greatest commandment--"You will love your neighbor as yourself"--would be interpreted in a plural manner.)

I find this thought very comforting. I spend too much of my thinking time wondering how someone I admire would respond to a situation, or word an e-mail, or make a presentation; but I can love God in those situations with my personality & internal construction. I don't need someone else's.

Are Introductory Physics Problem Dehumanizing?

In my alphabetical album iPod listen-through, I'm currently in the middle of "The Eclipse and Reappearance of the Human in Higher Education," a series of talks hosted by the Christian Study Center of Gainesville in 2008. (Apparently, I need to clean out my podcasts.) It's been refreshing to relisten to these conversations (especially hearing the voices of people from Gainesville I haven't seen in some time).

But for the fist time, I turned the question of whether higher education is dehumanizing on my own field of interest: physics education. The first thought that came to my mind was the classic argument between physics professors and their introductory students about all these problems in our textbooks that ask students to ignore friction and air resistance. (Consider the comic above and the classic "spherical cow in a vacuum" joke.)

Students constantly complain that these problems are useless; physics professors insist that anything that takes place in the real world is too difficult for introductory physics.

While I make this argument every semester (Once, I tried to circumvent the argument by asking the students to consider an experiment on the airless moon; I then had to spend half an hour convincing my students that there is no air on the moon...), it occurs to me that one could consider the imposition of these artificial conditions to have a dehumanizing effect on the student.

Think of just a couple implications of a frictionless airless world: First of all, we couldn't live in this world, so our idealized experiments have no humans to operate or watch them. Second, we couldn't walk in this world, because friction is necessary for walking.

If you couple these implications with the stripped-down nature of the objects under consideration in physics problems (purposeless blocks on inclined planes that lead nowhere, spheres and triangles suspended from pulleys for no reason), you quickly find yourself immersed in a human-less (perhaps human-stifling) world.

I think I need to go revise the problems in my own textbook...

What We Think We Know & Believe

After many delays, I'm hoping this marks the return of Corner Interactions for the Fall 2010 semester!

I've got many exciting things going on this Fall, including participating in a book club with other JU faculty to read "How Learning Works" by Ambrose, et al.



The first chapter is about how students' prior knowledge about (or related to) a subject area impacts (for better or worse) their learning in that subject area. Prior knowledge & beliefs help learning if they are activated, sufficient, appropriate, and accurate. (Programmers & inductive Bible-study people will notice the AND there.) However, if prior knowledge & beliefs are unactivated, insufficient, inappropriate, or inaccurate, they're actually detrimental to the learning process. (Programmers & inductive Bible-study people will notice the OR there, and notice that a rough statistical estimate suggests that prior knowledge & beliefs harm more often than they help.)

(You might notice I included "beliefs" with "knowledge," which are not terms we usually pair together in academia. However, research increasingly indicates that what a student believes about a subject drastically impacts how well they learn it. I'll write more about that later...)

The authors provide the simple example of students learning the concept of "negative reinforcement" in behavioral psychology, in which students very often associate "negative" with bad, concluding that negative reinforcement is actually a form of punishment (thereby ignoring the "reinforcement" part of the term, which is less familiar).

It seems to me this concept is also true spiritually. Our preconceptions (of what we know & believe to be true spiritually) drastically impact our reception (or rejection) of more spiritual truth. Perhaps, even, the majority of our disagreements as Christians come from unactivated, insufficient, inappropriate, or inaccurate prior spiritual knowledge & beliefs?

Struggling with Service

This Sunday, my church's senior pastor presented a great challenge about service and hospitality. He made some great comments, including (paraphrased)

1. Burnout is not a result of doing too much but of wrong motivation.
2. Availability/life station should be a factor in our service, but not an excuse for not serving.
3. We should not let our gifts pigeonhole us into a certain venue of service.
4. Our gifts need development through use.
5. The best way to discern our gifts is to start serving and see what people notice about us. (Could this be considered a genetic algorithm? But I digress provocatively...)

It occurs to me that, not only does the church struggle to put these truths into practice, but the university does, as well. Service is one of the "Big Three" when it comes to faculty expectations (along with teaching and scholarship), and faculty (Christian and non-Christian) also struggle with motivation-based burnout, a sense of unavailability, pigeonholing themselves, lack of development, and lack of self-awareness.

If Christian faculty proactively learned to adopt these principles in serving the church and the university, one can only imagine how it would revolutionize our example to other believers and our witness to the academy.

How have you struggled with service? How have you dealt with motivation, availability, self-awareness, and development?

What should an ECC elder believe about the creation of the universe?

This was the question posed to me as an essay assignment (only one page!) at a leadership development class at my church (ECC).

 

I found this question very interesting not just because of its relevance to my professional life, but because it was the only question on the assignment list phrased in terms of "What should an elder at ECC believe" and because, in my opinion, it offers the most room for disagreement and debate out of all the questions on the list.

 

I'm pasting in my answer below.

 

Beliefs

An elder at Eastside Community Church (ECC) should believe…

1. God made the universe good.
   
2. God made the universe out of nothing.
   
3. The universe is separate from and dependent on God.
   
4. The universe reveals God's glorious character (including, but not limited to, His wisdom and sovereignty).
   
5. The universe inspires worship of God.
   
6. The universe glorifies God, even apart from the worship it inspires.
   
7. The universe was placed under humankind's care.
   
8. Humans, specifically, are part of creation, are radically different from the rest of creation, are created in God's image (in particular as creators and cultivators), and are the pinnacle of creation.
   
9. The universe is fallen.
   
10. The universe will be restored.
    
11. God's truth and nature's appearance do not always seem to agree.
    

Many of these Beliefs are depicted pictorially in Figure 1.

 

Applications

Based on these Beliefs, an elder at ECC should…

1. Actively engage and support the efforts of congregation members to understand, care for, and cultivate creation.
   
2. Affirm the significance of human beings, especially in light of our present day's dehumanizing intellectual and moral culture (which is desperately seeking an answer to this problem).
   
3. Assess present-day challenges (from the external world and from within the church) to these Beliefs and respond accordingly.
   

Open Issues

On the following list of creation-related issues, an elder at ECC should allow disagreement and encourage healthy, informed discussion among the elders and within the congregation. In such discussion, an elder (and all Christians) should seek to understand how each opinion can be seen to glorify God. To be conversant in these issues, an elder should strive to understand relevant scientific research & biblical interpretation and adopt the appropriate terminology.

1. The interpretation of quantum mechanics.
   
2. The age and development of the universe.
   
3. Evolutionary theory.
   
4. The origin of humans.
   
5. The origin of carnivorism/omnivorism.
   
6. The development of language.
   
7. God's relationship to time.
   

Figure 1. Pictorial representation of the Beliefs summarized in this essay.

-----------------------------

Your turn: What should a leader at your church believe about your field of study?

The Moral Dimension of the Mind, a la Sire

I've been rereading Sire's Habits of the Mind, and just finished his challenging Chapter 5: The Moral Dimension of the Mind. In it, he lays down the truth that should haunt all Christians:


We only know/believe what we obey. Or, we are responsible for living based on what we know.


Thus, Christian intellectuals bear a great deal of responsibility.

Here is the great dichotomy that I found on this reread:


We fail in our responsibility as Christian intellectuals, and so Christian intellectualism needs the gospel. But living out the gospel (the actions he describes as aspiration--setting our minds on what is good--and mortification--denying our flesh) requires Christian thinking (and therefore Christian intellectualism). Each necessitates the other.


In general, in fact, the only way to respond to the gospel is in obedience, and the only way to obey is to believe the gospel.


But what does all of this have to do with being a Christian physicist? I came up with a few answers...

• I need to connect physics to worship.
• I am a teacher, and not just a physicist. (This thought also led me to consider the differences between the terms "physics teacher," "physicist teacher," and "teacher physicist." I'll tease out those differences in another post some day...) I need to value my students, their learning, and their future.
• Physics is applied to help creation. (I normally say, "help humanity," but with all the thoughts of the oil spill floating around in my head, and my multi-year-long fascination with the Cultural Mandate in Genesis 1, it occurred to me that I needed to expand my understanding of my own sphere of responsibility. Again, probably more about this in a future post...)

Summertime

...and the bloggin is easy. Apparently not, since I haven't posted most of this month! I think I'll post sporadically over the summer. It's been a good year but my brain is tired...

A few personal updates:

• My five year anniversary with Amy Lane is this Friday!
• I started teaching Aviation Physics as a hybrid course last week. I've never taught (or seen) a hybrid introductory physics course. So far it's going well. (Of course, we haven't hit free-body diagrams yet...)
• I'm listening through Beethoven's Symphonies, as conducted by Leonard Bernstein. I'm halfway through #5, and find it sad that the second movement is so often upstaged by the first.
• I'm trying something very different in my Electromagnetic Theory I course in the Fall; more on that later...
• I'm re-reading Sire's Habits of the Mind. As always, when I re-read a book, I find myself wondering why I highlighted some of the things I did, and why I didn't highlight others. Sire & Newman are right: The mind is like a mountain climber...

See you around!

Expo Pics and the Questions that Matter

The EPA Expo weekend before last went great! We're very proud of our students. You can find pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/110636788435437003869/EPA_EXPO_2010#.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

LOST is quickly drawing to a close. There are three regular episodes left before the two-hour finale. As the title of the show implies (and as conversation with any LOST fan will reveal), LOST is a show that raises many questions. What happened to so-and-so when she disappeared? Why did That Guy kill That Other Guy? What is The Monster? (For those of you who stopped watching mid-stream: No, we still don't know!)

There are perhaps 1,000 little questions that LOST has yet to answer, and many of us are wondering how the writers are going to answer them in only 5 more new hours of programming. I'm beginning to wonder if they intend to answer any of the little questions.

In fact, that seems to be their point as we head toward the finale: Not all questions matter equally. (In fact, one character even explicitly stated this back in Season 4: "Why don't you ask the one question that does matter?") They want us to focus on the big questions, which right now are basically boiled down to: What is the Monster? What is the Island? Who is Jacob?

While this frustrates me as an academic (I should have the ability to find the answer to any question, no matter how obscure!), I wonder if I need to be reminded that this is, in many ways, how God works.

In Scripture, we don't get the answer to every detail-oriented question: How many angles & demons are there? Was John the Baptist really saved before he was born? How old is the universe? What is "gopherwood?"

And from the point of view of the main themes of Scripture (the "Monster," the "Island," and "Jacob," if you will), these questions don't ultimately matter.

And perhaps this is not contrary to an academic mindset. After all, don't we teach our students to pick out the main ideas & themes of a work? Don't we want them to identify and readily employ the primary equations of a section?

Looking forward to May 23!

I'm off to Washington!

(I've enjoyed saying that all day...)

Tonight, I leave with a group of students and faculty to participate in the EPA's National Sustainable Design Expo. Our students are presenting the results of their (EPA funded!) residential water reuse system. I'm looking forward to it!

You can pray...

1. for our safety.
2. for this to be an opportunity for me to live out God's love and grace to my students & colleagues.
3. for our students to represent their project and their university as they compete with 41 other teams for a second phase of funding.

I'll post pictures to my Picasa page.

Have a great weekend!

Bloggin' Bout my Generation, Part III

So... what's the answer to this generation dilemma?

I don't have a foolproof solution, but I do have a suggestion.

My generation needs to transition from feeling challenged to feeling called.

We needed challenges. We needed to be pushed out of our comfort zones. We needed to be inspired to sacrificially serve God. We needed See You at the Pole rallies and Newsboys concerts and Summer Projects. Even those of us who haven't gone into "full-time ministry" needed them. (Perhaps we're the ones who needed them the most.) Those experiences, I believe, have made us unique, and we need to not be ashamed of that uniqueness.

But to hold onto our uniqueness, we need a sense of calling. Os Guinness defines calling as "the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have in invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to His summons and service." Challenges come in lumps (sometimes mountain-sized lumps); calling is continual. Challenges lead to growth in fits and spurts; calling leads to a journey. Challenge brings change from the top down; calling brings change from the bottom up.

Here's to praying we become a generation that answers its call. Not a call to abandon our "normal" lives in exchange for something "better," but to live out our extraordinary relationship with God in our "normal" lives. I think that's how God wants us to change the world, and I think He's prepared this generation of Christians to do it in a unique way.

The other side of the question is how the church can help us do that. I don't exactly know. But I hope current and future church leaders will see this need and dream of ways to encourage a new, called generation.

RTS Professor's Resignation

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/09/video

I have mixed reactions to this article.

On the one hand, I respect RTS's right to govern what is taught in their classes. I think they (along with every seminary and Christian higher education institution) have a duty to the church and to God to preserve the truths of Scripture and equip the church's leaders to be lovers of truth and shepherds of people.

On the other hand...

• This issue was not brought up in an RTS class. It was not being taught as what the students "should believe." And even if it were brought up in class, being a lover of truth means understanding concepts that you don't agree with.
• Evolution is a very nonessential issue, and not one worth losing a valued colleague over. RTS has promoted the cone of certainty for so long... Have they decided to abandon it?
• What kind of example/precedent does this set? Who else at RTS is in danger of falling out of favor? How should church's who value RTS as a spiritual & intellectual trendsetter react to similar viewpoints among their leaders & congregation?
• If this professor is worried about the church losing its relevance... Shouldn't he be encouraged for his concern and willingness to step out on the prophet's limb?

Bloggin Bout My Generation, Part II

Earlier, I talked about how my generation of Christians doesn't generally fit into the church.


The great irony is that, in a lot of ways this lack of fitting in comes from the church, itself.


Think about what the church (youth groups, college ministries, Dawson McAllister retreats, See You at the Pole Rallies, etc.) told my generation growing up:

• "You need to step out of your comfort zone."
• "You've got to reach your campus for Christ."
• "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot live without."
• "Serving God is worth any sacrifice."
• "You have to power to tell your sphere of influence about the gospel."
• "Your generation can change the world for Jesus."
• "Your generation is going to see Jesus return."
• "You should go on a mission trip every summer."
• "You've got to serve out of God's strength, and not your own."
• "You're too busy not to pray."
• "All of life is ministry."
• "All of life is worship."

My generation of Christians learned to live out those truths in high school and college. But now that we've grown up, two things have happened: 1. It's much harder to live out those truths in real life (in which your boss doesn't care whose strength you're serving in), and 2. Many Christians in the earlier generations find these ideas foreign. To many of them, the Christian life is about "family" (by which they mean "children") and "morality" (by which they mean "watching the right movies"). They've never cosidered their comfort zone or their sphere of influence; they have little if any vision about changing the world; they think of ministry and worship as something that happens only on Sunday morning.


I know what you're thinking at this point: This is not true of every Christian older than we are. After all; it was Christians older than we are that laid down these challenges. For that, I am eternally grateful.


But, I think the fact remains that the church challenged my generation in a way that no generation has been challenged in a long time. And we're now at a point where we can continue to live in that sense of challenge and take risks to follow God, or we can resign ourselves to "normal life." The first sounds thrilling. But the second looks tempting when I'm tired and when I see others doing it.

Undergraduate Corner: What have you learned?

At the end of each semester, I ask my students to write me one page of text describing the three most important things they've learned in my class. The things the learned can be about physics, math, engineering, science in general, life in general, etc.

I think it's important for them (and all of us) to reflect on what they've learned, instead of just rushing off to Summer Break to crash on Mom & Dad's couch.

(This question also benefits me, since I make copies of their answers to go in my yearly evaluation & tenure portfolio! I find they provide a nice complement to the course evaluations.)

So... what are the three most important things you've learned this semester?

Bloggin Bout My Generation, Part I

(Image from www.xkcd.com.)

I was born in July of 1981. By nearly all sociologists' demographics, that puts me right in the middle of the transition between Generation X and the Millennials. And I could see the difference in high school: Most of my older classmates seemed characterized by apathy, emptiness, and nihilism, while most students just a year behind me in school (though only a few months younger) seemed characterized by an almost unending optimism that they could take on the world and win. On the few occasions that I saw them interact, it was like watching Kurt Cobain duke it out with Ross from Friends.

I've never really felt as though I fit into either category. I appreciate the GenXers' honest outlook on life (though I could never understand how they got out of bed each morning), but I also wish I could have the Millennials' optimism (without feeling like I was deceiving myself). I've always felt that, as a Christian, it's my nature to transcend any categories that human wisdom puts me into. (Of course, the fact that I'm an introverted nerd who teaches physics and writes blogs like this one doesn't help me fit in, either.)

These feelings (identifying equally with each generation while feeling equally alien to each generation) lead me to think a lot about the Christians my age. We've definitely come "into life." We're past the "staring out" point in our careers; college is long gone; we're (generally) not going to Newsboys concerts anymore (Are they even still around?); we've forgone seeking "spiritual mountaintops" in favor of enough faith to make it to work each morning; we've got some money in our 401-k's (and hoping it will stay there); and we're trying to be involved in the local church as adults.

I think it's this last characteristic (amid the swirling vortex of all of them) that's giving us the most trouble.

We don't really know what previous generations of Christians think of us: When we were growing up, they seemed to think we were all pregnant drug addicts. On the other hand, they seem to be watching us, like we're the new gila monsters at the zoo.

We don't really know how to make friends at church. (Adults don't seem to do those icebreaker games we learned in Youth Group.)

We don't know where we can serve or whom we should ask about it.

When we do meet someone new at church, we don't know what to talk about.

How can my generation find its way through this challenging time? Should we try to forge a new identity for ourselves? Should we try to be like the previous generations? Should we just "be ourselves," as we were taught at school? Should we disconnect until others initiate with us?

10 Marks of the Early Church

I seem to be having trouble posting on Tuesdays of late! I have an idea for a series of posts cooking, so in the meantime, here's a link to a great article I found this week:

http://www.pastorfairchild.com/2007-02/05/10-marks-of-the-early-church/

What I find interesting is the emphasis on humans being created in the image of God as the foundation of their convictions. Can we say that's the foundation of ours, today?

Commonality, Part II: The University and the Church

The university and the church have a lot more in common than most people think.

For example, this week, my univerity is hosting a faculty & student symposium for members of the campus community to present their work.

It's amazing how different "research" looks in different fields. In the sciences, we spend as little time as possible on background so that we can show as much of our original work as possible. Meanwhile, presenters from the College of Business seem to spend the majority of the time on their title slide (this shocked me) talking about the background and motivation and then speed through their original work. I've also seen Dance students who's talks seem to be entirely historical research, without showing what a scientist would consider an original thesis.

They're all very different---so much so that they hardly seem to understand each other---but they're all equally part of the academic enterprise.

It's very much like the church.

Commonality

Whom do you feel like you have more in common with?

Person A: This person has made many of the same decisions as you in life. They have pursued a similar career, for many of the same reasons. They have many of the same goals as you. They come from a similar family & social background as you. They hold many of the same opinions and convictions as you.

In fact, there is only one thing you don't have in common with this person: They have no relationship with Jesus.

Person B: This person has made many of the exact opposite decisions that you have. They have a career that has nothing to do with yours---or perhaps they are even opposed to your career. Their goals seem alien to you. Their family life is radically different from yoursl perhaps it is even offensive to you. They come from a side of town you would never visit. They don't share your most closely-held convictions, and hold convictions that you consider absurd.

But this person is a follower of Jesus.

Whom do you feel like you have more in common with?

The Discipline of Dismay

My small group is going through Os Guinness' The Call. We recently had a discussion about Guinness' description of what Oswald Chambers called "the discipline of dismay." He describes it as the weightiness that settles in when, after the initial joy of following Jesus has passed, we realize that Jesus may be traveling somewhere we'll find unpleasant.

He gives the example of Jesus setting a course for Jerusalem, telling His disciples several times along the way that He was going there to die. (This setting makes their questions about who is the greatest seem even more ludicrous, but that's another blog for another day.)

It's at this point in the semester that the discipline of dismay sets in for me. There are six weeks left---only six!---and yet following Jesus for those six weeks seems so much more difficult than the previous nine. There are difficult conversations with students who have fallen behind; long-term projects come to an intense head; I get sick; multiple deadlines converge on the same day (and procrastination becomes a long-gone pleasure!); LOST offers more questions than answers...

(Okay; that last one is relatively tame, but it certainly doesn't help.)

It's also at this point in the semester that it's easiest to put false hope in the next semester, to begin planning for the next round of classes, when I know I'll "get it right."

But I need to learn what I can, and grow how I can, during this time. I need to accept the discipline of dismay, and not avoid it.

I'm not quite dead yet!

I've missed a couple posts because of a cold. (Sick during Spring Break--isn't that always the way?) Let's say I'll see you on the 23rd!

Curiosity, Anger & Fear - My Testimony March 7

This Sunday, I was given a few minutes during my church's Sunday morning meeting to share about my journey with God. Below is the text of what I shared.

I feel the need to apologize, as the story I’m about to tell you is unfinished. I wish I had an ending to give you, but I’m afraid that hasn’t happened yet. But while I don’t have an ending, I do have an outline for you. I’d like to tell you about my curiosity, anger, and fear.

First, my curiosity. I grew up in church, and I often felt curious and confused. I didn’t understand how what I learned in church lined up with what I learned in school. As an example, I learned in church that the basis of my relationship with God was faith in what Jesus had done, and not in anything I did. On the other hand, in school, I learned that there was a time in history when Christians believed the exact opposite. I wanted to learn where my faith had come from, and why I believed what I believed. In short, I needed to make my faith my own and, as a result, develop my own relationship with God.

As I graduated high school and started college, I learned to read God’s word for myself and apply it to my life. I soon learned that the Christianity I read about in the Bible and the Christianity I had witnessed growing up were not always the same. The God I met in the Bible was gracious beyond what my sin deserved, loving beyond what I could imagine, and cared for me as an individual. I also learned that God has a specific calling for my life, and that He wants me to follow Him by serving others everywhere all the time, and not just at church on Sundays or at college ministry events. I learned to view all of life as an opportunity to glorify God by serving others.

It was this desire to glorify God by serving others that led me to pursue a career in academia. To do so, I had to take on the greatest challenge of my life: graduate school. For those of you unfamiliar with grad school, imagine, over the course of five years, having all of your dignity, physical health, and sanity slowly stripped away.

Life in grad school was harder than I had thought it would be. I knew my studies would be intellectually challenging, but I didn’t expect them to be so emotionally draining. I learned the pain of facing challenges that I didn’t feel strong enough for. I learned that putting my faith in God doesn’t mean that life will be easy. I felt as though God had brought me to a spiritual mountaintop in college, and then, in grad school, crammed me into a dark dank cell. (And that’s quite literal. My office was about the size of a shoebox.) I was often hurried and under pressure to produce results, and I had little time to reflect on what I was learning or to serve others like I had wanted to. I felt disillusioned with my studies, and was sad at my lack of progress in serving others and sharing Christ with my classmates.

I became angry at God.

I did not want to admit my anger. I felt ashamed. I felt like, if I confessed it, there would be no coming back.

I ended up taking my anger out on Amy. I became uncaring and emotionally unresponsive, except for when I was frustrated. I would yell at her for the silliest things, like leaving dirty clothes on the bed or if she got home late from work. I thought that controlling her would somehow appease my anger.

Finally, late into grad school, I confessed my anger to God and to Amy. I wish I could tell you that as soon as I confessed, the clouds parted, the sun shined down on me, and I felt this heavenly sense of freedom. But that’s not what happened. I wasn’t free from my anger at that moment, but somehow the anger didn’t seem to have nearly the weight that it once did. When I confessed, I felt the freedom to slowly begin to slide out from under it.

As a result, I learned that the world doesn’t end when I confess a huge sin. I learned that God doesn’t return my anger with spite. And I learned that God will take the punches from my anger.

Finally, let me tell you a little about my struggle with fear.

Just before finishing grad school, I learned that I have a heart condition called Mitral Valve Prolapse. The short description is that my heart’s mitral valve shakes every time it closes and my heart often feels as though it’s beating twice as fast as it actually is. It’s very distressing, and I often feel nervous and afraid in response to it.

When I learned that I have this condition, I felt very afraid and fragile, like I might break at the slightest touch. This fear has been a struggle, because in many ways, this condition affects me beyond my control, but at the same time, I need to respond to it as best I can. Dealing with this condition has been a lesson about how I cannot control everything in life, but need to turn to God as I respond to what happens to me. It’s difficult not to become angry at God over this, and He’s been very patient as I’ve learned to live with this condition and struggled with my fear and anger as a result.

So, as I said, I cannot offer you an ending. God is still in the process of developing my trust in Him. In spite of my fear and anger, He remains faithful and gracious to me, and does not treat me as my sins deserve. Because of his love, patience, and forgiveness through Christ, I can learn to depend on Him in all circumstances of life.

Ford vs. The Frantics

My church small group is reading through The Call, by Os Guinness. We recently discussed Chapter 5, "By Him, To Him, For Him," which addresses the "Protestant distortion," which, as Guinness puts it, "[said] that work was made sacred. Whereas the Bible is realistic about work, seeing it after the fall as both creative and cursed, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries lost the balance. Work was not only entirely good, but it was also virtually made holy in a crescendo of enthusiasm that was later termed 'the Protestant ethic.'"

Guinness illustrates this distortion with a series of quotes from that time.

"The man who builds a factory builds a temple. The man who works there worships there" (President Collidge). All right; I can understand & appreciate that. We should worship God in all we do (not just work, but including work).

"Work is the salvation of the human race, morally, physically, socially" (Henry Ford). Yikes! Sounds like someone is trying to drum up motivation to work at an assembly line...

At the same time, we can fall into the other trap of hating work altogether. Consider the following lines from "Kids of Summer" on Meet the Frantics (Are they still around?):

"I don't want to go to work again.
Think it's the only place I've ever been.
And I would rather be at home
Watching TV all alone
Than to be in this.

I feel it eatin' at my soul again.
My candle's burnin' and it's reached the end.
But there's nothing I can say
To make a difference anyway
To get me out of here.

I used to have a heart,
When we were the kids of summer.
But the dyin' had begun,
When you and I were young.

I don't want to go to sleep again.
By six a.m. I'm wishing I was dead.
A couple hours in the sack
Turn around and headin' back
To start the cycle again.

I gotta wear that stupid painted grin
When I just wanna jump right outta  my skin.
I need something that is true,
But there's nothin' I can do,
I gotta pay the bills."

How do we find the balance? How do we feel a sense of completing our calling, while at the same time paying the bills (and washing the laundry, and filling up the car with gas, and cleaning the bathroom, and washing the laundry again because you forgot to put it in the dryer after washing it yesterday...)?

Undergraduate Corner: Insightful Book

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

What's Wrong With University: And How to Make It Work For You Anyway looks to be an insightful book on undergraduate life. You can find a number of interesting excerpts on the site.

No one ever told me...

...that I would spend most of my professional life being a cheerleader for other people. Nor did they tell me that it was so tiring.

On Thursday afternoons, I take part in co-managing a student project to complete an environmental innovation project funded by the EPA. Today, the students were in need of a pick-me-up, so I spent most of the class period asking them to describe accomplishments we'd already made in the project, and rewarded them by tossing bite-sized candy bars left over from Valentine's Day. It's one of those moments that is certainly worthwhile, but you don't expect to encounter in your career while slaving away at a PhD.

I suppose that it's not a requirement unique to professors, but also applies to managers and parents and pastors and marketers and missionaries and bus drivers.

Whom in your life have you had to cheerlead, even at the expense of your personal productivity? How do you keep yourself cheered along while doing so?

Carpenter, Skeptic, Savior

I learned a valuable lesson about skepticism a couple years ago.

My wife and I had just bought our first home (yay!) and decided it would be a great investment idea and a lot of fun to replace all of the carpet with laminate wood flooring. Six months later, we were approximately 10% of the way done, and learned that we didn't find it to be much fun (and, it turned out, we were also eight months away from moving again).

But I learned the value of asking good skeptical questions:

• "Is this really a right angle?"
• "Was that cut supposed to be measured from the tongue end or from the groove end?"
• "These measurements can't possibly be accurate!"

(Okay, that last one isn't a question, but you get the idea.)

I learned that carpenters have to be very good skeptics: They have to know how to ask constructive questions that challenge the status quo to help develop a correct understanding of reality. We have to do the same thing in physics problems (hence my use of a Pascalian group problem-solving strategy), and in studying theology.

It's also important to remember that Jesus was a carpenter, who had to ask such skeptical questions about every cut He made. In many ways, He also applied that same clear-cut understanding to the spiritual world, calling into question those who sat on their spirituality a little too comfortably.

Here's to good skepticism!

Potential Kindred Spirits?

Things aren't looking good for global warming/climate change activists. Let's look at the record.

1. Their message isn't welcomed by a society of people who don't want to make changes to their lives.
2. Their message is based on claims no one completely understands.
3. The scientific credibility of their message has been compromised by scandal.
4. The public challenges their claim because of seeming inconsistencies with reality.
5. Because of these inconsistencies, they've had to expand their claims and change their name.

Yes, it seems like things don't look good for the climate change movement.

But these traits make it very similar to another movement that's in trouble: the young-earth anti-evolution creation science movement (or any variation thereof). These members of these two movements could learn from each other, offer each other empathy. They are, potentially at least, kindred spirits.

The great irony, though, is that Christians provide the climate change movement with some of its most ardent opposition, creation scientists included.

Even if one disagrees with their conclusions (on scientific or theological grounds) or questions their methodology, is it more important to join the broader culture in mocking them, or to spread the gospel by identifying with their challenges? Shouldn't we be capable of empathizing with people with whom we don't agree?

Undergraduate Corner: Dream big, but keep your head in the game

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

Today, you'll get to hear from my wife, Amy. Enjoy!

-------------------

Hi. I'm Amy, Brian's wife. He's given me the keyboard today to share a simple, but profound thought I've only recently wrapped my head around, as the title says: dream big, but keep your head in the game.


When I was an undergrad, I had big hopes, long-term year plans, meticulous GPA trackers, and color coded notebooks. I was the unstoppable force immovable objects dread. My goal, simply stated by my roommates so often, was to take over the world and I was going to use a finely sharpened #2 pencil to do it.


My senior year brought a series of life and perspective changing events (injury, boyfriend, breakup ... are some of mine, feel free to add your own to your mental list).


I found myself losing sight of my big dreams in the murky waters of the everyday mundane. Then, in the need for catharsis, I would attempt to catapult myself toward my dream, leaving the dreary day planner behind. I swung between these two extremes for years, along the way running blankly through graduation, first jobs, even marriage.


In 2009, I realized I had settled into a routine based life that lacked forward-movement. Most of my college "deadlines" and "goals" had passed. Just before beginning to wallow in self-pity, I remembered (after some not-so subtle reminders from a certain physics prof) that looking backward while trying to move forward will get you nowhere.


2010 will be a year of new goals set and met, of renewed vision and dreams. Along the way, I think I'll find my good ole #2.

It's Weird Being on This Side

My Quantum Mechanics students are struggling through what is quite possibly one of the most challenging homework assignments of the semester. It's not necessarily the most difficult (we haven't even gotten to linear algebra yet), but it is probably the one that requires the most amount of work and thoughtfulness.

One of the problems is a scaled-down version of an assignment we wrestled with in graduate school to create plots to compare the behavior of a mass on a spring in classical mechanics with its behavior in quantum mechanics. (Plotting the classical and quantum probability densities for successively higher energy levels, for those familiar with the material.) The results are very illuminating, but it takes quite a bit of work to reach the satisfying conclusion... especially since a single mistake along the way can ruin the end product!

I spent some time after class with them in the library computer lab as they worked on the assignment. I saw in their eyes the same level of concentration & consternation that my classmates and I had displayed when completing this assignment... and I have to say, it was weird being on this side of it.

I know what the final results are supposed to look like, and I know what steps they need to take, and I know what they're supposed to learn along the way. (Granted, I will probably make mistakes as I finish my own solutions to the assignment.) And I am setting them on this task that will take a good number of hours.

It makes me think of how Jesus is described in Hebrews as a sympathetic high priest. I was reminded of the importance of that feature of His relationship to His people. I hope I can mimic it well in my relationships with my students and with others.

Additional (possibly irrelevenat) comment: I looked up "weird" in the dictionary to make sure I had spelled it correctly, and learned that it has the same origin as the word "worth." Do we think of "weird" things as having unique "worth?"

What is Done in Secret

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  Matthew 6:1-4

As an educator, there's a lot that I have to do that no one ever sees. Grading lab reports, tracking students' grades, setting up on-line materials, fixing typos, scouring for homework problems---It is all prep work that none of my students or colleagues ever see. It also makes for boring dinner table conversation. For example, imagine the following:

"How was your day?"


"It was okay."


"What made it just okay?"


"Well, I was trying to write comments on a student's pre-class reading assignment, and I wanted to say that the expectation value of momentum was definitely zero in this problem, but when I wrote it as <p>, the on-line software interpreted it as an html paragraph tag, and it came out looking strange. It took me about half an hour to figure out why. I'm still not sure how to fix it."


"Oh... okay."

I have to remind myself that God "sees in secret," and that He has a reward prepared, apart from how many people see it or hear about it.

T-Rex on Doubt vs. Skepticism

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=544

While clicking through random Dinosaur Comics, I found this little gem about post-modern thinking in a prehistoric context.

Undergraduate Corner: "Who Told You That?"

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

I think one of the most underutilized verses in the Bible is right at the beginning: "Who told you you were naked?"

I had a similar question arise last week in my Quantum Mechanics class.

One of my students was growing frustrated with his halting success and many intellectual roadblocks to completing the first round of homework problems. "How can I calculate this thing [the expectation value of x]?" he asked. "I've never even seen this kind of formula!"

I spent the better part of this week thinking over how to help him overcome his frustrations. It is, at first glance, an intimidating formula

but there was something odd about his frustration.

Then, I realized what it was: He was expecting to be able to complete this course using only concepts he already knew.

"Who told him that?" I asked myself. "Who told him he needed to know everything before taking a course?"

I realized, then, that this was a cognitive hurdle that many of my students were troubled by, at all levels of physics.

I brought this up with the student during class on Friday, as the students began to work another set of problems. "Somewhere along the way," I said, "someone told you---and many of your classmates---that you had to know everything before coming into a course. I don't know who did, or when or why, but that's what keeps you from succeeding."

His jaw hit the floor. He realized that it was true---and went on to best a rather lengthy Quantum Mechanics problem, involving many formulas more scary than that for <x> quoted above.

Where did these students get this idea? Who told them they did not---and could not ever---have what it takes?

http://www.myministryminute.com/following-christ-and-seeking-tenure/

Great thoughts from Sarah Hamersma, an Assistant Professor of Economics at U. of Florida, on Christian faith & the tenure process.

A Journey into a Christian Physicist's Mind

I go through nearly the same line of thinking every time I hear or sing "God of Wonders" in church. It goes something like this:

First, I wonder if other Christians expect this to be my favorite worship song. I am a physicist, and the song is about God reigning over the universe. It's a good song, I tell myself, but not necessarily my favorite. Should it be my favorite?

Then, I move on to think that no, it's not my favorite; it's not even about my line of physics, after all. I don't really know that much about astrophysics or cosmology.

This is sometimes followed by a distraction into thinking about my friends in grad school who studied astrophysics or cosmology, or a distraction into thinking about my own field of study, in which case Hamiltonians and conductances and double-quantum-dot diagrams float around in my head. This may be followed by a brief sense of panic---I did actually graduate, didn't I? My Ph.D. defense wasn't just a dream, right?

After that distraction, I return to my original distraction with a little bit of unrest: Why aren't there any worship songs about condensed matter physics? Why don't we sing about God reigning over atoms and quarks and wave functions and strings? I might even try thinking of a few lines for such a song.

This is sometimes followed by a distraction into thinking about how the indeterminate nature of quantum mechanics might harmonize with the notion of a sovereign God. This, of course, gets me nowhere.

I then return to my original distraction, chiding myself for being so petty. I shouldn't let myself be distracted during worship! This is a nice song. We used to sing it all the time at my church in grad school... until we sang it for five weeks in a row one time, and we never seemed to sing it again after that.

The last time we sang it there, I recall, was just after the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded. One of the astronauts on board was a Christian, and his family had requested this song as one of the crew's wake-up calls.

It's at this point that I'm a little teary and a little sobered about my petty distractions. Aren't there so many more serious things out there? All right God, I silently pray, I'm free of distractions, and ready to worship!

It's at that moment that the song ends.

Happy 50th blog entry!

A Conversation with Mr. al'Thor (Spoilers!)

Spoiler Alert: The following blog contains glimpses into the events of The Gathering Storm.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the difference between strength and hardness as displayed in Rand al'Thor, the main character of The Wheel of Time. Everyone (readers and characters) agrees that this path will destroy him, but he doesn't seem to realize it.

Well, in the chapter I read last night, Rand acknowledged that his emotional/spiritual path would destroy him, but that he simply doesn't care. In fact, he sees it as inevitable, since he believes he's destined to die at the Last Battle, which is swiftly approaching. His words are chilling:

You all claim that I have grown too hard, that I will inevitably shatter and break if I continue on. But you assume that there needs to be something left of me to continue on. That I need to climb back down the mountain once I've reached the top. That's the key... I see it now. I will not live through this, and so I don't need to worry about what might happen to me after the Last Battle. I don't need to hold back, don't need to salvage anything of this beaten soul of mine. I know that I must die. Those who wish for me to be softer, willing to bend, are those who cannot accept what will happen to me.

A few thoughts:

1. This is a chilling reminder of the key importance the resurrection plays in the Christian faith. Paul said that without it, our faith and everything we do is in vain.
2. I quoted earlier another passage from The Wheel of Time: "Men become hard when they should become strong." We, as Christians, believe that the joy of the Lord is our strength, and that the alternative is hardness of heart. Rand's Creator, however, is (in my interpretation, and Lews Therin's) a deistic god, setting the universe in motion and watching it flourish and wither time and again. (I'm hoping I'm wrong, and that the Creator does something dramatic at the Last Battle, but we'll just have to "read on and find out," as Mr. Jordan always said.)
3. Thus, Rand's attitude above is not the Bible's picture of self-sacrifice (displayed by Jesus and His followers), but what becomes of biblical self-sacrifice when we divorce it from hope and joy.

I'm really looking forward to the end of this book, and the next two to come! But I'm also looking forward to seeing what this hope and joy does in my life this year to motivate me to self-sacrifice.

Undergraduate Corner: When Do We Stop Cheering?

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

As a physicist, I'm interested in phase transitions (such as the melting of ice into water or a substance beginning to superconduct), and I see the evidence of a phase transition at every college sporting event I attend: Students scream at the top of their lungs to support their team and distract their opponents (or, in the case of the game I attended last night, harass the coach hysterically), while alumni sit stoically, perhaps clapping when their team takes the lead.

I see the evidence of this phase transition, but have no idea how or when it occurs.

When do these students stop cheering? When do they stop being a vital part of their team's success and turn into silent observers? And, more importantly, why?

We could ask the same question of Christians who lose their fire. When (and why) do we stop cheering on the progress of the gospel? When (and why) do we become silent observers? When (and why) do we begin to care more about what we'll eat for lunch after church than who we can stop and take time to minister to?

I'm writing this as part of Undegraduate Corner because, for far too many Christians, this phase transition occurs either during college, or shortly thereafter. Let's pray that we'll remember that the Christian life is a marathon and a relay race, but not a sprint.

Pascal-esque Experiment, Part II

I think my Pascal-inspired group problem-solving session went well. The students were very quiet at first, seeming to not know who should speak first as they read over the first problem. A couple of groups didn't even stand up to use the whiteboard for the first five minutes.

But after only a short time, the room was filled with discussion, and the boards were filled with writing.

A few interesting observations:

1. As always, I find that students think more clearly and write more neatly when they are standing at a markerboard. I think the blood flows to the brain better because the body is more active. Also, seeing your handwriting on a whiteboard makes it all look so much more "official."
2. As always, I also find that students think more clearly and write more neatly when they are working out a problem with others watching them. You can't simply gloss over an assumption or a math step with other students---especially an assigned Skeptic---watching you.
3. Speaking of the skeptic role, I heard a lot of chatter between Skeptics and Leaders! What I noticed, though, was that the Skeptic always countered the Leader's statement with another piece of information: "Yes, but we also know that..." or "Perhaps, but the textbook says that..." were typical beginnings of their sentences. They were never skeptical for skepticism's sake, but always challenged the Leader's statement with a purpose and a counterbalancing idea.
4. Lastly, one student (assigned the role of Scribe) asked what the Scribe was to contribute to the discussion. I hadn't considered this, but quickly realized that part of the Scribe's role was to ask the Leader and Skeptic to clarify their ideas so that the Scribe could write them on the board. This is a crucial role that we often miss in the classroom.

So, did the session work? I think so, but we'll see when I get their homework scores in...

A Very Pascal-esque Experiment

Pascal said,

One must know when it is right to doubt, to affirm, to submit. Anyone who does otherwise does not understand the force of reason. Some men run counter to these three principles, either affirming that everything can be proved, because they know nothing about proof, or doubting everything, because they do not know when to submit, or always submitting, because they do not know when judgement is called for. (Pensees, 170)

This morning, I'm going to be putting this into action in a new group problem-solving system I'm introducing in my classes, which I read about in Just-in Time Teaching. The students will be randomly sorted into groups of three. Each student is assigned a different role: the Leader, the Scribe, and the Skeptic. Each of these reflects Pascal's actions of affirming, submitting, and doubting, respetively. Each group will receive one or two physics problems and given the majority of the class time to solve.


The Leader is to direct the group's conversation, putting forth ideas and looking things up in the textbook. Only the Scribe is allowed to write anything down. The Skeptic is to ask questions of and poke holes in what the Leader says.


This makes me excited, because it is, quite literally, Pascal in action! I'm excited to see how it works out. Tomorrow, I'll post a synopsis of how it went.

Augustine & Setting up for Success

Augustine made a great statement about the dichotomy between God's sovereignty & man's responsibility, in the form of a prayer:

Command what Thou will, and grant what Thou commandest.

Paul said it another way:

It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work according to His good pleasure.

In a very small, but very scary way, professors & teachers imitate God in this way. We set up the requirements for a course---never entirely on our own authority, but usually with a lot more freedom than we recognize---and our preparation of our students is a necessary requisite for their success in meeting those requirements.

It makes me appreciate how perfectly God fits together His particular requirements of my life and His preparation of me to meet those requirements. He always sets me up for success, which makes it even more hurtful to me & others when I don't live out that success.

Are we setting up our students (or employees, or children) for success? Are we spelling out our requirements clearly? Are we providing them with the tools & time they need to meet those requirements? If we're not, what does that say (to us and to them) about our view of God? If we were to set them up for success, how might that set us apart from our colleagues, and give our students a glimpse of the gospel?

The Real Academic Calendar

This was forwarded to me by a colleague. Very true!

The Real Academic Calendar



By Laurie Fendrich


I just learned from my very smart colleague, Neil Donahue, associate dean of Hofstra’s Honors College, that I’ve been stupidly following the wrong academic calendar in setting up my spring courses. I was structuring the content of my courses around our two-day spring break, our long spring vacation, our study days and the examination schedule. How foolish could I have been? Turns out the real academic calendar follows the successive philosophical stages through which all students necessarily progress.


For the reader’s benefit, I’ve added my own words of explanation to Neil’s academic calendar and have forwarded this to the provost’s office. I’m confident that by next spring our academic calendar will be organized the right way, and look like this:


Idealism


Early January. Because students don’t have very many claims on their attention, it’s good to send out reading assignments even before school begins.


Optimism


February. Students love all their courses, and are gung-ho about doing well. There’s no reason they can’t earn a grade of “A” in just about every course. This is the time when smart professors really pile on the work.


Realism


March. Students have come to terms with the fact that it’s going to be darn hard to get all those “A’s” they originally thought would just fall in their laps. The moment calls for triage: It’s time to figure out whether to drop calculus or the course in the history of mirrors. Also, students need more sleep than they’re getting, and the way to fix that is to sleep through the first half of the early morning class.


Pessimism


April. It’s too late. Whole lives are doomed. Students will never get into law school with the grades you, the vile, wretched, cruel-hearted professor, have been unfairly giving out.


Cynicism


May. The semester ends. Professors never gave students a chance, or considered how hard they tried. The world is stacked against them. What does it matter? There are no jobs out there anyway.


Sybaritism


June. Whatever happened in the past is over and done with. Time to forget everything and party like hell.


NOTE: Summer inevitably passes. With fall, the Sisyphean climb resumes.