What to Say...

“Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas?”

I’m squarely in the “Merry Christmas” camp. And it isn’t merely because of my minor rebellious politically incorrect tendencies. It is a matter of the nature of blessings.

To wish someone well in any regard is to bless them. It may not seem like that big of a deal, but that is because words today have largely been divorced from real meaning and impact. When someone sneezes, we say “bless you” or some variant without even thinking about it. But for most of human history, blessing someone was no mere polite thoughtless phrase, it was a significant event with strong spiritual effect.

It was viewed such by the recipient, as well as the giver.

Preparation

As we’ve looked at recently, Advent is a time of preparation. We prepare for all sorts of events. For me, a time of preparation is at an end. Part of our chemistry building is completing a renovation, and I am privileged to move my teaching labs to some of the new space.

We move today, so the last week has been a lot of packing, moving small things, and getting ready for an army of movers to transport everything up two floors. Essentially, everything is ready, and all that remains is to direct the troops…

ADVENTures Before Christmas, Week 4

Each week of Advent has a number of symbolisms, and the following table is now filled completely.

Week	Scene	Attitude	People	Action
1st	Journey on a Donkey	Hope	Isaiah/OT Prophets	Expectation/Prophecy
2nd	Bethlehem	Peace	John the Baptist	Annunciation
3rd	Shepherds	Joy	Magi	Proclamation
4th	Angels	Love	Mary	Fulfillment

In the first week, we looked at suffering/penitence and its relationship to expectation and hope. The second week looked at how the solid promises of God through Christ gave peace even in the midst of trials and suffering. Historically, for reasons given last week, the third week of Advent turned a corner into increasing joy and eager anticipation as the Day of Christ drew nearer, and we looked at the traditions of gift giving. The fourth week is the rising to the crescendo of Christmas Eve and Christmas itself. This year, Advent is a full five weeks long—the longest possible, as Christmas itself is on a Sunday.

There is so much to talk about here that it is hard to pick a topic.

Inspiration

What inspires you? What does it take to get your attention, to lift your eyes above your daily cares, so they may see grandeur, dignity, hope, the sublime and the holy?

Now is a great time of year to explore your sources of inspiration. We are told to count our blessings. This is very good, yet I’m beginning to realize that is merely a starting point. Counting our blessings simply reminds us to be aware of what we do have, engendering gratitude. It’s like climbing a mountain, and taking a break to realize how far we’ve come.

Counting our inspirations lifts us still higher, encouraging us to push further up the mountain, to keep climbing, for we are not yet as He intends for us to be.

SDG

Manliness

What characteristics, positive and negative, come to mind when you think of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’? How does the culture view/define them? How have those changed over time? What is a Biblical description of those terms, and how do they compare to your pictures and those of the culture?

While it seems to me that both masculinity and femininity have been radically redefined in the last 50 years, I’m tempted strongly to evaluate the changes to the concept of manhood as the most negative and damaging. It is as if equality for women was improved at least partly at the expense of men. Rather than lifting both up, women were lifted up and men brought lower.

To put it bluntly, women have become, not just better women, but more masculine, and men have been made more feminine and less masculine, to their detriment.

Winter Break

Here at UT, today was the last day of final exams for the term. All that is left for some is to finish grading and submit final grades. That is one of the nice things about teaching is that when a semester is over, it usually really is over. There are rarely lots of loose ends to deal with, except for the occasional incomplete.

So, once it is done, most of us have 2-6 weeks to decompress and prepare for the next round. What do you do with the time? Catch up on research? Clean your office? Deal with other administrative tasks you’ve put off, “until you had time?” Start revamping your courses based on the lessons learned this term? Run for the hills for a while? Introduce yourself to familial relations who’ve shared your home but not your time for the last three months? Hibernate? Some mélange of the above?

Nonesuch

Saturday, the New York Times published an op-ed in the Sunday Review section entitled, “Americans:  Undecided about God?” by Eric Weiner, author of Man Seeks God:  My Flirtations with the Divine. He identifies himself as a brand new (to me), but apparently fast growing spiritual demographic, the “Nones.”

He says that nearly 12% of the US are Nones (as opposed to nuns), and a quarter of young people (no age range given). What are the Nones? They are people who do not identify with any specific or organized religion, yet believe in “God.” They consider themselves spiritual, yet are ‘undecided’ and will explore a wide variety of ‘isms’ and probably cherry pick from each.

Weiner cites a Notre Dame/Harvard study that indicates this trend towards amorphous spiritualism is due to the increasing religious polarization of politics and how it drives folks away from both politics and organized religion. I think that is far too simplistic.

Church in the Public (School) Square

During the 1980’s, there were a number of court battles over whether Christian student groups could have a presence on campus like other voluntary special interest groups like the chess club or Key Club, with the ultimate decision being in favor of ‘equal access.’ Similar arguments were used for churches to rent school cafeterias on Sunday mornings or other non-school times, just like any other civic group.

It turns out that the latter policy is falling out of judicial favor. “In a June 2 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled 2-1 that the New York City Department of Education can bar churches from renting school facilities for worship services. The decision overturned a 2002 lower court ruling that allowed the congregation, in addition to nearly 60 other churches, to conduct worship services in school buildings.”

Overwhelmed?

It is so easy to get overwhelmed with all of the problems in the world. Our politics, conflicts abroad, drugs, school violence and lockdowns, poverty, starvation, the sex and slave trades, religious conflicts (armed, verbal, legislative, etc.), and the list keeps going.

Jesus didn’t heal every sick person in Israel, much less the world, nor did He right every injustice around Him, but He confidently said that He had done everything He came to do.

For us, we aren’t God, so we can’t hope to solve every problem. However, I think the solution is to see what issues impassion you and prayerfully pursue those, and not feel guilty for not pursuing others. It is easy to be guilted by others’ passion, but resist. Many if not most of these problems are desperately real, and so be grateful and encourage others in pursuing their passions, and share yours with them. Just don’t be insulted or think less of them if they don’t jump on board with you. It goes both ways.

We will each have peace and encouragement, and more will be done as we mutually encourage each other while remaining focused on the tasks we’ve been given.

SDG

ADVENTures Before Christmas, Week 3

Each week of Advent has a number of symbolisms, and the following table will be filled as the weeks progress.

Week	Scene	Attitude	People	Action
1st	Journey on a Donkey	Hope	Isaiah/OT Prophets	Expectation/Prophecy
2nd	Bethlehem	Peace	John the Baptist	Annunciation
3rd	Shepherds	Joy	Magi	Proclamation
4th

In the first week, we looked at suffering/penitence and its relationship to expectation and hope. The second week looked at how the solid promises of God through Christ gave peace even in the midst of trials and suffering. Historically, for reasons given below, the third week of Advent turned a corner into increasing joy and eager anticipation as the Day of Christ drew nearer. For some reason, the third week has an association with the Magi that visited gifts upon the Christ child, likely several weeks or more after Christmas, traditionally on January 6, Epiphany. Thus, today, I want to talk of gifts.

Strategic Impact

From a colleague, I became aware today of a newly compiled list…of the “50 Top Atheists in the World Today,” as compiled by atheists. It is a remarkable list with a couple of surprises:  Richard Dawkins is not number 1 (he’s #7), and Woody Allen is on the list (#35).

What is also remarkable is that nearly half of them (24) are academics; that is, they are current or former faculty members. In fact, 17 of the top 20 are. The first non-academic on the list is #10, Christopher Hitchens. Most of the rest are novelists or other professional writers. The vast majority have advanced degrees, even if they are not faculty.

Fighting is Good for the Soul

In some ways, teaching is like parenting in that we are trying to shape human beings, sometimes against or in spite of their wills, and certainly against their fallen natures. If you’ve been reading TSR for any length of time, you know that it can easily frustrate me, and does many other educators from time to time.

I came across an article today called, “Midnight in the Bedroom of Good and Evil,” which is worth reading for the title alone, that dealt with how parents (and educators, by extension) not only struggle against the resistance of their children, but how that creates a sympathetic eruption of their own fallen natures—selfishness, anger, frustration, irritability, and so on.

The author tells an account I will repeat here about a monk living among the Desert Fathers.

Examination

Today was the first day of final exams for the term at my school, and honestly, I am very thankful I do not have to give any and in fact was able to turn in most of my grades today. Thank you, Lord!!

A lot of students wonder why we give final exams. Ideally, it is a chance to see how much of the material presented over the semester has stuck and how deep the student’s understanding of it has become. Ideally, the student has spent three and a half months struggling with the new material, trying to fit it into their understanding of the world and having that understanding reshaped to accommodate it.

The consideration of new ideas, new exercises in critically examining assumptions/arguments—both our own and those of others, whether we agree with them or not—these compose the real heart of education, the maturing of the mind and heart, ideally helping them work together and deeper with the goal of developing wisdom more than knowledge.

A Student Thank You Note

The time is 1:58 am, and I have just finished a six or seven hour intense time working on final grades and posting them for students. A little bit ago, shortly after sending out an email to let them know everything was posted, I got the following from a chemical engineering student:

Intellectual Property

About once a year or so, I have an academic integrity case in my class where a student, usually with the best of intentions, innocence and/or naïveté, will give/email his/her work to their partner. Usually, it is to ‘help them out,’ to check their work or the like. In most of these cases, I believe them, usually because when I talk with the partner, they admit they used the work inappropriately and apologize to the source partner.

The betrayal on their faces and in their responses is sad. However, collusion is explicitly forbidden in my syllabus, but they often don’t realize that is what they are doing. So we have a chat. I usually take points off, but not as many as from the thief.

Humanity

I think I’ve commented on this verse before, but it is so fundamental that its applications seem never ending. Micah 6:8 says, “He has shown thee, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”

What this tells us is the God looks at our character, our heart, not our intelligence, socioeconomic status, or anything else. For us as academics, at the top of our field, where we receive accolades because of our abilities, this can be difficult to accept.

ADVENTures Before Christmas, Week 2

Each week of Advent has a number of symbolisms, and the following table will be filled as the weeks progress.

Week	Scene	Attitude	People	Action
1st	Journey on a Donkey	Hope	Isaiah/OT Prophets	Expectation/Prophecy
2nd	Bethlehem	Peace	John the Baptist	Annunciation
3rd
4th

Last week I mentioned how Advent starts off in a spirit of penitence. Not only is purple symbolic of royalty, it is symbolic of suffering. Yet, the attitude of this second week of Advent is peace. How do these reconcile?

Grudging Grace

If you’re like me (and I fear you are, and hope you aren’t), then there are times you aren’t very gracious about extending grace. Today I was the poster child for GGD, Grudging Grace Syndrome, and I suspect more than a few faculty suffer from it, especially at the end of term. This isn’t an online telethon—raising funds will never find a cure, only raising prayer. Fortunately, there are no busy signals on that hotline.

Proverb

Love is blind, yet can teach the eyes much about sight.

SDG