The Atheist's Nativity

What does the love of Christ really look like? What does it do to real people when it is truly expressed? Would it, could it, possibly cause an atheist to provide a star for the very nativity scene he nearly sued to have taken down?

Ridiculous, I know.

SDG

To Make a Difference

Every semester, I meet individually with each of my students to discuss their plans and dreams for the future, and offer some personalized career counseling.

With many, I ask them a pair of questions to try to get below the surface, and for many, it is very difficult to answer them, even for those that have thought about them before.

1)      What are you good at? What are your gifts, strengths, talents, or skills? What do your friends admire about you?

2)      What are you passionate about? What energizes, motivates, or inspires you? What makes you exult or rage?

For many, if not most, the most common passion expressed is to make a difference in the world or to help people.

It is striking to me that this should be such a common refrain, as it seems independent of any spiritual tradition or other recognizable single factor. However, there are some interesting things I have either noticed or inferred from the sum of their comments.

A Sin To Be Silent...

This is a difficult post to write for a number of reasons, yet, as the title suggests, it would be wrong for me not to. Several weeks ago, I read a series of news articles about a New Jersey family, Army Major and Mrs. Jackson, a Christian family with three biological and two adopted children. For years, they have fostered medically at risk children, a herculean and noble effort that led to them adopting at least two.

However, in April 2010, (nearly two years ago) they ran afoul of New Jersey’s Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS), when they took the youngest, an adopted, medically challenged infant, to the hospital for a fever. The hospital staff initially thought aspects of the baby’s condition were suspicious and contacted DYFS, who immediately removed all five children from the home. Ultimately, in a fairly short time, the medical concerns were determined to come from her existing conditions and likely pre-adoption injuries.

Sawing Off the Branch You're Sitting On

It is no secret that many, if not most of the movers and shakers in the Academy would just as soon Christianity disappeared into the night, and the more quietly the better. Many of them attribute the growing ills of society to the poisonous influence of Christianity and other religions. Just ask Richard Dawkins and his fellow monks of the “New Atheism.”

I have just one question:  the prominence of Christianity in the fabric of society has been sharply decreasing for much of the last fifty or sixty years, so why are our problems increasing? It seems like we should be darn near a utopia now.

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.

Isaac and Ishmael, Together Again

A stray thought popped into my head tonight—apart from the fact that the West has been historically primarily Christian, why have the militant atheists appeared to focus almost exclusively on attacking Christianity? Why not Islam? So, I went to every blogger’s first resource, Google, and did a search for “books atheism Islam,” and was a little surprised to see 8.9 million hits. Apparently, there is no love lost between the militant ‘new’ atheists and Mohammed.

Feelings

Several weeks ago I posted a commentary about Mormonism and whether or not it might be a cult, which came up as a result of the furor over Mitt Romney as a Mormon presidential candidate. Since that whole episode, the Mormon PR team has covered the country with billboards and other ads promoting their faith. One online ad caught my eye in particular, but not in a favorable light. It had a picture of a very attractive young woman with the quote, “I feel God is proud of me for who I am.” (or something very close to that).

The problem with that ad is a cultural issue endemic in mainstream Christianity and the culture as a whole, and is not unique to the LDS church. Simply put, it is deriving truth from emotion.

God gave us emotions and intuition. In fact, I am a fairly intuitive person much of the time. However, I view our emotions primarily as spice, or seasoning in the decision making process. The “meat and potatoes” of clear thinking are truth, wisdom and logic, in that order.

Happy Birthday!

I am very excited to celebrate one year of The Scholar Redeemer. There have been readers from 72 countries totaling nearly 11,000 views of 349 posts. By far, the most popular topic was the Professor Martin Gaskell court case. Topics have ranged from meditations, devotions and random thoughts, to observations of education in general and higher ed in particular, to government interactions with education, to the educational culture to apologetics to science/faith issues and so on.

It has been a faith journey for me personally as well. Many have asked how I am able to write something every day. Often I’d sit down, usually late at night, wanting nothing more than my pillow, to face a blank screen. Without any ideas jumping to get out, I’d simply pray for God to direct my thoughts and show me things from the day that might inspire, encourage or challenge folks.

The Church and Sex

A friend posted the following link on the ubiquitous facebook:  “$28-Billion-Crime: New film shows the dark connection between sex addiction and sex trafficking.” I had to really think through whether and how to cover this deep of a subject without diluting it by overhype or platitudes. The topic of sex and sexual sin is both over- and under-exposed in the Church. Because the topic seems so private, it can be hard to realize the global implications of one’s personal choices.

C.S. Lewis put the topic of lust and pornography in his typically unique way by comparing it to gluttony. He described both hunger and the sex drive as natural God-given aspects of being corporeally human, yet, we would think it quite odd for someone to drop a coin in a machine to have pictures of a roast turkey or ice cream or pizza pop up in a titillating fashion for a few seconds before disappearing until the arrival of the next coin. Such a person would rightly be viewed as mentally unstable or not quite right in the head, needing professional help. Why would we consider porn any different?

The Beginning of a Bad Joke, or What the West Needs to Remember?

Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks

A rabbi, a Chinese communist and a pastor walked into a bar…

This is what first comes to mind when reading this article by a British rabbi. In “China is reversing the decline and fall of Christianity,” Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks shares research by Chinese social scientists that what made the West rise to such astonishing heights was not our guns, our politics, or our economics, but something that led to all of these—our Christianity. In fact, two western authors have reported that as of two years ago there are more Christians in China than Communist Party members and the numbers are growing.

HWJV: How Would Jesus Vote?

At grave risk of breaking my rule to be apartisan in this blog, I feel compelled to comment on the issue of Christians in politics.

Growing up in Texas, at least post-Reagan, it has been commonly viewed among evangelicals here that you can’t be a Christian and Democrat or a Christian and politically liberal. I had a roommate in grad school who grew up in Pennsylvania believing you couldn’t be a Christian and a Republican. Obviously, what we have here is the heart of Christian unity.

Compassion > Hate

In the right hand column of this page, one of the gadgets is a list of four related news headlines and summaries. I’d like to encourage you to read this one. It tells the story of a sleeper terrorist who was in a horrible car accident, and the Christian medical professionals who healed him and their love and compassion revealed to him his own hate. In time, he surrendered to Christ. The Christians didn’t apparently know (at least at first) who they were treating, they just loved him as a fellow human being, paid for his medical, a new car, and housed him as part of one of their families. The power of the Gospel is in love.

SDG

Unexpected Evangelism

Today, a student from a Middle Eastern country met me for lunch and proceeded to share the ‘gospel’ of Islam with me. It was an interesting experience as he tried to explain how Judaism, then Christianity, then Islam all contain the same message but in a progression, and that the Quran tells the story of that progression.

Walter Bradley: Is the Bible Scientifically Reliable?

Dr. Walter Bradley is a mechanical engineering professor with a long and distinguished career at three major institutions:  Colorado School of Mines, Texas A&M, and currently is at Baylor. His current research studies various uses of the coconut plant for improving the standard of living in tropical areas. He is also a personal friend and mentor for the last nearly 20 years.

One of his passions is studying the interface between science and Christianity. Over the last 40 years, his views have evolved from young-earth creationism to increasing sophistication in old earth theories, as his studies have gotten more in-depth.

About two weeks ago, he was in Austin to give a presentation he entitled, “Is the Bible Trustworthy in Areas Related to Science?” At the request of a friend also in the audience, Walter has sent me the slides in order to post here. Most of the slides are self-explanatory. For those that aren’t, that’s the limitation of not having the audio attached.

I hope they are useful, interesting and informative for you. (I apologize for the delay in posting this due to technical issues.)

Is the Bible Trustworthy in Areas Related to Science? by Walter Bradley

SDG

I Like Love You

In way too many places to list here, Scripture commands us to love one another. One day in a Bible Study in grad school, we were discussing what this means—to put another’s needs above your own, to look out for and guard the well-being of others. I don’t remember now if someone said it, or if it clicked for me—that doesn’t mean I have to like that person or be feeling warm and fuzzy towards them at the moment. The love commanded is that of action and attitude, not emotion.

What has made this stick for me is how surprised I was at the overwhelming relief I felt. I can serve them, even graciously, even if they are not my favorite people, even if they are difficult and annoying, I can still show them love by guarding their well-being, whether physically, emotionally or spiritually. I can even do this willingly and not grudgingly, because they are a human created by God, and, if a Christian, a brother or sister in the Lord.

What is interesting is that when obedience to God’s commands is performed, even when ‘our heart isn’t in it,’ eventually our heart comes around.

Sometimes it is easier to say “I love you,” than it is to say “I like you.” Once more, God turns our expectations upside down.

SDG

A Different Trumpet Call

In some ways, this is a difficult post to write, because I feel the need to address a room-filling elephant in the American church. In surfing the web this week, I came across this chart on an atheist website. After a little hunting, I found the original source, a blog evaluating various aspects of data from a dating website. If you are interested in what it says, scroll down nearly halfway to where it tells you how to circumspectly find out if your date is religious, and you’ll be able to skip the parts about how preference for beer correlates to sex on the first date. Hardly a scholarly site.

So why am I giving it any credence at all? Simply because it is consistent with empirical evidence I have observed as well as that observed by folks with whom I shared the chart this week. So rather than being the authority on which this post is based, it was merely the spark that ignited my concern into action (or at least into the words of this post).

If the suspense hasn’t yet driven you to either of the links to see what the chart says, I applaud your fortitude. Basically, the chart indicates that the more religious you are, the less likely you are to be proficient in reading and writing. The chart compares different religious viewpoints and degree of self-reported devotion to one’s faith and their literacy grade level. If you are atheist, Buddhist, Jewish, or agnostic, you were the most literate. It goes downhill from there, in order: Hindu, Muslim, Catholic and finally Protestant.

Apparently, the ‘researcher’ compared the proficiency of spelling and grammar of all of the folks using the dating site and correlated it with stated faith and how seriously the person claimed to adhere to it. That’s about as much detail as was given in the article. I have no idea how they assessed grade level to the quality of writing, so don’t know the validity of the assessment. So why give it my attention?

Again, it is because it is consistent with my empirical observations. It grieves me to realize that the portions of our country that are associated most strongly with our faith strongly correlate with the worst educational statistics. When this country was founded by predominantly Protestant folks seeking religious freedom, one of the first and most important (in their view) things to do was to establish schools and universities so that their children could be educated in order to understand and advance their faith. Get that? Their faith was the goal of their education, not its enemy.

My friend, Dr. Robert Woodberry, a subject of a recent Scholar Redeemer post, is a sociologist who has found extraordinarily strong correlations between the work of Protestant missionaries around the world and a profound increase in the standard of living of the native population.

And yet, and yet, I see evidence all around me of folks who fear ‘secular education,’ and see faith as separate from and superior to anything the ‘world’ has to say on topics, and who see anyone who doesn’t hold to their interpretation of Scripture as deceived, wrong, evil, or of Satan, and therefore will not engage with them but retreat into holy huddles.

Why?

Bob’s the sociologist, not me. However, I think the Big Event that did the most to shatter the Protestant (and to a lesser extent, Catholic) confidence was Origin of Species. Basically, someone floated a plausible theory that casts doubt on the special Creation of humanity, and we crumbled. Why? One possible reason is that Christians had grown accustomed to their dominant role in American society and grew intellectually lazy, and thus their faith was more cultural than living and vibrant. They lifted their understanding of what the Bible says above other possible interpretations. They failed to read and appreciate the wealth of diverse interpretations of difficult passages by 1800 years of church thinkers, limiting themselves to rather simplistic interpretations. Thus, many were ill-equipped to intellectually engage evolutionary theory on a scientific, academic, or even logical basis, and surrendered the discussion with blind insistence on their interpretations. They had already ceded the intellectual rigor of the academy and hadn’t realized it, so perceived an attack rather than an attempt to fill the vacuum of quality scholarship.

What was the result? Christians as a rule began to advocate ‘blind faith’ (a term I despise), and that the truth of our faith trumps any evidence apparently against it. When this should have emboldened them to seek out data all the more strongly, instead they turned inward and suspicious, discouraging the brightest among them from pursuing those studies. Ignorance and fear multiplied, causing the church to stop trying to answer the difficult questions raised by science (and other academic fields) and insist on spiritual platitudes. The result was almost a Hindu like dualism—the physical world was deceptive illusion and the spiritual one the only reality. Yet, the Bible is the holy book that is one of the most grounded in the real world. The Jewish and Christian faiths are meant to be lived in the daily grind, not divorced from it.

When our young grew up in this environment, then went ahead and entered the secular educational system, the rationality God put into their brains received a shock like falling into an icy river and they realized they didn’t know how to swim, so they succumbed to the philosophy that their faith didn’t have the answers and was empty. They had been discouraged from asking questions in church, and in the academy, not only were they encouraged to ask, they were given answers that made sense of the information given, not knowing there was more out there to be discovered that would bolster their faith as reasonable. Their faith was revealed to be weak and powerless, and therefore God must be also, if He even existed after all. When word of this falling away reached home, folks just held on tighter in panic, their fear reinforced, and a vicious cycle began.

The church in effect agreed with the naturalist philosophy that faith was irrelevant and couldn’t be defended in the marketplace, so it exiled itself underground. Is this the picture of the church Christ painted to Peter of a force tearing down the gates of Hell? Are these the believers in whom perfect love casts out fear? Or is it the picture of those who hold to the form of religion but deny its power? Instead of the Church victorious, we have the Church anemic, afraid of getting bruised, afraid the atheists might actually be right that God does not exist and their faith is in vain.

I didn’t realize until seeing that chart how deeply I was aware of this phenomenon. Ever since high school, I was passionate about not wanting to study at a Christian college because I knew I needed my faith to be challenged in the world in which I would spend my career and life. I was passionate that I would send my kids to public school so they would be equipped to engage their culture from the beginning—I would train them in the faith at home and through church in such a way that they would be prepared for what they would face and they would get immediate practical application of it with their peers.

There are some truly wonderful Christian schools at all academic levels and some truly backwards ones. Within each category are faculty who are either wonderful or blind-faithers and everywhere in between. However, I wanted to be in the secular environment, fleeing the holy huddle, being a shelter for Christian students, and engaging the secular ones, providing an alternative. We still need folks to do that.

What I realized this week, is how badly we as Christian faculty, the exceptions to those in the graph, need to reach ‘in’ to the Body, to ease their fears, to enable them to stand, to open the eyes of their blind faith, showing them that faith is truly the assurance of things hoped for, because of what we have seen in God’s faithfulness. We do not need to be afraid for God’s power or reputation—He is the Lord All Mighty. Faith is supposed to give us the confidence to seek out the truth in the world and proclaim it in all of its forms, not cause us to run in fear in case it gets crushed.

Faith and fear are opposites. It is time for us as Christian scholars to lead our brothers and sisters out of fear and into faith. We need to help them to see their view of God is too small, a god of the gaps, not the Conqueror of Death and Author of Life. We need to restore a love of learning and study of Creation within the Church, to reignite the idea that scholarship is a holy calling, and reinforce the command that intellectual integrity is not only possible, but expected in a person of faith.

SDG

Glory--Goal or Garnish?

Pride is a tricky thing. It is one of the “seven deadly sins,” yet we are to take a certain amount of pride in our work, be pleased with a job well done, be proud of our family, friends, church and even country. Obviously, there are shades of meaning, differences of degree, and so on.

Similarly, in Luke 6:26, Christ warns “Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.” Yet, in describing the qualification for elders, Paul says in I Timothy 3:7, “He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.”

Situations like these remind me of my dependence on God’s grace. It seems that rarely do our behaviour and situations we face fall cleanly into black and white. Furthermore, what is crossing the line for one person often is quite acceptable for another—not in terms of their opinion on the topic, but in terms of what is truly acceptable or sinful. For some, drinking really is a sin because they have a weakness in that area and it masters them immediately. For others, it is merely a pastime or one among many beverages from which to choose. What might be sinful pride in one person may be a much needed change in perspective in one who has been downtrodden. Christ’s redemption brought us into indwelling communion with Him through the Holy Spirit, and we have a relationship guiding our lives, not a rulebook.

I think that in both cases (pride and others’ opinions of us), God looks primarily to our heart and before whom our heart is bowing. Is it to ourselves, our work, talents, family, etc, or is it to Him, as we joyfully lift up the object of our pride to Him as an offering of the best of ourselves? Do others lift us up because we justify and enable worldly values or because the excellence of Christ is visible through us, our work, etc?

When we say we ‘want to do great things for God,’ for whom do we really want to do them, Him or us? Often, usually, it is a mixture of both. Again, thank God for the grace He lavishes upon us and that at the end, when we stand before Him, He will take all we have offered and burn away the baser motives to reveal what is pure. It is a cause both for thanksgiving and holy fear, that our good deeds would be found to be primarily for our glory not His, and we will have small rewards in heaven.

What’s the point? As academicians, we face this struggle intently. Going for tenure, or even our annual reviews, we must list our accomplishments—how many papers have we written, how much in grant money have we attained, how many conference/seminar invites have we been extended, how good are our student evals, how many and how important are the committees on which we’ve served, how unique is our work, and so on. Do we count them as rubbish, as Paul counted his accolades?

“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.”        --Philippians 3:7-9

Our accolades are not rubbish—they are temporal rewards for our efforts and/or gifts in this life by the Many-Gifted Giver of all blessings. However, they are but a wet match compared to the searchlight of riches and reward of devoting our life to Christ and seeking His glory above all else. Are academic accolades the goal or the garnish of our lives?

Do we take pride in, and people speak well of in us the right things for the right reasons to the right degree, so that at the end of all that we know, God Himself speaks well of us as a proud Father?

SDG

Christian and Muslim Views on Science and Religion

Tonight, the same group sponsoring last night’s talk sponsored a talk on science and religion. They had a Christian Religious Studies professor from the University of Houston, Dr. Lynn E. Mitchell, and a Turkish Imam from San Antonio, Zubeyir Safak.

                        

Mitchell went first and then Safak. There followed a Q&A with only a couple of questions, most of which were fielded by Mitchell.  Nearly everything discussed has been pretty thoroughly covered in previous posts, particularly the “What is Science?” series a couple of weeks ago, and a few Vibrant Dance topics from last fall.

Mitchell is a clear NOMA supporter, a fact he confirmed to me explicitly afterward, though he seemed to respect the Concordist view I tend to hold, and is appreciative of the work of Hugh Ross and Reasons to Believe. He correctly and at length explained that in spite of much belief to the contrary, there hasn’t really been a war between science and religion, again as covered in the highlighted post earlier in this paragraph. He also echoed Ross by describing how Genesis is unique among creation accounts in that God created, rather than creation creating some pantheon, like the Babylonian {and Greek} mythologies do.

I found Safak a pleasant, likable, soft-spoken gentleman, and very thoughtful. He holds a concordant viewpoint that the Book of Nature and the Book of Scripture, when properly interpreted are in complete agreement/harmony. The key difference is that his Book of Scripture is the Qu’ran, not the Bible. I would enjoy sitting down with him over lunch or dinner and discussing theology, philosophy and/or science. One of the more interesting things he touched on was why the Muslim nations, which had an advanced scientific/technological understanding for centuries, stagnated. He stated simply that they stopped watching the sky.

As has been recently popularized by the DVD “The Star of Bethlehem,” The magi were likely Babylonian scholars descended from the school of scholars of which the Old Testament prophet, Daniel, was chief. One of the primary things this school of scholars did was astronomy.

Why did they stop watching the sky? I’m not sure, but I interpreted Safak’s statement as being both literal and figurative, in that for some reason, scholarly pursuits were simply not valued. There is a rather unflattering legend that in A.D. 640 when the Muslims conquered Egypt, they sent word back to the Caliph Omar asking what to do about the documents in the Library of Alexandria. He is reported to have replied, "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous." And thus they were burned. This legend, recorded 300 years or so after the event by a strongly anti-Muslim bishop, must be taken with a rather large grain of salt. Furthermore, it is sad to admit that a few of our brothers and sisters in Christ would agree with the Caliph, viewing any book other than the Bible as being unnecessary.

Before going to the lecture, I had mentioned it to some of my staff, and one commented that he expected that the Islamic view of science and religion would likely be comparable to the other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity, and he was right. On the one hand that makes a lot of sense, but on the other hand, there has been such a long historical divide in the cultures of Western Judeo-Christianity and Islam, and corresponding difference in scientific development, that I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I found was there is a range of view that is very similar to the range among us.

Still the biggest surprise for me was the similarity. I have read precious little of an English translation of the Qu’ran (which must be read in Arabic to insure you’ve gotten the message correctly, I’ve been told), and have heard a fair bit of hearsay regarding the content of it. That small level of exposure has not left me with an expectation that Concordism between the Qu’ran and science would be feasible or significant. That an imam sees it as such is interesting.

During the Q&A, I was the first to raise my hand, and thanked them for coming, saying that as a scientist of faith, it was encouraging to hear theologians speak on the subject in similar terms to my own views, and got the chance to offer up this blog to demonstrate it. (Never pass up an opportunity for free advertising!) The unexpected result of that comment was to draw enough attention to myself, that afterward, three students accosted me with digital voice recorders, saying they were in a journalism class and wanted to interview me for an assignment. Sigh. (What was that about free advertising?) Fortunately, they said it would not appear in the student paper, as I’m not sure I’m ready for that kind of publicity.

Admin note: it appears I have fixed whatever setting was causing the email subscriptions not to go out daily, and I think I have linked the blog to Twitter. Supposedly, when I post, it will send a tweet out to @ScholRed. It didn’t work last night, but maybe it is fixed now???? Stay tuned or tweeted or friended or…

SDG

Social Networking

Online social networking is here to stay. It is astounding the number of creative ways it is being used by all walks of life, and so fast! As a somewhat old-fashioned educator (especially for my age!), I struggle with the short attention spans of my students and the new ways they like to learn. A colleague sent me this YouTube video and blog article that you might find interesting as well.

That’s not all. Entrepreneurs are using social media too. I have some friends who have come up with a new concept of the online daily coupon, where they exclusively use social media to spread the word about their new company, MooLaLa, and the money they would spend on advertising goes to pay the members (sign up is free) for telling their friends about it. It combines Groupon, Facebook and multi-level marketing in an innovative way.*

I’ve mentioned previously how I refuse to have a Facebook page because I want to keep a personal/professional barrier between me and my students. I try to be vigilant in what I say in emails, for, as another colleague states, “Don’t put into email anything you don’t want on the front page of the newspaper.” I do have a Twitter account that you will never find. Educators are finding ways to use these venues to aid in their teaching, and I don’t see how they have the time. Twitter is so transient, I’d feel like I was repeating myself to answer the same question over and over. I have a hard enough time keeping my extensive Blackboard sites reasonably up to date.

In light of this, I am trying to reexamine how I teach my labs to see if there is a way to incorporate this new way of life and learning. Our Christian faculty group will explore the idea this semester to see how we can use it both for ministry and more effective teaching. One faculty ministry has developed a somewhat primitive version of Facebook for Christian faculty to share their testimony, and you can find my page in one of the weblinks in the right hand column of this page.

Students are also increasingly challenging why they need to learn certain things, and want to know how to integrate what they learn from us with their online world—how to mix chemistry and social media into a profitable entrepreneurial venture, for instance. When we tell them that Facebook is what you have when you fall asleep studying, we lose credibility.

The early church, as it expanded to new cultures and new areas of the globe, took full advantage of the things around them that pointed to the Gospel. Think about Paul in the Areopagus, and St. Patrick and the shamrock. I know of a missionary in the South Pacific that, when translating the Bible into the native tongue had to change the wording of Revelation 3:20, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock…” In the culture in which he was immersed, they lived in huts, and only a thief would go to the door and knock to see if anyone was home. A friend would stand in the street and holler out to the inhabitants. Thus, his translation was, “Behold, I stand in the street and shout…”

As Christian faculty in a rapidly changing world, we are continually finding ourselves in a new culture of students, and need to learn how they learn, communicate and find value, adjusting our teaching methods (and ministry methods) to match. All of this on top of research, service, family, ministry, etc…

Whew!

*Disclosure—If you click on the MooLaLa link and join, I have the potential of benefitting financially from it, as you and your friends who join would be part of my group. Please feel free too! But it is appropriate for me to be upfront about it.

SDG