Saving Students Money

As I’ve mentioned in recent posts, higher education is undergoing much greater scrutiny these days, especially in Texas. One of the key areas of contention is the cost of going to college. This is actually a large umbrella for many related issues:  tuition, cost of books, educational value, overall debt upon graduation, and so on. Today, I offer some perspectives on these.

Breaking Stereotypes

{Note:  This is the manuscript of my essay for “The Truth That Makes Them Free" Anthology, described in this post. Thus it is longer than most posts.}

 “Always share your faith. If necessary, use words.”

      St. Francis of Assisi

"Ooh", said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he...quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion!"

"That you will deary and no mistake", said Mrs. Beaver. "If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?", said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Course he isn't safe.....but he's good. He's the King I tell you."

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

I grew up in a normal American family—my parents and a younger sister. We were Americans, so that meant we were Christians. Then, when I was around the second grade, my dad was urged by his father, “Kevin, you get those kids into church!” So, we started attending a Methodist church. My sister and I didn’t find the services terribly interesting, but I seemed to absorb the Bible stories in Sunday School. Several years passed, and Dad’s Sunday School teacher began to challenge him to take the Bible’s claims about truth seriously. Thus began a bittersweet time for my sister and I—we went from listening to music in the car to all of these radio preachers, hardly an enticement for young kids to be interested in spiritual things. 

Gerald Schroeder at UT Austin

For those in Central Texas or who will be on March 8, Gerald Schroeder, the author of The Science of God and other works will be speaking on the UT campus giving a free lecture entitled, “Comparing Biblical Writings with the Fossil Record.” For more information and a poster link you can download, see http://sixdayscience.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/schroeder/

Feel free to tell folks on Twitter, Facebook and your favorite social media site, and we’ll see you there!

{Update:  the talk went great, but the hosting committee for various reasons has decided not to authorize publishing the audio. I apologize for any inconvenience. We had hoped to provide this service, but it will not be happening.}

SDG