Category: Academic Integration

I just ran across a very inter­est­ing arti­cle, How To Become Edu­cat­ed Despite Going to Col­lege (yet anoth­er entry from the engag­ing J. Budziszews­ki

soul assas­sin free down­load

).

In this dia­log, the fic­tion­al Pro­fes­sor Theophilus rec­om­mends the very real Stu­dent Self-Reliance Project from the Inter­col­le­giate Stud­ies Insti­tute (read a some­what hos­tile eval­u­a­tion of ISI’s aims).

They have some absolute­ly extra­or­di­nary guides to books and schol­ars that you should acquaint your­self with–and these are books and schol­ars who don’t often make it onto your class­room read­ing lists.

I just ran across a very inter­est­ing web­site by Clif­ford Pick­over which pur­ports to rank the best and worst peo­ple in all of his­to­ry.

Here are his picks:

Evil Peo­ple
1. Tomas de Torque­ma­da
2. Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler)
3. Adolph Hitler
4. Ivan the Ter­ri­ble
5. Adolph Eich­mann
6. Pol Pot
7. Mao Tse-tung
8. Idi Amin
9. Joseph Stal­in
10. Genghis Khan
11. H. H. Holmes
12. Gilles de Rais

Good Peo­ple
1. Bud­dha
2. Baha’u’l­lah
3. Dalai Lama
4. Jesus Christ
5. Moses
6. Moth­er There­sa
7. Abra­ham Lin­coln
8. Mar­tin Luther King
9. Mohan­das Gand­hi

Obvi­ous­ly, we as Chris­tians would rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer in his assess­ment of Jesus, and I per­son­al­ly have ques­tions about the rel­a­tive rank­ing of many indi­vid­u­als on his list. Still, the exer­cise is an intrigu­ing one: who would you rank as the most right­eous and most vile peo­ple of all time?

I was inter­est­ed to stum­ble across this arti­cle: No Ordi­nary Path: Colum­bia doc­tor­al stu­dent Lau­ren Win­ner outs her­self as a Chris­t­ian linked on the Chris­tian­i­ty Today blog.

There are two things that caught my inter­est:
a) this young lady had a remark­able encounter with Jesus
b) it’s con­sid­ered news­wor­thy that a doc­tor­al can­di­date at a prestit­gious school believes in God

Why is this news­wor­thy? In her words: “It is not clear,” she says care­ful­ly, “that it is intel­lec­tu­al­ly respectable to be reli­gious. And pub­lish­ing a spir­i­tu­al auto­bi­og­ra­phy might fur­ther under­cut my abil­i­ty to be tak­en seri­ous­ly.”

Don’t wor­ry, sister–you’re not alone! There are many smart and well-edu­cat­ed com­pan­ions on your jour­ney of faith with Jesus.

One of the great­est chal­lenges we face as believ­ers is liv­ing authen­ti­cal­ly Chris­t­ian lives. It’s very easy to be spir­i­tu­al on Sun­day and at offi­cial reli­gious func­tions, but it’s much hard­er to study in a Chris­t­ian way, to work with a Chris­t­ian work eth­ic, to con­duct our­selves at the din­ner table in a man­ner that pleas­es Christ.

But such things are the very essence of our faith.

If our faith does not man­i­fest in the small things, it’s vir­tu­al­ly irrel­e­vant how it man­i­fests in the big things.

Why all these thoughts on holis­tic Chris­tian­i­ty? This blog entry dis­cussing ethics among Chris­t­ian busi­ness­peo­ple. You ought to read it.

And then you ought to ask your­self whether or not you’re dif­fer­ent as a stu­dent because of your faith in Jesus. If you’re not, then you’ve not ful­ly inter­nal­ized your faith.

What do I mean? Here are some off-the-cuff reflec­tions on what it means to be a stu­dent to the glo­ry of Jesus:
* You actu­al­ly seek to mas­ter the mate­r­i­al.
* You love truth and seek it pas­sion­ate­ly, even going beyond the bounds of an assign­ment to acquire it.
* You do assigned work whether your pro­fes­sor will check it or not.
* You seek to make knowl­edge prac­ti­cal (turn it into wis­dom).
* You’re a plea­sure to have in class (both for the prof and oth­er stu­dents).
* When you dis­agree with the prof you do so in an agree­able way.

There are tons more, but these are a few that pop into my head…

One of our chief goals is to inte­grate our bib­li­cal and aca­d­e­m­ic per­spec­tives on life. If you think it’s hard as an under­grad, just wait for grad school!

To help you out, Leader U has a spe­cial set of arti­cles relat­ed to Chris­t­ian schol­ar­ship.

Some that caught my eye:

Check out On Inte­grat­ing Your Faith for a brief set of relec­tions on com­bin­ing your schol­ar­ship and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. I liked the inno­vat­ed idea of tithing your research.

I was also struck by The Call­ing of a Chris­t­ian Pro­fes­sor (mean­ing a Chris­t­ian pro­fes­sor at a sec­u­lar school). If that’s what God is call­ing you to do, check it out!

Also con­sid­er The Out­ra­geous Idea of Chris­t­ian Schol­ar­ship. George Mars­den argues that “Chris­t­ian per­spec­tives should make at least as much dif­fer­ence as fem­i­nist per­spec­tives.” Hear, hear!

Final­ly, you might want to check out Toward Inte­grat­ing Your Life and Work for a chal­lenge towards view­ing schol­ar­ship as a voca­tion that mat­ters to God.