disciple, husband, father, college minister
One of those quirky little things you can’t help but be proud of!
A friend just informed me that Stanford student Vinita Kailasanath won the 2001 Jeopardy Collegiate Championship.
I searched long and hard online for information about the 2002 winner, but I couldn’t find any info. I can only surmise they’ve not conducted the 2002 contest yet. I’m sure the Cardinal will emerge victorious again!
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…
A list of incoming freshman and some specific prayer requests on their behalf.
Stanford has given us a list of incoming freshmen who are interested in getting involved in a group similar to Chi Alpha. I’ll be contacting each of them and seeking to help them transition smoothly. I’ll also be praying for them daily: could you join me in praying specifically for each one of these things?
If you’d like to pray for them by name, here they are: Aaron, Akilah, Albert, Alfredo, Alina, Amanda, Arin, Ben, Brandon, Camille, Casey, Charles, Chioma, Chris, Chris, Christian, Christine, Chuck, Collin, Cyndy, Cyrus, Danny, David, Dena, Diana, Didi, Dominique, Ean, Eden, Eleazar, Emily, Eric, Jamelia, Jamie, Janine, Jessica, Jessica, John, Julia, Julian, June, Juston, Karen, Karen, Katie, Kevin, Kirsten, Laura, Lauren, Lauren, Lindell, Lisa, Lisa, Maria, Mark, Michael, Michael, Michelle, Naima, Natalie, Nathan, Nathaniel, Nicolas, Nicolas, Ochuko, Omorinsola, Paul, Quynhanh, Rachel, Richard, Samantha, Steph, Stephanie, Stephanie, Stuart, Suhan, Tamarah, Taylor, Timothy, Victor, and Yoko.
Noted philospher Charles Taylor (who seems to be a Christian) has just been interviewed in Books and Culture on What It Means to Be Secular.
It’s pretty interesting stuff. For example
To say we live in a secular civilization is to say that God is no longer inescapable. It doesn’t mean that we live in a society from which God has been expelled. I don’t think we ever will live in such a society for very long; the Communists tried that. But the nature of this modern secular society is that it’s deeply plural. We have to accept that the ultimate grounding of the civilization we share in common is up for grabs.
and later on
There is an alternative readingnamely, that we’re moving to a society where more and more the consensus will be around an unbelieving variant of the modern social imaginary. But to me this seems to be just a dream. It’s a dream that arises among those who are deeply into an atheist or non-believing position and are convinced as a matter of faith that religion will gradually disappear and everyone will think as they do. For them, the secular world is one in which we all end up agreeing fundamentally that there’s no God, and that agreement is the basis of everything. That’s an impossible scenario, and the more they think like that, the worse it’s going to be.
The Objectivist Club at Stanford is pretty active, and so this seemed like an appropriate first entry in our “Reasonable Answers to Honest Questions” category.
In case you’re not familiar with it, objectivism is the system of philosophy defined by Ayn Rand. It deals with much more than merely ethics, but that’s what I want to comment on today.
Ayn Rand’s ethical theory is of the type known as “ethical egoism,” which means that we should always choose to do things that benefit ourselves (we also call this selfishness). A short way to summarize Ayn Rand’s ethical theory would be “selfishness is a virtue.” That’s not a completely fair summary: she argues for a very specific type of selfishness: an enlightened self-interest which recognizes that sometimes acting for the good of others actually benefits oneself. Here’s a more detailed description written by one of her fans:
The Objectivist ethics rebuilds morality from the ground up. “You cannot say ‘I love you’ if you cannot say the ‘I’,” wrote Ayn Rand. According to Objectivism, a person’s own life and happiness is the ultimate good. To achieve happiness requires a morality of rational selfishness, one that does not give undeserved rewards to others and that does not ask them for oneself. (source
I sent an email to Ravi Zacharias International Ministries asking them to provide me with a critique of Ayn Rand’s ethical theory. Paul Copan was kind enough to craft this brief reply:
“AYN RAND’S ETHICAL EGOISM (OBJECTIVISM)
There is a fuller defense of an objective, divinely-rooted ethic in the book, True for You, But Not for Me; this can be ordered through RZIM’s order line at 800–448-6766.”
If this topic is of more interest to you, Copan (author of the above critique) also recommends that you read The Ethics of Ayn Rand: Appreciation and Critique by John Piper. Piper takes more space to elaborate on Rand’s theory and points out several elements of it he agrees with.
One of life’s little pleasures: recoding a website with elegance.
One of the weirder (but probably more strategic) ministry tasks that I’ve had for the last few years is maintaining the Chi Alpha national website and the Reach The U website (the latter being the more significant).
Today I had some time to tackle a feature I’d really been wanting to revise: the chapter directory.
I think it’s a lot slicker now, and the clean codebase means that I can add new functions without a lot of hassle. Huzzah!
Ultimate goal: to create a user login system so that each local campus ministry can own it’s data and update it whenever something changes.
Speaking of site upgrades: I finally managed to quash a very annoying bug on my blog. The page kept getting cut off! If you’re having similar trouble, read this helpful thread.
Today I received from the Stanford Office for Religious Life the names of all three of the Assemblies of God students planning to attend Stanford next year. That’s right–three. Out of around 1,400. There was also a Foursquare student and a few from independent charismatic churches. Let’s say there are about 10–15 Pentecostal/charismatic students in total.
Even given that only 4% of teens attend a Pentecostal or Charismatic church, that’s pretty sad. If even 4% coming to Stanford were Pentecostal/charismatic that would be over 50 incoming freshmen. That’s a discrepancy of 70% (in other words, 70% fewer students are Pentecostal or Charismatic than you would expect)!
That doesn’t bother me for the reason you might think. Chi Alpha @ Stanford is primarily an evangelistic organization. While we do want to take care of incoming Christian students and help them mature in their faith, we’re primarily concerned with reaching the majority who have no religious background at all (much less a Christian one).
It’s not so much that I wish there were more students to plug into our group as I wonder why more coming in aren’t believers. These numbers, while only directly reflecting on Pentecostals are representative of what the other ministries are receiving.
There’s been a massive renaissance in youth ministry over the last decade, and there’s tons of articles on the burgeoning evangelical intellectuals: so why aren’t there more arriving at Stanford? Is it that we strongly discourage our gifted youth from attending secular schools or is merely the sad fact that most “Christian” students can’t wait to escape from their youth group?
In any event, if the other elite schools are seeing similar trends the intellectual future of American Christianity isn’t looking particularly robust…
Check this out on CNN: A Pornographer Hacks An Al-Quaeda Site. This is one of those bizarre little situations in which someone we thoroughly disapprove of does something we greatly approve of.
Evidently his expertise in running a smut site was immediately applicable to the challenge of hacking a paranoid and ruthless organization’s computer. Messner, using the aggressive tactics he’s employed to run his adult site, said he “hijacked” Al Neda for five days It kind of makes you wonder exactly what skills porn site operators pick up… One more good reason to avoid porn like the plague–some of these guys are ace hackers!
I found the following excerpts sad: “I bought a digital camera and convinced my wife to get naked for the Internet.” … His Porsche and its “WIVES” vanity plates memorializing his success in adult entertainment are, he believes, a testament that he and his family are living the American dream. And, in his own way, Messner said, he is fighting an American war.
In the entire CNN article there’s not a hint of appropriate moral indignation that this man is both destroying the sacredness of his own marriage and enticing men across the world to violate their marriage vows. I’m willing to bet that it didn’t even cross the journalist’s mind… *sigh* Does no one see how destructive pornography is?
A list of leaders who believe in us and in our ministry.
Here are some Assemblies of God leaders who believe in us
and in our ministry: I would like to particularly direct your attention to the
fact that both our current and our former pastor are on this list. We believe
in the Assemblies of God, we’re committed to the primacy of the local church,
and we’re team players!
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I had Glen & Paula do a missions window in my church and they |
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“Peninsula Christian Center is honored to serve as a covering Jeff Langskov |
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Being a graduate of the University of Calif. in Berkeley, I appreciate Dr. Steve Lim |
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“As a 10 year veteran of the campuses in Northern California Curt Harlow |
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“Glen Davis is one of the new generation of leaders God is raising Dr. J. Melvyn Ming |
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“Glen and Paula Davis will make a difference. As a former pastor, Dr. Earl Creps |
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“Glen is one of my favorite communicators. His teachings are Alicia Chole |
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“I have known Glen and Paula for many years and am pleased to Anthony Scoma |
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“As Glen and Paula’s former pastor, I wholeheartedly endorse Cal Swenson |
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“For five years I was blessed to have Glen and Paula on my staff Joe Zickafoose |
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I ran across a very interesting rant comparing Islam and Christianity by a blogger I’d never heard of called James Lileks (I found the link on blogdex).
At one point, Mr. Lileks identifies himself thusly I am a Deist, which means EVERYONE disagrees with me.
Translation: a lot of his underlying assumptions will differ from yours, but you should still read the piece. He puts some very important points in a very direct way.
Here’s his opening statement:
There are two ways for a religion to approach life:
A) Everything is permitted except that which is forbidden; over time, we work out the details as the situations arise.
B) Everything is forbidden except that which is permitted, and we will work out the details in advance.
After an opening like that, how can you not read the rest?
(there’s a similar diatribe at Little Green Footballs, although it’s not as reflective it does have the virtue of a very active comments section)
I added this next bit on 8/9/2002
Ever wonder what an Episcopalian terrorist would look like?