Chapter One
Learning to Love God
The Christian college refuses to compartmentalize religion. It retains a unifying Christian worldview and brings it to bear in understanding and participating in the various arts and sciences, as well as non-academic aspects of campus life.19
âArthur F. Holmes, The Idea of a Christian College
Aaron was a bright student. In fact, he was amazingly bright. He could devour historical, philosophical, and theological texts with the greatest of ease. He not only understood the arguments being made but the intricate details concerning how those arguments were made. Despite the high quality of his undergraduate counterparts, most of them proved to be incapable of keeping up with him. In class, the student union, and the residence hall, he could argue circles around his peers and made for a worthy discussion partner for many faculty members.
Aaronâs problem, however, was that his considerable intellectual gifts lacked direction. In more complicated philosophical terms, Aaronâs gifts lacked what I will refer to later as a telosâa larger commitment that orders how we utilize various gifts, opportunities, and resources in our lives. Aaron and I initially met because he decided he was no longer going to attend chapel. As the dean of students at the time, part of my responsibility was to persuade Aaron that chapel attendance was a valuable use of his time. He quickly responded by making arguments that the preaching was poor and that the music was aesthetically displeasing. While I must confess I would certainly agree with him on particular days, the performative quality of these services was a lesser concern to our willingness as members of the body of Christ to come together in a spirit of worship.
Given his in-attendance, he was on what our institution referred to as chapel probation. One of the benefits of such a distinction was that he got to spend a considerable amount of time with the dean of students. In the beginning, he was asked (or sentencedâdepending upon your perspective) to listen to chapel services he had missed. Given his interest in history, philosophy, and theology, we spent time together discussing the terms of a paper he would compose concerning the role of corporate worship in the lives of Christians. We then had coffee together discussing what he uncovered through his work.
In Aaron, I found a discussion partner who challenged my own thinking. I am hoping the time we spent together challenged his thinking in comparable ways. In the end, our differences proved to be more anthropological than theological. What I mean is that Aaron believed Christians should only participate in worship when they are in the right spirit and thus desire to participate in such an experience. In other words, while Aaron probably believed that learning a subject matter, a sport, or a musical instrument may take continual practice that is undertaken no matter what one feels like doing, he did not think the same about learning to love God. In contrast, Christians throughout history have believed that those moments when they were least inclined to worship God were the moments they needed that reorienting experience the most. Learning to love God with our whole being takes practice. And it should be no surprise that we often do not feel like practicing.
The following chapter makes the argument that in order to truly understand what is at stake in the context of a Christian university, one must first be committed to loving God with oneâs whole being both as an individual and as part of the larger Christian community. While such love is ultimately a gift or fruit of Godâs spirit as detailed in Galatians 5:22â23, in order to habitually and continually manifest it in our lives it also requires practice. Just as a team that no longer practices or plays baseball can hardly be called a baseball team, a Christian university that does not engage in corporate practices that nurture our love for God, such as corporate worship, can hardly be called a Christian university.
What is Your (Our) Purpose?
An education, like all critical activities in life, draws upon a larger purpose. It would be odd to see a team practicing the catching or throwing of balls, but then have no explanation for why they thought such a practice was important to perfect. The same proves true in the university. What larger good defines lessons learned in disciplines ranging from anthropology to zoology? What larger good defines lessons learned in arenas such as new student orientation and residence life? More importantly, what larger good sheds light on what kind of relationship those activities, the in-class and out-of-class, share with one another? The unity of the university is found in our relationship to the triune God. The lessons of the curricular (in-class) and the cocurricular (out-of-class) only make sense in the light of a commitment to love God with oneâs whole being with other members of the Christian faith.
The practice of common worship reminds us of that unity and the fact that the telos or purpose of all life is to love God. Everything else is secondary and draws its own orientation from that purpose. Anthropology cannot do that for zoology. Student orientation cannot do that for residence life. Likewise, neither curricular nor cocurricular lessons can define the other. For example, the love, knowledge, and habits cultivated by the practice of common worship grant meaning, purpose, and a right relationship to those areas as well as all other important functions making up the Christian university. These experiences are not designed to be a random composite that occupies studentsâ time in seemingly unconnected ways. In contrast, they are all designed to engage different dimensions of our identity in the larger purpose of loving God.
Directing and Ordering Our Loves
Augustine of Hippo was arguably the most influential theologian to leave his imprint upon how Christians think about their faith. The North African bishop of the early Christian church was influential in orienting our thinking about the study of Scripture, the nature of the Trinity, and the churchâs engagement with political power (i.e., the Roman Empire during his time). Despite the prayers of his faithful mother, Monica, Augustine initially chose a different life. During his youth, he lied, stole, and later chased women. He also passionately chased academic prestige and various religions and philosophies. As he describes his journey of desire starting at age nineteen, âwe were seduced and we seduced others, deceived and deceiving by various desires, both openly by the so-called liberal arts and secretly in the name of false religion, proud in the one, superstitious in the other, and everywhere vain.â20
After spending years depending upon the powers of his own intellect and enticed by various distractions, Augustine confessed to God in his classic spiritual autobiography, âour heart is restless until it rests in you.â21 Augustine never renounced his strong passions and desires. He only realized that he needed to find a telos, or end that would ultimately satisfy them. In essence, he makes the argument that we human beings are desiring creatures whose affections or loves are constantly in flux until they come to focus on the end for which we are createdâan end, or as the Greek philosophers called it a telos that can help us order and give direction to our lives. While desires for an education, a career, friendships, and romantic relationships are good, when not properly ordered, they can prove to be distractions instead of noble investments.
Augustineâs understanding of the human person stands opposite a conception sometimes presented in some secular contexts which I will call the separate spheres model. For example, at one point in our education, each of us was taught about the wellness wheel. According to the wellness wheel, the sum total of what it meant to be human was subdivided into several different pieces such as the physical and the spiritual as well as the mental and the emotional. Wellness was then defined by granting proper attention to each one as if they are not somehow connected to one another. In the end, however, we likely have a difficult time deciding where our emotional well-being ends and our physical well-being begins.
For Augustine what makes us desiring creatures is the sum total of all that makes us human including what we may refer to as the mental, the emotional, the physical, and the spiritual. In order to be properly focused upon our goal as beings created in Godâs image, our desires or affections must be focused on God. Distractions to that focus can emerge from any strand of our identity and are unlikely to be singularly identified with just one. For example, is the vice of gluttony (by which I must confess I am greatly tempted when we near a barbecue joint) just a vice emerging from my physical need to eat? If so, why does a heaping plate of smoked brisket tempt me more than a good salad? Part of it likely has to do with taste but part of it has to do with associated memories I have of spending time talking with good friends over such a meal (while I am learning to appreciate a good salad, it is hard to imagine such conversations taking place at a salad barâno offense intended to my vegetarian friends). At other times, it may ease the pain and frustration of unfulfilled desires about work, relationships, and more. The bottom line is that we human beings are complex beings who rarely, if ever, are defined by only reason, emotion, or physical needs.
Unfortunately, to the detriment of our students modern higher education developed the myth that the mind or rationality is the preeminent dimension of human identity that should be the focus of a university education. According to this model, students come into my class, I pour in the respective facts, they leave, and both parties assume such an exchange is sufficient. Unless I revise my educational assumptions, I might as well refer to students as âbrains on sticksâ to quote a good friend.
As detailed in the introduction, the biblical narrative challenges us to think more comprehensively about what it means to be human. For example, Christ echoes Deuteronomy 6:5 when he argues the greatest commandment is that we love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strengthâa commandment recorded by the authors of all three synoptic Gospels (Matt 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27). Of course, the second greatest commandment is that we then love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Christ then concludes his admonitions concerning these commandments by indicating that to do so is to be as close to the kingdom of God as one can come this side of eternity. Although it took years of trial and error, Augustine eventually recognized the wisdom of these commandments when he realized true peace comes only when we first love God and then in turn love others.
Prior to our profession of faith in Christ and our baptism, our telos remains confused. Like Augustine wrote about in his Confessions, we struggle with placing corrupted goods at the center of our lives. Some of us struggle with misappropriating romantic relationships. Some of us struggle with misappropriating professional achievement. Some of us struggle with misappropriating money. However, sex, money, and power are not the only temptations which can misalign our purpose in life. Even a construct as enduringly good as family can become an idol if we place the value of our parents, siblings, spouse, and/or children over our relationship with Christ. Without Christâs influence at the center of our lives, our fallen nature proves capable of turning even good dimensions of creation into expressions of our depravity.
The Blessings (and Curses) of an Education
With this understanding, Augustine also realized that all education cultivates and orders oneâs loves. The problem with his pagan youthful education was that it disordered his loves. He lamented that his former education âwas all that I might succeed in this world and excel in those arts of speech which would serve to bring honor among men and to gain deceitful riches.â22 It also taught him to love the wrong things in the wrong way. He learned to love correct grammar more than eternal salvation. He learned to love âinane talesâ more than Godâs Word. It taught him to strive for academic achievement in order to earn the praise of others rather than to offer praise to God.
In contrast, any community that dares to call itself Christian, including an academic community such as the university, seeks to direct a personâs loves toward God. The reason stems from the common telos we share that makes us into a common body. In a variety of places in his writings, the apostle Paul refers to the church as the body of Christ and its individual members as parts of that body. For example, in 1 Corinthians 12:27 he writes, âNow you are the body...