Here are the articles that caught my attention this last week or so:
This article is old news to those of us in the Christian University business. It is a pretty accurate treatment of the subject, but it is not new information that Baptist universities have been cutting ties with their respective conventions for some time. In the cases of William Jewell, Georgetown College, and Baylor, for instance, the further away they get from Baptist affiliation, the better they do their jobs. It raises the question: can faith and academics be reconciled without compromising one or the other? Read this too.
This op-ed piece by Harvard psychologist, Daniel Gilbert, demonstrates what I am calling the "escalating reciprocity" principle. Fascinating stuff about our natural human propensity to take "an eye for an eyelash." It sheds a great deal of light on our natural escalation toward revenge.
Maybe Gilbert's column is connected to the problems in Baptist higher ed? Hmmm.
Finally, those of you who know me well know that I am a freak for the Tour de France. I have been an off and on cyclist myself for 20 years. Among my greatest sports heroes are Eddie Merckx, Greg Lemond, Miguel Indurain, and, of course, Lance. I was prepared to add this year's winner, Floyd Landis, to that pantheon--partly because we share hip problems--then, dammit, it happened. Doping scandal. It's not completely proven yet, but it doesn't look good.
Sigh.
I'm not sure why I grouped these stories. Each of them contains good news and failure. Maybe it is within the tension of hope and fear that I find meaning. Maybe this is why certain stories don't grab my attention. Stories about pleasantly unified academic communities, perfectly peaceful relationships, and spotless champions don't get much traction with me.
Maybe we all need to live with the sense that whatever we are a part of could be triumphant or disasterous at any given moment: living between the scourge and ascension. Maybe John Mellencamp is our dialectical prophet, living "between a laugh and a tear." In our inexorable progress toward destinations--life without uncertainty, prepackaged formulas with guaranteed results, and uniform perspectives--we lose something essential.
Or, maybe I'm just a freak who needs a powerful serotonin reuptake inhibitor.
8 comments:
I did not know you were a cycling fanantic. You and Christian would get along fantastically. I just got him back last week. As to the guilty vs. not - keep the faith! It's all a set up! The French just can't admit that we are better than them, etc. But, seriously, I've heard it was the beer and whiskey he drank the night before ...
In regards to "narrowing the focus in education...becoming much more interested in indoctrination..." lets be fair and present exhibit B-the NEA, et al. Read their mission statements and tell me what any of that has to do with teaching my child math and science,etc. I won't deny you your SB affilliation arguments, but you cannot deny me this either.
http://www.nea.org/topics/walmart.html
http://www.nea.org/socialsecurity/index.html
http://www.nea.org/privatization/index.html
Here are three shining examples of political indoctrination couched as concern for education and the well-being of young students.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.htm
Whoa, check this out, you may be on to somethng.
if anonymous above is actually three (posts)-in-one, then I can tell that the shape of the axe I'm usually grinding is a bit different than the axe that anon. is grinding...but only a bit.
Because it seems to me that a good baptist "education" doesn't differ all that much from a standards-based, no-child-left-behind, change-the-subject-when-the-bell-rings contemporary schools education in this regard:
they're both hellbent on acting as comfort-inducing, mind-numbing, confidence-enhancing, norm-embracing, lock-step-choreographing seratonin reuptake inhibitors...
the trick is maintaining any kind of sanity as I'm (perpetually) falling away from one of the doctrinaire worlds I inhabit or (just as regularly) grasping to maintain enough of a fingerhold to hang on in another....
LaFeeb,
If you would've clicked on the link "Read this too." you would've noticed that he was referencing your blog. ;-)
I think once it comes to a showdown between the academic empire and the mustard seed movement, we should choose the path of the mustard seed. Faith and academics works out fine if you don't try to force increasingly tighter restraints for accreditation. That is the way things are headed, by the way, is it not? Won't the requirements for prestigious accreditations continue to be increasingly secular in the years to come? I think Jesus' command to be "hot or cold" comes into play here, as well as His admonition that "you can't serve two masters". Where academics serves the Church or the Christian, I support academic pursuit. But bowing to the accreditation God while losing out on our spiritual, epistimological distinctiveness is a dangerous proposition, if you ask me. We Christians have no reason to fear the truth. What's true is true. When you're dealing with proof-based truths and not evidence or reason-based truths, then it's easy to conclude that the Christian worldview (let's not get into a debate over the word "the" right now) has nothing to fear from academia. But when you start talking about some of the more evidential or theoretical arenas of science, as well as philosophy, communication theory and so forth, Christians have every right to be afraid. It takes a massive leap of faith to believe in the inherent goodness and purity of the intellect--to believe that somehow our minds were/are not tainted by sin. The same way our emotions can lead us astray, so can our minds. If this were not the case, philosophers long ago would have solved any epistomological crisis that exists today. But if you want to talk about facts, one fact is that there is no philosophical consensus. And i don't anticipate there ever being one. So we do have something to fear from subjecting our faith to all degrees of "higher criticism" and so-called academic licence. The question boils down to whether or not we have faith in God, in my opinion.
I was going to post this to remind you that people read things on your blog and this seems like an appropriate thing to be found on your blog.
Then I came and found that while I was sleeping, you'd posted quite a bit.
Anyhow, I'm still posting this.
A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE
by Jack Gilbert
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
-Jack Gilbert
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