Jonah,
Your insights are right on target and the story about your sister is very instructive (and revealing). The Church is lacking in long-term vision. It is amazing that many wonder why we have lost the University (which was once the bastion of the Church) and yet do not make the connection to the importance of supporting Christians in higher education. I, too, have never been a part of a church or even visited a church that supports a Christian following God's call to Christian Scholarship. Every church pastor, elder board member, etc. could use a solid reading of Marsden's "The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship".
Can we even imagine the cumulative impact a Christian philosophy professor would have in a secular university over a tenure career? A mere handful of key Christian thinkers in various disciplines around the university could revolutionize the education system and thereby revolutionize our country.
Alas, the Church does not see it, however, and does not see the tremendous need for Christian's doing the hard work of Christian Scholarship. It is very frustrating.
Jeff, my brother, this goes far beyond simply all of us wanting more financial support. This is about the future of this country and the future of the faith. We need to engage the culture for Christ at the highest levels. We cannot abandon the intelligentsia and expect it to not have massive ramifications down the road. Indeed, I think much of the pervasive relativism on one extreme or pure materialistic scientism on the other extreme, so abundant today, are the results of the Church surrendering the halls of the University to the secular. These warped views of truth and knowledge simply make it more difficult for Christianity to be accepted as a rationally viable worldview. But further, we need to realize what this means: this milieu has made it more difficult for people to come to Christ in faith to receive salvation (of course!). The reality is that our Church's lack of support of the fight in the University is directly responsible for unknown thousands (millions?) who will never come to Christ because they are trapped in an atheistic naturalistic worldview delivered to them by the hegemony in secular education that is anti-supernatural (or they are trapped in a relativistic "tolerance" worldview handed to them by an education system dominated by postmodernity; and so on).
My point is this: the Church's lack of support to Christian thinkers (in all disciplines, but especially philosophy) may end up having a more devastating effect on the future of missions than anyone can foresee (and indeed, it has already). Giving to direct evangelism work is crucial -- but the very work of evangelism will become increasingly more difficult if we do not reverse the trend away from Christianity and the Truth in education. I think of the evangelists doing the work of spreading the seed and reaping the crops. But the education and intellectual streams of our society are what determine the fertility of the soil. As the Christian worldview becomes less and less plausible, our country’s soil (and the world’s) is becoming harder and harder. The time is NOW for the Church to support Christian thinkers to get into the Universities and the various marketplaces of ideas and till the hardened soil once again.
I view it as foundational work. We need to establish and fight for the Christian worldview as rational, defensible, livable, and TRUE in the University if we intend for our missionaries to go and claim it as The Truth. If we do not have the foundation established, how can we expect to build a house? Yet that is precisely what the church is doing. It is sending out vast resources to missions to build walls and roofs upon a foundation that it has forgotten or neglected to build (or wrongly assumed was still there and strong in this post-Christian nation).
My apologies for rambling on... but Jonah you hit on a bit of a nerve with me.
Your insights are right on target and the story about your sister is very instructive (and revealing). The Church is lacking in long-term vision. It is amazing that many wonder why we have lost the University (which was once the bastion of the Church) and yet do not make the connection to the importance of supporting Christians in higher education. I, too, have never been a part of a church or even visited a church that supports a Christian following God's call to Christian Scholarship. Every church pastor, elder board member, etc. could use a solid reading of Marsden's "The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship".
Can we even imagine the cumulative impact a Christian philosophy professor would have in a secular university over a tenure career? A mere handful of key Christian thinkers in various disciplines around the university could revolutionize the education system and thereby revolutionize our country.
Alas, the Church does not see it, however, and does not see the tremendous need for Christian's doing the hard work of Christian Scholarship. It is very frustrating.
Jeff, my brother, this goes far beyond simply all of us wanting more financial support. This is about the future of this country and the future of the faith. We need to engage the culture for Christ at the highest levels. We cannot abandon the intelligentsia and expect it to not have massive ramifications down the road. Indeed, I think much of the pervasive relativism on one extreme or pure materialistic scientism on the other extreme, so abundant today, are the results of the Church surrendering the halls of the University to the secular. These warped views of truth and knowledge simply make it more difficult for Christianity to be accepted as a rationally viable worldview. But further, we need to realize what this means: this milieu has made it more difficult for people to come to Christ in faith to receive salvation (of course!). The reality is that our Church's lack of support of the fight in the University is directly responsible for unknown thousands (millions?) who will never come to Christ because they are trapped in an atheistic naturalistic worldview delivered to them by the hegemony in secular education that is anti-supernatural (or they are trapped in a relativistic "tolerance" worldview handed to them by an education system dominated by postmodernity; and so on).
My point is this: the Church's lack of support to Christian thinkers (in all disciplines, but especially philosophy) may end up having a more devastating effect on the future of missions than anyone can foresee (and indeed, it has already). Giving to direct evangelism work is crucial -- but the very work of evangelism will become increasingly more difficult if we do not reverse the trend away from Christianity and the Truth in education. I think of the evangelists doing the work of spreading the seed and reaping the crops. But the education and intellectual streams of our society are what determine the fertility of the soil. As the Christian worldview becomes less and less plausible, our country’s soil (and the world’s) is becoming harder and harder. The time is NOW for the Church to support Christian thinkers to get into the Universities and the various marketplaces of ideas and till the hardened soil once again.
I view it as foundational work. We need to establish and fight for the Christian worldview as rational, defensible, livable, and TRUE in the University if we intend for our missionaries to go and claim it as The Truth. If we do not have the foundation established, how can we expect to build a house? Yet that is precisely what the church is doing. It is sending out vast resources to missions to build walls and roofs upon a foundation that it has forgotten or neglected to build (or wrongly assumed was still there and strong in this post-Christian nation).
My apologies for rambling on... but Jonah you hit on a bit of a nerve with me.
posted by BJS at
3:19:00 PM
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