Why College Matters to God: An Introduction to Christian Learning

Part One

Introducing the Christian College

This

is a book for students at the start of their college years, but let’s begin with a story from the other end of the college experience: commencement. Fifteen years ago at Kenyon College in Ohio, the late novelist David Foster Wallace gave what became one of the most famous commencement addresses ever. He began his talk with a well-known joke: Two young fish are swimming along and happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ As the two young fish swim on for a bit, one of them looks at the other and says, ‘What the heck is water?’

It’s not the funniest joke, but, as Foster Wallace went on to explain, it does illustrate a basic point—that the most obvious and important realities are often the ones that are hardest to notice. Or to put it another way, as modern Americans, we swim in a cultural water of assumptions, behaviors, and influences that we rarely notice and usually take for granted.

Take college, for example. A Tibetan herdsman visiting the United States would notice a strange phenomenon. Around the age of eighteen, most American young people complete a certain level of schooling known as high school. After that, about two-thirds of them will move on to college, where for the next four or five years, they will complete an assortment of classes that collectively make up what is called undergraduate education.

Just what are these classes? First, they take general education or core curriculum classes such as English literature, history, natural and social sciences, and philosophy—subjects that people have been studying for centuries. Along with the core, students take classes in what they call a major area of study: a subject they are most interested in, or one they (or their parents) believe will yield the best career prospects. Then they fill in the rest of their courses with a minor, electives, and perhaps a study abroad program. Amid all this coursework, the students find ample time for eating, socializing, competing in athletics, and water fights in the dormitory.

It all may seem quite normal to those of us who have gone through or are going through the process. But our Tibetan herdsman probably would be hard-pressed to see the purpose in all of it. His perplexity would increase if he visited a private Christian university, where chances are students pay more money for a narrower range of academic programs and more restrictions on their social lives.

Of course, there are a variety of reasons students choose to attend a Christian college. For many, it’s the perception of a safe environment. For others, it’s a particular major that the school offers; or perhaps it’s the Christian emphasis in the dormitories, chapel, and student organizations; or it might be the school’s reputation for academic quality and personal attention from Christian professors. It may even be the prospect of finding a Christian spouse at a religious college.

None of these features, however, is unique to a Christian college. For example, if it’s safety you’re looking for, you could just as well attend college in Maine, which boasts the nation’s lowest crime rate. Moreover, most state universities have Christian organizations on campus that provide opportunities for fellowship and ministry. One can also find good Christian professors at just about any secular university. One of the most outspoken evangelical professors I had as a college student, for example, was my astronomy professor at the University of Michigan.

The difference between a Christian university and other institutions of higher education is this: a Christian college weaves a Christian worldview into the entire fabric of the institution, including academic life.

The real uniqueness of a Christian college lies elsewhere. Simply stated, the difference between a Christian university and other institutions of higher education is this: a Christian college weaves a Christian worldview into the entire fabric of the institution, including academic life. It is designed to educate you as a whole person and help you flourish in every part of your life as a follower of Christ. This statement will take a while to unpack in all its complexity, and that is the purpose of this book. If properly understood, however, this concept will enable you to thrive at a Christian college and to understand the purpose of each class you take, from English literature to organic chemistry. But first we must establish some foundational concepts, the first of which is the notion of a worldview.

What Is a Worldview?

One of the most popular action movies over the past couple of decades was a Keanu Reeves film called The Matrix, which spawned—as is typical—several sequels. The film has surprising staying power because amid the fight scenes and big explosions, The Matrix forces viewers to ponder the age-old philosophical question posed by Rene Descartes back in the 1600s: How can I know what is really real? The film begins with the protagonist, Neo, as a typical New York City resident. But gradually he becomes enlightened to the true state of reality: computers have taken over the world and are using humans as power supplies, all the while downloading sensory perceptions into their minds to make them think they are living normal modern lives. Neo achieves salvation when he accurately perceives the bad guys not as real people but as merely computer-generated programs.

The Matrix thus challenges us to recognize that some of our foundational assumptions about reality—that other people exist, that this laptop I’m writing on is really here—are just that: assumptions that serve as starting points for how we perceive our world. If my friend chooses to believe that I am a computer program designed to deceive him, it’s unlikely that I can produce evidence that will convince him otherwise. Furthermore, as Neo’s experiences in the film indicate, shifting from one perception of reality to another can be a rather jarring, painful process.

In other words, The Matrix illustrates this notion of worldview—that our prior assumptions about reality shape how we perceive the world around us. A worldview can be defined as a framework of ideas, values, and beliefs about the basic makeup of the world. It is revealed in how we answer basic questions of life, such as: Who am I? Does God exist? Is there a purpose to the universe? Are moral values absolute or relative? What is reality? How should I live my life?

We can think of a worldview as a pair of glasses through which we view our world. We do not so much focus on the lenses; in fact, we often forget they are even there (think again of those two young fish in the opening story). Rather, we look through the lenses to view the rest of the world. Or here’s another metaphor: if you have ever done a jigsaw puzzle, you know that the picture on the puzzle box is vital. It helps you know where a particular piece fits into the overall puzzle. A worldview does the same. It’s the picture on the puzzle box of our lives, by which we make sense of the thousands of experiences that bombard us every day.

Two important qualifications about this notion of worldview are important at the outset. First, a worldview is not the same thing as a life philosophy. A philosophy of life implies a rational, deliberately constructed, formal system of thought that one applies to one’s world. But worldviews go deeper than that. A worldview is more pre rational and intuitive. It is shaped less by logical analysis than by personal identity (white, black, male, female, young, old, etc.), experiences, and the community in which one lives. I could say that my worldview originates in my heart as well as my head. It’s the means by which I know that 2 + 2 = 4, but it’s also how I know that I love my wife, that Jesus is my Savior, and what the appropriate social space is in our culture. As Christians, we should, of course, seek to align our worldview with the truth of Scripture and with sound reason (and that’s an important purpose of college). But we need to recognize at the outset that a worldview is rooted in who we are at our deepest level, not just our intellect. As C. S. Lewis remarks in The Magician’s Nephew, For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are.

Second, it’s important to note that worldviews are about actions, not just beliefs. As one scholar has stated, it is a view of the world that governs our behavior in the world. To return to the example of Neo in The Matrix, his new understanding of the nature of reality results in a fundamental change in how he lives his life. Indeed, one could say that the actions and practices that order our lives reveal what our actual worldview is, regardless of how we might describe that worldview in words. Moreover, because worldviews are lived rather than just pondered, as the philosopher James K. A. Smith observes, the actions that we perform repeatedly can shape who we are, how we think, and even what we believe.

All education, whether religious or secular, comes with a built-in point of view.

We cannot help but have a worldview; like the pair of spectacles perched on my nose, my worldview exists and is constantly interpreting reality for me and guiding my actions, whether I notice it or not. Neo begins The Matrix with a worldview; it just happens to be a mistaken one, and he has never bothered to think critically about what his worldview is. One of the main purposes of college, therefore, is to help students recognize, examine, and adjust their worldviews. Which brings me to the second foundational concept.

All Education Comes with a Worldview

Worldviews shape not just our individual lives but institutions, including universities. There was a time when many scholars believed that education was an objective process. Professors in the secular academy, it was claimed, simply studied the facts and communicated those facts to their students. Or they forced students to filter their preconceived notions through a supposedly objective scientific grid. Now we know better. All education, whether religious or secular, comes with a built-in point of view. Even in academic disciplines, where critical inquiry is valued, the worldview of the scholar shapes how the information is interpreted and even what information counts in the first place. Nothing illustrates this fact better than the following optical illusion commonly used in psychology.

Fig. 1.1. Old Lady, or Young Woman?

Some viewers immediately see an old lady when they look at this drawing. Others see a young woman. Eventually, just about anyone will be able to see both. (If you cannot, relax and keep looking!) This is because while the actual black and white lines on the page (the facts, so to speak) remain constant, our minds arrange and interpret these lines in different ways to create a coherent image. Moreover, this isn’t something that we consciously decide to do; our minds do it automatically. Finally, it would difficult for those who interpret the drawing in different ways to argue objectively about whose view is the correct one, since their disagreement is not so much over the details of the drawing but over what those facts mean.

In a more complex way, a similar process occurs when scholars work in their disciplines. Historians, for example, agree on many events of the American Revolution—that on April 18, 1775, Paul