faith, learning, and conscience – 4th quartet

thoughts from tape #25 (december 6, 2004)
– f & l, discipline, christian
intellectuals ...

three thoughts

christian intellectual is a
falsely privileged calling

intellectual development belongs in the faith/identity/vocation
model

where IS the intersection of spiritual discipline with
academic discipline?

faculty hiring – used to be
that our primary interest was in their christian
commitment, first, and then second we want them to be academically qualified.

first, now we’ve moved the
rhetoric to wanting them to carry out christian
scholarship – isn’t that misguided? it
misses the point of our faculty discernment discussion – that says
one’s calling, one’s christian nature,
one’s makeup is who you are ... and the way it is actually lived out is
secondary.  the
danger is that we minimize or tend to give privilege to some areas of
work/career – we say that so and so is more christian
than another because of their line of work (e.g. doctor vs. subway driver)
– not true!!!

secondly, identity development is fine, faith development is
fine, but intellectual development needs to go into our student research  model (as with astin
paper)– because as students grow intellectually they are becoming more
and more academically discipled (quartet #3) as they
are in parallel growing in their faith, they are becoming more spiritually discipled.

where is the intersection of faith
maturity, spiritual discipline and academic discipline?  - this touches
on point #3 – a kind of richard foster, dallas
willard vs. what it means to be liberally educated
– discplined in that way   (this is all wasc
stuff!!!!!!) ... does this intersection exist in the personhood of jesus, paul, what would be an example
scripturally of that? david?
in the parables? in the
teachings of paul? through a
stratified process?

does jesus
teach in parables at different spiritual maturity levels?   or is he
firing on all 8 cylinders out of the gate?

the two disciplines piece must not
have been transcribed yet – need to do that!!!

dec 9

who you are defines what you
become  and what you do. classic example – darryl tippens says – i’m an
orphan and from that he says his calling is to build community.

his calling is build the family he
never had.  what
other themes would be the defining themes in our book? – family, job, friendship, ... and the fundamental starting
point is the sense of being

chapters:  who are you, how you see your being
related to your becoming,  prigogine,

one is a state of existence and the
other is a state of motion, moving forward.

dec 22

saw the incredibles
last night – at the beginning of the movie mr. i. says – it would just be nice if the world could
stay saved for 10 minutes and i didn’t have to
save it again.

"Faith,
on the other hand, consists in the awareness that I am more than I
know."  L'Engle, p. 193

use madeleine
l’engle’s walking on water as core
metaphor.

A good
friend of mine climbed Yosemite’s Half
Dome last year and had this to say:

“I
find adventures of the Half Dome kind so much fun, in part, because such
experiences challenge the boundaries of that which I think I'm
capable.  They challenge my understanding and perception of myself.  But in order to challenge boundaries, one must
have some measure of faith.  How would I ever know whether or not I was
capable of doing a 20-mile hike with 5000 feet of elevation, including scaling
a granite dome, unless I had the faith to at least try it?

The night
before we did the hike, I met a woman who had done the climb and she
described it as pretty harrowing.  Her description, on top of
our previous failed attempt to do the climb, made me doubt whether or
not we could/should even try it.  I not only had doubts, but I
also was fearful.  That night I had trouble sleeping as I remembered
trying to do the climb when Jacob was only 9 years old.  He was so brave
and persistent, but in the end we just didn't think we could make
it.  I'm proud of him, not just because he was able to make the climb
successfully this time, but because he was willing to.  Faith also
consists in the awareness that our children are more than we know.

The notion
that we are "more than we know" is one of the most exciting and
inspiring of ideas.  Having the faith to trust in this is not
always easy, but it can lead to great treasures.

faith and learning connect in the
outer layer, where the beyond lies, where the unknown belongs.  faith and
learning require that we understand the limits of our ability to know and we
ascribe the margin, the great barrier reef of margin, to the creator, who built
the margin, the beyond, and the interior.