Integrating Christian and academic lives

A wonderful little book, Why Study? Exploring the Face of God in the Academy has just been published by the Fellowship of Evangelical Students in Singapore (IFES).
In each chapter, a Christian academic describes their personal journey as they aim to integrate their Christian and academic lives. Fields covered include history, law, engineering, sociology, biology, ...
Most of the authors are from Asia.
I wrote one of the chapters,  Living as a follower of Jesus and a Physicist. I thank some friends who gave many constructive suggestions on a draft.

The target audience is Christian undergraduates who are beginning their studies.

I welcome any comments on my chapter, bearing in mind the target audience.

I hope this book will stimulate similar ventures from other parts of the world, and for different target audiences. For example, it would be great to see an African version and an Australian version. I would also like to see a version for non-Christian audiences and for faculty audiences.

How to write a good essay

Here are a few of the key ingredients for an effective essay for a college/university class.
Unfortunately, many student essays miss one or more of these ingredients.

• Have a single main point/idea/opinion. Clear state what it is. Your goal is to convince the reader that you are right; or at least, that your opinion is worth considering.
• Provide an argument and evidence to support your main point.
• What do scholars say about your opinion? Do they agree or disagree? Why?
• Show that you have read widely in researching your essay, with a focus on the most influential academic authors (not bad internet sites). This should be demonstrated by quoting these authors and citing them in your bibliography.
• Don't plagiarise. Never copy text of other authors, without referencing them. Use your own words.
• Polish your essay. Writing is hard work. Edit. Rewrite. Spell check. Get someone else to read it and give feedback. Proofread.

For much more detailed discussions see

Writing in College from Joseph Williams and Lawrence McEnerney at the University of Chicago

10 steps to writing an essay is from Tom Johnson at the American University in Cairo.

Putting scientific and philosophical questions in perspective

Why is the sky blue?
Why are the laws of physics the way they are?
Why did God make the universe this way?
Why does God allow children to suffer?

What does love have to do with physics?

This is a powerful video about a dynamic physics teacher with a handicapped son.
He puts the "why" questions in perspective?

Science and theology in Sri Lanka

In August I will be spending a week at Lanka Bible College (Colombo, Sri Lanka) teaching an intensive course on Science and Theology. I welcome any comments on my draft course outline.

The mission of teaching

Teaching is hard work.
Effective teaching where students actually learn something is demanding and an elusive art.
Teaching cross culturally involves a whole extra set of challenges.
Teaching which engages students to the point that they actually change their world view is something most of us dream of.

These issues are addressed in the highly recommended book, Teaching in a Distant Classroom: Crossing Borders for Global Transformation by Michael Romanowski and Teri McCarthy.

Marks of a true scholar

Partly because my daughter just started an Arts degree at university I started reading Five Minds for the Future, by Howard Gardner. [The book was recommended to me by a friend, Keith Birchley]. Gardner is a Professor of Education and Psychology at Harvard. He is best known for developing and promoting the concept of Multiple Intelligences.

However, independent of giving me ideas to discuss with my daughter, I have found the book very stimulating, both personally and professionally.
Gardner defines five specific cognitive abilities that he claims will be sought and cultivated by leaders. Roughly here is my paraphrase of each of the minds, as applied to research.

• The Disciplinary Mind: You need to master a specific discipline or research area. This takes about ten years.
• The Synthesizing Mind: You need to learn to integrate ideas from different disciplines into a coherent whole and to communicate that integration to others.
• The Creating Mind: You need to develop the capacity to uncover and clarify new problems, questions and phenomena.
• The Respectful Mind: You need to be aware of and appreciate different approaches and values within your discipline and between disciplines.
• The Ethical Mind: You need to fulfill your responsibilities as a worker within your institution, your discipline, and as a citizen.

The power and pitfalls of illustrations

A sermon illustration can be a powerful tool to increase understanding and to increase recollection. However, a danger is that sometimes we remember the illustration but not the truth they were meant to illustrate.

When I try to teach kids about God and the Bible at church and in Religious Education classes in the local primary school about God I sometimes do some simple science demonstrations, such a turning a tea bag into a rocket, breaking a rule with air pressure, or getting an egg into a bottle. The kids really love these. [I have a fan club and struggle to stay humble...]

My dear wife is so enthusiastic about this that she has signed me up to give an elective at the forthcoming Ignite conference on kids ministry in Brisbane. Hence, I am thinking a bit more systematically and critically about the value and limitations of such science demonstrations. Here are a few preliminary thoughts.

The goals of these demonstrations should be modest:

• to have fun
• to help engage the kids with you and with the lesson
• to stimulate the kids to think about what they are observing
• to give (an imperfect) illustration of the lesson

There are actually many books available at our local Christian bookstore on "Science experiments to illustrate Bible lessons for kids." Unfortunately, I am hesitant to recommend any of the ones I have looked at. They all have lots of great demonstrations. However, I find they often use the Bible in a manner that I am not comfortable with. This may be even more problematic than the debatable connections they try to make between specific experiments and specific Bible verses or stories.

Perhaps, it is enough to be less ambitious about illustrating specific stories and verses and instead use the science demonstrations to preliminary ideas such as:

• something that we may think is impossible may actually be possible
• something can exist even if we cannot see it
• our perceptions of reality are not always correct
• something may be true even if we cannot understand it
• there are people who are both scientists and Christian

The science demonstration is then just like any other illustration (e.g., a personal anecdote, a scene from a movie, a recent news story, a joke) at the beginning of a lesson or sermon which invites the listener to pay more attention to the actual passage from the Bible being taught and its application.

Comments welcome. Any favourite science demonstrations?

Teaching theological students to think critically

Geoff Thompson sent me a helpful and stimulating article, "What 'Great Cloud of Witnesses'? Isn't My Own Religious Experience Enough?'' by Robert J. Sherman from Bangor Theological Seminary.

The article is mostly about how to engage seminary students with "a critical and constructive examination of their views and hinders their understanding of theology as an undertaking of and for the Church." The biggest obstacle to this is suggested to be "Acculturation in American Religious Privatism and Individualism". (Wow! I love that Section title):

Because so many students have come to their beliefs privately and experientially, they can construe the "catechetical" and/or the "critical/constructive" examination of those beliefs as a personal affront, even attack..... They are unaccustomed to any sort of detached probing of their beliefs, unaware that those beliefs may have diverse historic antecedents and unwilling often to recognize that their eclectic mix may have internal tensions and incoherencies.

The article is not just critical and negative though and discusses pedagogical strategies Sherman has used to address these issues.

I wonder if indirectly the article is also providing an argument for faculty at theological colleges to be engaged in original research and publication. This engages them in the process that Sherman strives to engage his students in.