Fides Quaerens Intellectum

A recent article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution has me thinking.  See my post on the Touchstone Magazine blogsite.  JDB

As I’ve been making my way through professor Leland Ryken’s (father of current Wheaton College president Phillip Ryken) book Redeeming the Time:  A Christian Approach to Work and Leisure, I’ve been reminded once again of the importance of viewing life holistically.  The Puritans certainly emphasized [Read more →]

A number of IMPACT 360 alumni and other former students came to mind when I read this snippet from C.S. Lewis today:  “But I have received no assurance that anything we can do will eradicate suffering.  I think the best results are obtained by people who work quietly away at limited objectives, such as the abolition of the slave trade, or prison reform, or factory acts, or tuberculosis, not by those who think they can achieve universal justice, or health, or peace.  I think the art of life consists in tackling each immediate evil as well as we can.”

-from “Why I am not a Pacifist” (The Weight of Glory)

Summer is the time of year that professors, student life administrators, and mentors get Facebook messages and calls from students who have deeply impacted their lives both spiritually and intellectually over the course of the just-finished academic year.  They want to share how life is going in the interim.  It is the same for us at IMPACT 360.  Students come in early September, experience transformational change intellectually and spiritually that most never thought possible, get commissioned in May, and then they’re off and running–equipped and energized to be a force for change on their respective college campuses.  Except…maybe not. [Read more →]

One of IMPACT 360′s regular guest professors, Dr. Anthony Bradley, who is currently professor of Theology and Ethics at The King’s College in NYC, has a great post on an aspect of leadership that is almost never discussed–the temptation to turn our supposedly missional, Kingdom-minded organizations into idols.

This spring an article in Time magazine entitled “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal” really woke me up.  For years I’ve used the late Harvard political philosopher Robert Nozick’s thought experiment called “the experience machine” (found in Nozick’s book Anarchy, State, & Utopia) to generate discussion with my students and to ask a few key questions about what it means to be human, and how the best college education will make that question the stackpole around which all other questions are gathered.  Philosophy of education aside for the moment, the Time article will jolt anyone who thought that Schwarzeneggar’s brand was a mere fiction relegated to our DVD libraries.  If this isn’t a case for young, clear-minded Christian thinkers to go and get Ph.D.’s in neuroscience and philosophy of mind from the best universities in the world, I don’t know what is.

My friend and colleague Hunter Baker, Assoc. Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Union University, has some sound counsel for freshly-minted college grads in his recent post.

http://hunterbaker.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/advice-to-new-graduates-in-recessionary-times/

This week Trent Wilbanks and I are team teaching our final module for the academic year.  Cultural transformation is the topic, and Andy Crouch’s book Culture Making is the backbone text.  Concept of the week?  Power.  Crouch says that cultural power is “the ability to successfully propose a new cultural good.”  As it turns out, this concept is related to our various callings.  More to come on this in future posts.

See my most recent thoughts on this in a recent post entitled “Millennials and Free Markets” on Touchstone Magazine’s blogsite Mere Comments.  Cheers!  JDB

^{John 10:7-10}

⁷So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. ⁸All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. ¹⁰The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

So we’ve all heard of this before—that being a Christ-follower means we should experience an “abundant” life.  Should.  Hmmm…now that’s a word many of us in Christian circles hear even more than the word “abundant” itself.  I’m no psychologist, but as far as I remember in my own journey, [Read more →]