College Faith

This episode continues my sporadic series on the various fields students may choose to study while in college, today discussing a major in mathematics. My guest is Dr. Francis Su, a professor of Mathematics at the prestigious Harvey Mudd College. Francis is a past president of the Mathematical Association of America, has been featured in Wired and The New York Times, and is the author of the award-winning Mathematics for Human Flourishing.

 

In this podcast we discuss:

How Francis first got interested in studying mathematics

The distinction between mathematics and arithmetic

How math helps us shape a set of virtues and flourish (vs. approaching math as simply skills)

Career opportunities for those with a degree in mathematics

Which character traits indicate you may do well as a math major

The similarities between mathematics and philosophy

The similarities between mathematics and music

Different emphases in the field of mathematics

How studying mathematics has helped Francis in his spiritual life

Challenges mathematics has posed to Francis’ faith

Where he sees ideas in mathematics as consistent with a Christian worldview

Areas in mathematics Christian students may want to consider pursuing

Francis’ general advice for all college students

 

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

Francis Su, Mathematics for Human Flourishing

Derek Schuurman’s work on ethics, faith, and technology

Francis Su’s website

Francis Su’s article “The Lesson of Grace in Teaching”

My guest in this episode is Dr. Roger Parrott, the President of Belhaven University for more than three decades. Over the years, he has thought much about the value of a college education, how higher education has changed, in some cases drastically, and the real cost of a college degree. I’ve invited him to share some of his wisdom with us. 

 

In this podcast we discuss:

How higher education has changed over the three decades he has been a university president

The four “S” features most public universities use to recruit students

The four “C” features that define most Christian universities

The causes of recent trends in public higher education

The spectrum of colleges and universities identifying as “Christian”

The difference between Bible departments and religion departments and what it says about a college or university

How to cut through the PR and fancy brochures when considering schools

The two essential questions to ask to choose the school that is right for you

Answering a common objection to Christian higher education

The downside of requiring students to sign a statement of faith to be admitted

The real costs of college and how to navigate the financial challenges

The problem with “tuition resets”

The importance of calculating living expenses, textbooks, and fees into the total cost of college

Understanding good debt and bad debt

How important graduate-level education is today

The number one quality employers are looking for, and how the college years can help prepare you for this

 

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

Roger Parrott, “The Real Cost of College: Insights of an Insider”

Belhaven University

My guest in this edition is Jeff Hardin, Ph.D., professor and former chair of the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Wisconsin. He holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) from the International School of Theology. In addition to his scholarly work in cell biology and leading textbook on this topic, Jeff has thought much about the intersection of faith and science and regularly addresses these topics in public forums.

 

In this podcast we discuss:

How Jeff got interested in studying biology

The value of exploring various ideas, and noticing God in the process

How, as a biologist, he benefits from inter-disciplinary conversations

What career opportunities are available with a degree in the biological sciences

How to zero in on the area of biology you are interested in

How he has connected studying biology with his faith, and how he has thrived as a result

Some challenges of being a biologist and a Christian  

How he seeks to reveal God in his work as a biologist 

Thoughts on how Christians can think about evolution and creation

The role of understanding ethics and broader worldview and religious commitments in studying the biological sciences

Character qualities/traits that are good indicators that a student will flourish studying the biological sciences

The overlap of God’s call for us to care for His creation and current conversations in the biological sciences 

The importance for Christians to thoughtfully engage with the biology of neuroscience

The importance for Christians to thoughtfully engage with the worldview, ethics, and practice of genome editing

The growing conversation around “trans-humanism” that will become increasingly important in discussions in the biological sciences

God’s grace for those called to study the biological sciences

The value of joining a professional society in the biological sciences, and connecting with other Christians in the field at the society’s meetings

What Jeff wished his 18-year-old self knew about majoring in the biological sciences

Why it is important for biologists also to study things outside the biological sciences

The importance of finding other Christians in the biological sciences, and how to find them

 

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

The Isthmus Society

C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer

Phillip Johnson, Darwin on Trial

Gilbert Meilaender, Bioethics, a Primer for Christians

Scott Rae, Moral Choices: An Introduction to EthicsJohn Wyatt, Matters of Life and Death: Human Dilemmas in the Light of the Christian Faith

The American Scientific Affiliation

BioLogos

Reasons to  Believe

The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity

The Christian Medical & Dental Association

Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

My guest in this episode is Scott Phelps, Executive Director of the Abstinence & Marriage Education Partnership. For many years now Scott has spoken to students about the great, long-term benefits of saving sex for marriage, and so I’ve invited him onto the show to share some of what he has learned, and how others have found his insights helpful. 

 

In this podcast we discuss:

How he got interested in the relationship between living life well, flourishing, and sex

Principles, or the successful pathway that most often leads to a good life

Habit formation for life-long intimate relationships

Hope for students who have already been sexually active

Other benefits of waiting for sex until marriage

The example of Joseph, Potiphar’s wife, and Joseph’s future wife (Genesis 37-50)

The disbelief some have about the possibility of abstinence until marriage, yet their interest

How to swim against the alternative cultural narrative of “free sex,” which saturates all   media

How his approach differs from most sex education programs

The personal value and apologetic force of the biblical view of sex and marriage

The biggest challenges students face to following the successful pathway to sex, marriage, and the good life

The acceleration and shift in the cultural narrative about sex since the COVID pandemic

How parents might tackle this topic with their children

Simplifying the issue with one simple question

Sex as fire in a firepit or as a forest fire

Living together, sex, future marriage, and divorce

 

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

Abstinence & Marriage Education Partnership

Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives

Scott Phelps, Excel Curriculum and Workbook

Glenn Stanton, The Ring Makes All The Difference: The Hidden Consequences of Cohabitation and the Strong Benefits of Marriage

Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier and Better Off Financially

Rick Mattson and Stan Wallace, “Finding the Middle Way in the LGBTQ+ Conversation,” a College Faith podcast

Stan Wallace’s Summary of Virtue Ethics

My guest today is Rick Mattson, a national apologetics specialist and evangelism coach with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. He often does open “Q and A” sessions on college campuses in which he is asked for insights on how to understand LGBTQ+ issues in ways that embody both truth and love. We discuss some of what he shares on this important topic.

 

In this podcast we discuss:

How LGBTQ issues come up in his conversations, and why it’s close to his heart

The importance of the larger narrative of Scripture in understanding human sexuality and flourishing

The relation of this issue to the Trinity

How both the physical and spiritual ramifications of the Fall are often neglected in this conversation

How to understand the idea that “God made me this way”

How to understand the idea of a “gay Christian”

Advice for Christian students with same-sex attraction

The modern shift toward “expressive Individualism” underlying much of this conversation

Finding the “middle way” between extreme views of human sexuality

The centrality of spiritual disciplines in healthy friendships and sexuality

How we frame conversations to open further LGBTQ discussions

The importance of having appropriate expectations for our relationships

How to not be bullied, or be bullies, in LGBTQ conversations

What the loving thing to do is in specific situations regarding roommates or gender non-conforming dorms

How to think about attending a gay friend’s wedding

How to think about the use of preferred pronouns

A strategy to think through various other LGBTQ-related issues

How the church can better prepare students to think through these issues

How parents can better prepare students to think through these issues

The hardest question he gets on this question on campus

 

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

Rick Mattson’s website

Rick Mattson, Faith is Like Skydiving: And Other Memorable Images for Dialogue with Seekers and Skeptics

Rick Mattson, Witness in the Academy: A Guide for Graduate Students, Faculty, and Those Who Minister With Them

Rick’s blog posts on “LGBT+”

Carl Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution

Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution

Summit Ministries

“A Practical Guide to Navigating University Culture,” John Stonestreet on the College Faith podcast

World View Academy

“Why Christian Students Must Understand Their and Other’s Worldviews,” Mike Schutt on the College Faith podcast

“How to Choose a College,” David Wunder on the College Faith podcast

Impact 360

This episode continues my sporadic series on the various fields students may choose to study while in college. My guest is Dr. Hannah Eagleson studied the great books at St. John’s College (Annapolis, MD) during her Masters degree, then went on to earn a PhD in Renaissance literature at the University of Delaware.

She has written study guides to The Lord of the Rings and to works by C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers. Dr. Eagleson also develops programming to support Christian scholars as they follow Christ and love their neighbors, including work with Global Scholars, Chesterton House (a Christian study center at Cornell University), and the American Scientific Affiliation (a scholarly and professional society for Christians in the sciences).

 

In this podcast we discuss:

What the “Great Books” are

What “Great Books” university programs are and why they were formed

Difference between Great Books programs at pluralistic and Christian universities

Defining the important literary term “canon”

How Hannah got interested in the Great Books and these university programs

The value of understanding the classical modes of education: grammar, logic, and rhetoric and Classical Christian Education

How the classical model of education contributed to interest in Great Book programs

Hannah’s perspective on the medieval period of intellectual history, as a corrective to our current negative perspectives

Details of specific Great Books programs

How Hannah benefitted from being in a Great Books program

The “seminar” approach to coursework in a Great Books program

Why “new” is not necessarily “better,” especially concerning books

How a Great Books program does and does not help you get a job and make a living, and strategies to better your chances

What a “liberal arts” education is and is not     

Strengths and weaknesses of Great Books programs

Suggestions if you want to use a Great Books program to prepare you for graduate studies

How Hannah’s Great Books program continues to shape her today, and will into the future

The positives and negatives of how social media encourages us to engage texts

Defining “literary criticism”

 

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

Britannica’s Great Books of the Western World series, compiled by Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins of the University of Chicago

Baylor Great Texts Program, an honors program within a Christian university setting with many different majors

Biola Torrey Honors College an honors program within a Christian university setting with many different majors

Columbia University Core Curriculum (a program within a secular Ivy League university that engages with great books)

Notre Dame Program of Liberal Studies Great Books Seminars, a program within a Catholic university setting with many different majors

St. John’s College, Annapolis and Santa Fe (the whole program is Great Books)

Thomas Aquinas College, Catholic (the whole program is Great Books)

Dorothy Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning”

C. S. Lewis, “On The Reading of Old Books” 

George Herbert’s poetry

John Donne’s poetry

Chesterton House, the Christian Study Center at Cornell University

“Why You Need to Join the Great Conversation About the Great Books,” The Art of Manliness Podcast #430

The New Yorker article “What’s So Great About Great-Books Courses?”

My guest in this edition of the College Faith Podcast is Dr. Ted Turnau, co-author of The Pop-Culture Parent: Helping Kids Engage Their World for Christ. Ted has spent many years thinking about how to help children (from the early years through young adulthood) understand, evaluate, and flourish in pop culture that is all around us. He shares some of his insights from his study, how his parents helped and didn’t help him, and lessons learned from raising his own children.

 

In this podcast we discuss:

What “pop culture” is conceptually and biblically

The two ways Christians tend to respond to popular culture, and a better “middle way”

 Daniel and his colleagues as examples of a healthy posture toward  popular culture

The goal of the Christian parent in the midst of pop culture

How various parenting styles tend to influence a student’s decisions once at college

The five questions that can help you and your children evaluate things in pop culture

A case study: Evaluating the extremely popular Baldur’s Gate 3 video game

Six things to keep in mind when we talk with our children about pop culture

 

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

Ted Turnau’s website

Ted Turnau, E. Stephen Burnett, and Jared Moore, The Pop-Culture Parent: Helping Kids Engage Their World for Christ

Ted Turnau, Popologetics: Popular Culture in Christian Perspective

Ted Turnau, Oasis of Imagination: Engaging Our World Through a Better Creativity

Ted Turnau and Ruth Naomi Floyd, Imagination Manifesto: A Call to Plant Oases of Imagination

Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling

Christ and Pop Culture (an online magazine and podcast)

Love Thy Nerd (a website thinking Christianly about pop culture)

Ask About Games (a website by Andrew Robertson providing a Christian perspective and evaluation of video games)

Hollywood Jesus: Your Bridge to Pop Culture (a website evaluating streaming shows, movies, and much more from a biblical perspective)

“A Guide to Majoring in the Arts,” College Faith podcast #34 with Cam Anderson, M.F.A.

In this episode we are discussing an idea every student is sure to encounter early and repeatedly during the college years-- the idea of “relativism.” My guest is Greg Koukl, co-author of Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air and the Founder/President of Stand to Reason, a great apologetics ministry.

In this podcast we discuss:

The prevalence of relativism on campus today (often seen as “expressive individualism”)

Some different forms of relativism students will encounter

Greg’s “inside/outside” distinction, which goes back to the Garden of Eden and the Fall

How relativism is related to the idea of “truth”

Why Christians should not talk about “their faith”

Why we can know “that” something is true without knowing “how” it is true

Why no one is actually a relativist, and how to help a “relativist” see this

How to ask good questions as a way to engage in conversations about relativism (and everything else--”gardening” vs. “harvesting”)

Understanding and discussing the new/current definition of “tolerance”

Responding to relativism on campus (with friends, in classes, in papers, etc.)

The importance of finding common ground in conversations

The value of using this dialogical approach to defend all Christian truth claims

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

Greg Kokhl, Street Smarts: Using Questions to Answer Chrisitanity’s Toughest Challenges

J. Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels

Greg Kokhl, The Story of Reality: How the World Began, How It Ends, and Everything Important that Happens in Between

Greg Kokhl, Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions

Francis Schaeffer’s Trilogy

C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

Randy Newman, Questioning Evangelism: Engaging People’s Hearts the Way Jesus Did

Stand to Reason, Greg’s organization

Greg’s podcasts

Related College Faith Resources:

The Reasonableness of Faith: Why Students Should Study Apologetics with Paul Copan (College Faith podcast #25)

How Asking Good Questions Helps Us Succeed with Randy Newman (College Faith podcast 10)

Stan Wallace, “When it Comes to Weinstein et al., No One is a Moral Relativist--And That’s a Good Thing!”

My guest today is Timothee Joset, author of The Priesthood of All Students. He has been a student leader in campus ministry in Switzerland and internationally, including serving on the International Fellowship for Evangelical Students (or IFES) governing Board for four years. Timothée holds a Master of Arts with majors in Literature and History from the Universities of NOO - ka - tel Neuchâtel, Switzerland and Berlin, Germany, a Master of Theological Studies from Tyndale Seminary, Toronto and a PhD in theology from the University of Durham. For several years he has also helped give leadership to “Dialogue and Truth,” an initiative to support undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students in integrating their faith and their academic disciplines. Finally, he’s the incoming IFES Engaging the Universty Coordinator. In this podcast we discuss:Timothee’s long experience in campus ministry as a student, staff, senior leader, and IFES historian, and a brief summary of IFES’s campus ministryWhy the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is an important way to understand how campus ministries should operate -- “Immediacy, Mediation, and Participation”The importance of treating students as studentsUnderstanding the university as a “foreign land” as a way to discern, value, and engage appropriately in the university contextWhat we can learn about flourishing in the university from the Nation of Israel’s exile (cf. Daniel chapter 1)The importance of engaging the university in all its dimensions (as a complete “ecosystem”)Why the term “parachurch” is a problematic way to identify campus ministriesA better missiological understanding of the relationship between campus ministries and local churchesHow pastors can encourage the students (and scholars) in their congregationsSome challenges and opportunities when campus ministries are independent and contextualizedThe close connection between campus ministries and a “missional ecclesiology”Thimotee’s three-fold summary of what a campus ministry should encourage students to do: Value, Listen, and Engage Resources mentioned during our conversation:Timothee Joset, The Priesthood of All Students: Historical, Theological, and Missiological Foundations of a University Ministry: The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES)Ralph Winter, “The Two Sructures of God’s Redemptive Mission” in Perspectives in the World Christian MovementIFES’s Engage the University projectNicholas Wolterstorff, Religion in the University

My guest in this episode is Dr. Martine Audeoud, Academic Dean of Bakke Graduate University and author of Research as Worship in the Company of God. In this recent book she shares much wisdom for students doing research for term papers.

 

In this podcast we discuss:

How Martine began thinking about research as worship

Why she believes “God is a God of research”

How Research as Worship can help students doing term papers

Why Africans have a “competative edge” in integrating faith and research and what we can learn from them

Why she chose the metaphor of the Jewish tabernacle to illustrate how research is worship

A few examples of how the tabernacle metaphor relates to research as study

Integrity in research as a reflection of the holiness of God

How understanding research as worship guards us against plagiarism, relying on ChatGPT to write papers, the temptation to only hear what we want to hear, etc.

How to balance being open to new ideas with affirming what we know biblically, as illustrated by Nehimiah

The non-negotiable values a Christian student should maintain while doing research

The importance of being part of a faith community to help in research

How to find other believers on your campus in general and in your major in particular

How to find a mentor(s) to help you as a Christian in your research

The importance of selecting the best research approach for your term papers

A helpful checklist to writing a good research paper

The role of journaling in doing research as worship

Sabbath-keeping as a part of research and worship

How all of our lives include research, well beyond just writing term papers

 

Resources mentioned during our conversation:

Martine Audeoud, Research as Worship in the Company of God

Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences

“A Case Study in Thinking Christianly and Making a Difference: Edmund Husserl,” Episode 21 of the the Thinking Christianly podcast

IFES/The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students and InterVarsity/USA

Christian professional societies (see also here)