My pedagogical philosophy of education is to teach my students to think while transferring the necessary factual information apropos to the subject matter. In today’s world, anyone can access the compendium of human knowledge by typing a few letters, or making a few clicks, or simply speaking a voice command to their phone, tablet or computer. “Alexa, what is….?” Facts are cheap. Analysis, logic, thinking, understanding and being capable of incorporating new facts into one’s weltanschauung is quite another thing. Reading, listening and allowing one’s mind to adopt the thinking style of another, or to place one’s self intellectually into the mind of the writer to flow with her words and her ideas, and then to understand and to realize connections between the writer’s words and ideas, and the words and ideas of a dozen other authors to formulate new ideas, new hypothesis, and new paradigms is what true learning is all about. This, coupled with a love of knowledge, an endless search for truth — this is the true intellectual journey.
As professors, it is our sacred obligation to offer the opportunity to achieve this level of thinking and love for knowledge to all our students. It is also our responsibility to recognize and to encourage those who have a particular affinity for academic and intellectual achievement and to provide an environment where they can challenge themselves and flourish. We owe it to these students, and we owe it to humanity —recognizing gifted students and providing them with the tools, the environment, the challenge and the opportunity for them to stretch themselves beyond their own expectations and to allow them to achieve.
But because we are a Christian institution of higher learning, we also have the mandate to grow these minds into minds for Christ; in service of the world, for the glory of God. Not to teach students a “Christianized” version of their subjects of study, but to teach them the facts as we know them in a manner that helps them to analyze new facts and ideas in the context of their weltanschauung. To teach them how to spend a lifetime reexamining their weltanschauung, and to have the wisdom to know when to maintain their core beliefs and worldviews unchanged, and to know when it is necessary to change or amend a core belief while maintaining the sum, substance and truth of their faith. This is the journey of the Christian intellectual. A constant search for truth in a world of scientific discovery, while incorporating new facts into their core beliefs, discovering new things about themselves, their worlds and their relationship with God in the process. To become and to perform as God’s intellectuals.
Let me share an example of what I mean. There is a famous experiment in science called “The Double Slit” experiment. The experiment sets up a “light gun” that fires photons at a target, a flat plane or surface. Between the “light gun” and the target is a flat barrier with two vertical slits separated by a few inches. Light, according to quantum physics, acts as both a wave and a particle. In this experiment, if the light gun fires multiple photons at the target, some of the photons are blocked by the barrier, while some make it through the left slit and others the right slit. Because light is acting as a wave, the waves of photons from the left slit meet the waves of photons from the right slit and an interference pattern is created and is reflected on the surface of the target.
If the light gun fires only one photon at a time, one expects, and logic would dictate, that the photon would travel through only one slit and thus there would be no interference pattern and so a single wave pattern should be reflected on the target. However, this does not happen. Instead, even when only one photon is fired toward the target, it is like the photon goes through both slits simultaneously, causing the same kind of interference pattern as when multiple photons are fired at the target.
It gets even stranger. When scientists set-up sensors and tried to observe which slit the single photon passed through (and potentially capturing the single photon inexplicably traveling through both slits at the same time), the interference pattern went away and the photon acted like a particle leaving only a dot on the target and no interference pattern.
This happened repeatedly. The conclusion, from most scientists at the time (though like many things in science new experiments and theories abound) was that the act of observation —of watching the photon, of attempting to measure it — changed the reality of how the photon acted. In other words, many scientists argued, thought itself affects reality at the quantum level. Mental observation, the act of watching, changed the outcome of the experiment.
What does this have to do with “education in relation to Christian faith?” As a Christian, I not only find this experiment and the results intellectually intriguing and worthy of study, but I must incorporate this finding, if true, into my weltanschauung. As I read about these experiments years ago, one thought occurred to me repeatedly, as a Christian intellectual: If, as the Bible teaches us, God created the universe with a simple act of cognition, expressed in a word, then why would a Christian be surprised that reality, at a quantum level, moves, changes from wave to particle and back again, when thought, a mind, a being focuses attention upon it? Could this not be scientific evidence supporting the proposition that all reality is sustained by the mind of God? That God is the source of all Being, and that as the sons and daughters of God, could we in remarkably simple and childlike ways, through our own creative spirits and minds, affect reality at the quantum level as well?
I am not arguing that this is true. It is a thought experiment based on a real scientific experiment. But this demonstrates how Christian intellectuals incorporate what they learn, new information, into the core of their beliefs and look always for God in the science. God in the physiology. God in the chemistry. God in the telescope. Because though I study many scientific truths, I know there is but one source of ultimate truth, and that is God. And so I look for God’s fingerprints everywhere. This is what education in relation to Christian faith means to me. It is what being a faithful Christian learner means to me. It is our challenge, as professors, to find ways to teach our students to look for God everywhere and rejoice in the sheer joy of discovery.
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