TRUTH: DISCOVERED AND REVEALED

A distinguishing mark of a Christian university is how its faculty pursues truth as a desirable end. There was a time when universities pursued truth. Today they only aspire to produce knowledge. For many truth is a relative concept and an artificial construct. The Christian university aspires to produce knowledge with the hope that knowledge can be transformed and engaged in wisdom. Wisdom is the domain of truth engaged in reality. The Christian university embraces truth in two forms: discovered truth and revealed truth. Truth discovered is that which we understand to be true and real through the faculties of logic and reason. The research biologist, psychologist, and physicist engage the scientific method, empirical observation, logic, and reasoning to attain a limited grasp of what is real and true. We discover that which is hidden and made known through the application of the higher order gifts , abilities, and intelligence that distinguishes us as humans. In the social, behavioral, and natural sciences, truth is a discovery framed as a construct derived from observation. Then there is revealed truth, truth that cannot be discovered, but must be revealed. It must be disclosed and given away, because it is beyond human efforts of discovery. While discovered truth involves human effort and ingenuity, unraveling mysteries and uncovering hidden realities, revealed truth comes to us from a God who delights in making himself known. Discovered truth is about the world that we can directly experience. Revealed truth is about the God who we can directly experience, and who is separate and beyond. In the Christian university, there is a unity of belief that Jesus Christ is the perfect, intentional revelation of God himself, the God who as himself comes, dwells, and moves among us, the God of relationship who seeks fellowship and intimacy. Jesus is the truth that puts a face on God the Father, the truth that is self -evident in His grace, mercy and blessing.

In the Christian university, through the panoply of exposures and encounters, the truth of the living Christ is seen in the people of Christ who make up the university. Christ is seen in the care of the faculty for the students. He is make known in the diligence in which staff members do their part to promote an environment that ensures student development and success. He is present in the spirit of love, compassion, and accountability all people in the university have for one another. When faculty and staff invite students home for a meal, when staff take-up a collection to send an international student home for the funeral of a loved one, when the students in a residence hall gather to pray for a student's father who has cancer, or when a faculty member take the time to come alongside a failing student and become a mentor and a friend, there is the truth that God is love and He is at work through others.

Distinguishing Marks of a Christian University

What distinguishes a Christian university from others? Every university has an essence in pursuit of desired ends (achievements, impact). I believe it is not only the ideal of a Christian university's essence (the presence of the Trinity: God in Christ by the Holy Spirit lived out by the university community), but its passion for achieving its special ends (in TWU's case: Truth, Compassion, Reconciliation and Hope) that is the difference. To quote page 19 in my recent book, Called to a Higher Purpose -

"Without a doubt, universities are places of discovery, learning, and engagement, but not necessarily exceptionally so. They pursue truth without acknowledging it as such, without acknowledging that all truth is Christ's truth. They may offer examples of compassion, but not compassion compelled purposefully as the love of Christ. They may seek reconciliation, but without the power of Christ to make it a lasting reality. They may be hopeful, but not occasion hope beyond the hope of career advancement and personal success. And all these things - truth, compassion, reconciliation, and hope - are not part of a typical university's mission, intentional design, and desire for the world. For the Christian university, they are the raison d"etre, the driving motivation and reason for existence."

In the next few blogs, I intend to share my thinking about each of these four "ends" which now comprise the TWU Board of Governors ENDS policy. A Christian university is a social/intellectual/spiritual ecology of grace and truth whose core nature is the very essence of Christ incarnated in the daily life of the university community. And it is in the pursuit of the ENDS, to which the university is passionately committed, that all who come into its sphere of participation and influence find meaning and purpose in an enterprise of higher, Higher Education.

Also do you ever wonder . . .

Do you ever wonder about the seemingly infinite vastness of space and the amazingly minute realities of cells, DNA, atoms, protons, and so on, and how mankind seems to be a reality at a point somewhere between the two? And do you ever wonder along the same comparative contrast about the transcendence of God beyond us and God's immanence within us and how we are a reality that exists in the middle of the two?

Do you ever wonder how the presence of peace calls for an absence of injustice, how human flourishing (shalom) is possible when justice reigns and injustice is banished? Does it seem amazing how in the face of gross injustice, nevertheless some people have a way of embracing and abiding in peace? Jesus said, "My peace I give you, not as the world gives. Let not your heart be troubled . . ." (Gospel of John 14:27)

Do you ever wonder why we are made so that in our youth at the peak of our physical abilities we often lack wisdom, yet at the end of life when our abilities wane and our physical capacities diminish prudence and wisdom are a more abundant blessing? Scripture says the Lord God gives us the Spirit of Wisdom (Ephesians 1:17).

Do you ever wonder . . .?

I wonder if you wonder about some of the things I wonder from time to time.

Do you ever wonder if people, as they enter the winter season of the life, go in one of two directions: either into joy and a deep sense of fulfillment or into sadness and a profound lack of fulfillment. If there is some truth to this observation, what occasions one path or the other? Scripture says the joy of the Lord is our strength and Jesus said (John 15:11) that his joy may be in us and our joy complete (full).

Do you ever wonder why it is that many people who suffer the most and live in the most oppressive countries of the world seem to have the greatest faith and are in the greatest numbers while so many people in the affluent nations of the world who seemingly have everything, every advantage, seem to have lost their faith and live in an existential malaise? Jesus also said "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven."

Do you ever wonder how it is that the more you learn about life and this world, the more you realize how little you really know? There sometimes seems to be a paradox of humility in direct proportion to wisdom accrued as one grows older. Does it seem to you as it often does to me that the paradox is that the more I learn in life the more it seems I am just getting started and there is so much more to take in, to learn, and to appreciate?

What to do about the future?

Universities ought to take seriously the preparation of leaders for the future. Trinity Western does, but for what kind of future? I am drawn to the writings of those who help us see alternative futures, especially those who look at demographic trends and project what might be ahead. Over the past few years, here's what's engaged my thinking going forward:

• Looking to 2015, of the eleven largest urban centres with populations that will range from 16.8 million to 26.4 million, only Tokyo is in the "North". All others are in the "Global South." (Africa, Latin America, Asia)
• By 2050, forty years from now, an 18 year old first year university student today will be 58 years old and in the prime of their leadership influence. By that time the "North," made up of traditionally "advanced" nations, will comprise only 10-12% of the world's population.
• Between 2010 and 2050 (the next 40 years) the world's population will grow from 6.75 to 9 billion, a nearly 50% increase. Africa and Latin America will account for 30% of that growth.
• The epicentre of Christianity keeps dropping south. Christianity now can no longer be thought of as dominantly a Western or Northern reality. The overwhelming majority of Christians reside in the Global South (Africa, Latin America and Asia).
• Today (2010) Christianity has become and will continue to be the most extensive universal religion in history. Most of Christianity resides in the non-western world, the "Global South." Islam is the next extensive religion.
• We now live in a post-secular world. The overwhelming majority of the world's population are people of faith. In the next 40 years an increasing share of the world's populations is going to identify with one of two faiths, Christianity or Islam.
• Global Christianity is deeply associated with poverty and is flourishing among the poor and persecuted while it atrophies among the rich and secure. Europe is faithless; a spiritual desert.
• Global South Christians are migrating to and rechristianizing the north. Today Korea is the second largest missionary sending nation. Great Britain has 1,500 missionaries from Global South nations and half of all churches in Britain are black.

The emerging demographics of the next 40 years comprise one of the most compelling social-political realities facing humanity yet we hear very little about it in the media or in the international dialogues regarding globalization. It may be one of the most important issues of our time.

So what do we do with this picture of the present and the future? If it is real, what does it mean for how we do university education in the next decade as we develop leaders for the next forty to fifty years? What should a globally sensitive, future looking university do with its curriculum, faculty hiring, pedagogy, and recruitment of students to prepare for and anticipate the future? What are the implications of doing nothing and just carrying-on the business of the university as usual? Any thoughts?

LEANING INTO HOPE

In C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, the story starts with the children between the wardrobe and Narnia in that gray place in between two worlds. We find ourselves between Christmas and New Years in that brief period of time when it is still possible to stop by a Salvtion Army Christmas kettle and act on the media reminders that not everyone's cup "runneth over." While the masses continue to crowd into parking lots and department stores to expend billions of dollars, televised football has record attendances, and hundreds of millions of dollars are being accrued at the holiday movie box offices. Others continue to struggle for survival against daunting odds. Crime is up in major cities around the world. Twenty-four thousand children continue daily to die of preventable causes. Rogue nations continue to build nuclear weapons. Unemployment continues at unacceptable levels. The globe continues to warm, and America continues war on two fronts. Between Christmas and New Years, we ponder these things in our hearts. We are pleased to see the old year come to an end and wonder what the new year will bring.

When we look forward to the new year, we ask the old question, "Is the world's glass half empty or half full?" Are things getting better or worse? Will the future be given over to the dark side or to the light? Will the economy get better or worse? Will climate change bring us closer to disaster and the end of the world, or force us to change and move us eventually to becoming a better world? Will human nature capitulate to corruption, degradation and sin, or will humanity rise to new levels of virtue, altruism, reconciliation, and compassion. Are we to embrace despair over the future or exercise hope? These questions are variations on pessimism and optimism. Pessimists believe they are realists and the optimists are very out-of-touch with reality. They may be right, but in reality most people are realists. They are not steeped in pessimism, but live in a real world where pessimism and optimism are simultaneously held in tension.

The truth be told, we live in a world of tremendous opportunity for many and of overwhelming, nearly unimaginable circumstances and suffering for others. Materially, never have there been more millionaires and billionaires in the world, nor a higher quality of life for most of the world's population. Nevertheless, a great gap exists between the material quality of life and the spiritual search for meaning and purpose in life beyond the material. I raise here the hypothesis that when the spiritual part of humanity is left unaddressed, devoid of meaning and purpose, people will eventually lean into depression and pessimism. When people spiritually experience meaning and purpose, they will lean into optimism. The challenge is to achieve a state of realistic optimism, realistic because tomorrow will not be all rosy and wonderful. There is corruption, degradation, and sin in the world, both personal and structural. Millions of people, approximately 1.4 billion, still live in deplorable circumstances and contexts and continue to be referred to as "the submerged tenth", the severely disadvantaged peoples who are at the bottom of the world's economic order. Deplorable circumstances were and continue to be created by man. People suffer because of the decisions of others. Nevertheless, it is possible to lean into a realistic optimism that occasions hope.

The words of the Apostle John still ring true: "For God so loved the world . . ." He still does, and yet our God chooses to engage human agency to bring about the impact of his love. He calls and commissions us to be a people of hope; of faith, hope, and love with him and in him. Later in the Gospel of John (15:5) we are encouraged by these words from Jesus Christ - "If you abide in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit." For what purpose? So that we can embrace the motto of a people who year round bring hope to many around the world, The Salvation Army. Their motto is "Others"! We lean into hope as realistic optimists who acknowledge the world's most deplorable circumstances and greatest needs, and yet remain determined to make a difference for others. We lean into hope with realistic optimism at this time of year and celebrate tomorrow's possibilities. "With Christ, all things are possible!"

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas

We find ourselves between Thanksgiving (Canadian and American) and Christmas. In the clutter of retail advertising, Christmas music, "Seasons Greetings," and so on, there will be our God who is not far off. He is Emmanuel, God with us! His voice is not in the howling wind, nor in the raging fire, but in the breeze, a "still small voice." Our God, whose incarnation in Jesus is the greatest story we can ever celebrate, is not a God "out there" or "up there," but rather he is always right here, Emmanuel, God with us! Rejoice! Be thankful! Give praise! He is ours and we are his!

Grace and Peace in Jesus' name throughout this special season!