Love Truth Blog

I was reading through Mark Knoll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (IVP) this afternoon, and came across this most enlightening point: It is the nature of God and his loving work, not primarily the practical benefits, that requires cultivation of the mind. For a Christian, the most important consideration is not pragmatic results, or even the weight of history, but the truth. Learning matters the world matters—the word both as material object and as the accumulated network of human institutions. For a Christian, the most important reason for exercising the life of the mind is the implicit acknowledgment that things do not exist on their own. This acknowledgment is a specifically Christian presupposition; its denial characterizes much of the scholarship that shapes our lives so decisively. But even more, we are learning about the One who made that thing (p. 50). Knoll’s point struck a chord, for often we simply learn about science, art, and philosophy in hopes of obtaining some prag...

The other day someone who asked, “What would the youth need to know about the Christian faith?” I responded with the following: It is important for high school students, grades 9-12, to understand that Christianity is more than just my mom and dad’s religion. They too must take up the challenge to know what they believe and why they believe it. It may appear that theology and apologetics is too cerebral for them, but this is not the case. If students can learn higher mathematics like trigonometry and calculus to improve their SAT scores, they can also learn how to give an answer for their faith. Several years ago, the youth group with which I served as a volunteer spent several Saturday evenings dealing specifically with apologetics and theology. These groups were called “Life.” The goal was to prepare them for the things that would challenge their beliefs when they entered into college. The first series of groups dealt with foundational questions related to areas of philosophy, like e...