The university where I teach has a long-standing tradition of selecting one faculty member each year to receive the Teaching Excellence Award. My friend and truly
excellent colleague, Dr. Nyk Reed, was selected as this year's recipient, and gave a beautifully challenging address to our community you can see here. Putting that address together is no joke. What do you say in such a short time about that meets the moment and speaks to faculty and students alike? Last year, when I preceded Nyk in that humbling honor, I had to think a lot about what makes teaching excellent for communities like ours. That is, of course, connected to the many questions are swirling about what education is and how it should take place. Here are a few of my thoughts I worked up for the Trevecca community, and I offer them more widely here.
There’s a cherished treasure in Christian higher education that is, I think, directly related to a prevalent problem facing modern people. First, an outline of the problem: a life of meaning and significance is lost on us. We are a people who have no problem setting goals, tackling issues, or getting things done. We just don’t really know why we’re doing most of this stuff. Yes, many of us can point to some quick connection that quickly justify what we’re doing. We get a job to make money. We make money to buy the things we want and need. We get a college education to be able to get the job that gets us everything I’ve just mentioned.
There’s nothing overtly wrong with anything I’ve just mentioned, but it rings a bit hollow in comparison with the gift that Christian higher education offers, so let me offer a description of that gift by appealing to a theological hero of mine. Augustine of Hippo was an unlikely saint on a quest for fulfillment through the achievement of lofty goals. His parents had high hopes for him, outpaced only by the even higher hopes he had for himself. On top of that, Augustine had the intellectual gifts to achieve everything he ever wanted. A top-of-the-class golden child, he set out on a quest to get the best education, the best job, and the girl of his dreams, and did exactly that, only to realize that none of it was satisfying to his heart.
Eventually, he came to an important realization: no finite thing was ever going to give his heart the satisfaction it craved. That doesn’t mean finite things are bad, only that they had limits, and every time he got one he wanted, it couldn’t quite quench his thirst for more. It was only the limitless beauty of God, he came to realize, that would offer him a field without border, a sea without floor, a sky without ceiling. “Our hearts are restless,” he would eventually come to confess to God, “until they find their rest in You.”
I get the sense that higher education in general is primed to perpetuate the restless heart syndrome. If nothing else, higher education is fueled by desire. We want the degree, the job, the relationship, the future possibilities, and so we enroll, driven by hopes for what might be. Again, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Every August, I get a front-row seat to incoming classes of students alongside their parents, driven with desires for the future, hearts on quest to find something that will satisfy. Many of them have enrolled riding a type of futuristic promise that this college degree will be an effective pathway to getting everything they want. My persistent concern is that they’ll get everything they want out of their college experience, and still be left with a restless heart. They’ll get the scholarship, the job, the relationship, and find out ten years down the line that while none of it was bad, it was also no match for the limitless goodness of an infinite God.
The restless heart syndrome happens when we confuse the limited goods of life for things that can satisfy our longing hearts. When we try to infuse infinite worth in things that couldn’t possibly hold that kind of water, they’re going to burst the skins of expectations every time. The joy of landing the job will eventually wear thin. The accomplishment at work will leave you longing for another one. Even that special relationship will finally reveal that the person you’ve found isn’t God, good as they are.
There’s tried-and-true wisdom in what Augustine eventually comes to recommend: use the finite goods of life – the college degree, the job, the relationship – as a way to enjoy the infinite goodness of God. Point your job toward something it can never be on its own. Make it a means of grace and come to discover the joy of a human life lived on mission for a purpose beyond itself. Aim the finite goods of life toward the infinite goodness of God and let your heart find a joyful home.
Higher education institutions are experiencing pressure on every side to become excellent, often by how effectively we can infect students with the restless heart syndrome. We measure excellence according to metrics like ‘return on investment’ and ‘job placement rates.’ And again, my argument isn’t that job placement is a bad thing, but so far, I’ve yet to discover the job that, on its own, can satisfy my restless heart. In honesty, I think I resonate so much with Augustine because I’ve found in his story a pattern of my own, questing after the next finite achievement just over that illusive horizon. To some degree, I think I have higher education institutions to blame for a piece of this. They’ve introduced to me a vision of possibilities I couldn’t have ever imagined, complete with a ranking system, GPA, test scores, scholarships, and awards, all offering a serpentine lie that the more I achieve, the more satisfied I’ll be.
But gladly, it was Christian higher education that also offered the gift of envisioning achievements and jobs for what they are: finite goods. Augustine had Ambrose, a teacher who helped him come to this realization. I had people like Michael, Herb, Helen, Doug, Judy, Ron, Steve, Jack, and Brent – all excellent teachers who have modeled for me a vision of education that serves something beyond finitude. They are gifted educators who were able to help me learn content and develop skills, while also offering a vision of who I could do with that content and skills that moved to the rhythms of prayers that became my heartbeat: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Christian higher education isn’t just the same content you can get at a state school with a Bible verse tacked on. It’s the nuanced development of an imaginative vision for how one might use content and skills in ways that offers a home to restless hearts.
Here’s a snapshot of what I think that might look like around places like Trevecca: Some students who enroll in my Christian Tradition course aren’t shy about telling me that their lack of excitement for that course is linked to the perception that it “doesn’t apply to their major.” It’s a course in history and doctrine, after all, and they are at a university to become a medical professional, business professional, or educator, so how will any of this apply to the skills they’re developing in their other courses? I tend to agree with them. Taking a course like mine isn’t meant to apply to their major – it’s meant to make sense of their major. At heart, I want a course like that to give them a story to locate their work as a teacher, nurse, or entrepreneur that will allow them to live life on mission, and to take what we’ve given them and how to know how to aim it in service to an infinite kingdom where the poor are blessed, the mourners are comforted, and the meek inherit the earth. Among the thousands of colleges and universities that are offering really good training and delivering really good content, Christian higher education gets to offer that training and content with a vision of how to use it in ways that are for more than the job itself, but for the distinct, colorful, beautifully offbeat, particular kingdom that Jesus established. Christian communities are those that get to point to something truly unique in the world – like the kingdom where the poor are blessed and the meek inherit the earth – and say, “Let’s use this training to do that really well.”
I’m really thankful for teachers who have taught me a way beyond the restless heart syndrome, and I’m really thankful for places where teaching like that can be called excellent.
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