The church, particularly the evangelical Protestant kind, often has a strange relationship between faith and learning.  It as if one must necessarily cancel out the other.  And while I got more of a sense of that when heading off to seminary, I imagine it is also true for college, particularly in light of the myths/realities one hears about coming form campuses today.  In his letter to Christian college freshmen, Hauerwas will have none of it.

Don’t underestimate how much the Church needs your mind. Remember your Bible-study class? Christians read Isaiah’s prophecy of a suffering servant as pointing to Christ. That seems obvious, but it’s not; or at least it wasn’t obvious to the Ethiopian eunuch to whom the Lord sent Philip to explain things. Christ is written everywhere, not only in the prophecies of the Old Testament but also in the pages of history and in the book of nature. The Church has been explaining, interpreting, and illuminating ever since it began. It takes an educated mind to do the Church’s work of thinking about and interpreting the world in light of Christ. Physics, sociology, French literary theory: All these and more—in fact, everything you study in college—is bathed in the light of Christ. It takes the eyes of faith to see that light, and it takes an educated mind to understand and articulate it.

It really is saddening (and maddening) to hear people of faith compartmentalize their beliefs in a way that ultimately rejects the lordship of Christ over all of His creation.

It is, though, too easy to go too far in the other direction: where learning is more of a distraction than an in-road for what God has done and is doing.  And, as everyone since Paul’s time (and probably before) knew: knowledge tends to puff up.  As Hauerwas states, though, learning is good for many things in the church, including a sense of defense for the faith.  Even still, there is something else to keep in mind:

So, yes, to be a student is to be called to serve the Church and the world. But always remember who serves what. Colleges focus on learning; as they do so, they can create the illusion that being smart and well educated is the be-all and end-all of life. You do not need to be educated to be a Christian. That’s obvious. After all, Christ is most visible to the world in the person who responds to his call of “Come, follow me.” I daresay St. Francis of Assisi was more important to the medieval Church than any intellectual. One of the most brilliant men in the history of the Church, St. Bonaventure, a Franciscan, said as much. But the Church needs some Christians to be educated, as St. Bonaventure also knew; this is why he taught at the University of Paris and ensured that, in their enthusiasm for the example of St. Francis, his brother Franciscans didn’t give up on education.

(image from yourquizmaster.com)