The Awakening of Desires in the Integration of Faith and Learning

TRAVIS DICKINSON 

Having recently made a job change to Dallas Baptist University, one of the things folks around here talk about a lot is the integration of faith and learning. The aim is to integrate Christian faith into all aspects of the educational process. If this is to be a Christian university versus a university with a Christian background, then integration is crucial for stemming the steady tide that pushes an institution to drift away from its Christian identity. In a hostile culture, no one is drifting towards a deeper commitment to Christian faith without constant attention and effort.  

In my experience many faculty are on board with this idea of integration. If one is a deeply committed Christian, then no one wants to leave their faith at the doorstep of the classroom. But the question often becomes how one goes about integrating faith into the subjects one teaches. It’s easy enough to see this if one teaches Christian studies courses but how do you integrate faith into chemistry or history or marketing or graphic design? Is there really a way to teach these subjects Christianly?  

I think the answer to the latter question is yes. But the task is to figure out what that means for one’s discipline. 

What Integration is not 

What this doesn’t of course mean is that all we do is start class with prayer and a short devotional thought and then turn to teaching the content of our disciplines. Though this may bring faith across the doorstep of the classroom, it stops well short of integrating faith into the discipline itself. Moreover, it seems to reinforce the idea that faith has little value for the content of the discipline. It teaches students that we can a have a brief sacred moment before jumping into our largely secular pursuit.  

What then is it to teach our subjects Christianly? Well, somewhat unhelpfully, I have to admit the answer is a bit complicated. The reality is there are many ways faith can be integrated into our disciplines and it will vary somewhat across disciplines. In a very real way, the practitioners of each discipline must figure out what it looks like to integrate faith into that specific discipline.  

We are too easily satisfied 

I make here a friendly suggestion of one way to get started in thinking about integration and this has to do with desire. In a familiar passage by C.S. Lewis, he says:  

“…if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.” (1) 

While no doubt Lewis thought of his day as an age of immediate and easy satisfaction, it doesn’t hold a candle to today. The students in our classes likely all carry with them devices specifically designed to satisfy their most immediate desires. They have at all moments infinite entertainment, immediate connections to communities of friends, directions to anywhere in the world, the ability to order food that will show up at their doorstep, and answers to (or at least information for) most questions.  

The need to awaken the desires of our students 

Is quick and easy satisfaction real satisfaction? For many students, it quite unfortunately is, or at least they think that it is! But this smacks of the mud pie-making of an ignorant child in the slums. They are seemingly unaware of the wonders this world has to offer them. As educators, we’ve can deliver a holiday at the sea! This isn’t always easy but we must cast a vision for the goods of our disciplines. No matter what our discipline is, we are there to show them the wonders of some part of the world and seeing these wonders is far more worthwhile than the latest Netflix offering. In this way, we awaken the desires of our students for something far greater.  

But, as Christian educators, our job is not done. As Lewis goes on in this essay and elsewhere, nothing of this world will satisfy—at least, not ultimately. Now this might seem to be a defeater of what we’ve just said. But, as it turns out, it’s the most important piece for integrating faith and learning. What these newly awakened desires do is point us to something greater still. They, in a way, put us on a journey to find something ultimately great.  

Finding God in an exquisite world 

At the risk of pushing Lewis’s metaphor too far, the idea is we shouldn’t fool around with only what’s easy (e.g., mud pies in the slum). We must awaken to the realities of a holiday at the sea. But the experience of a holiday at the sea is ultimately fleeting also. It is far richer than mud pie making but it can’t be what it’s all about. In fact, those experiences, in a way, set us on the journey to the ultimate good. That is, when we experience the exquisite nature and beauty of reality, we naturally long for what stands behind it. When we see truly exquisite art, we want to know all about its creation—including who the artist is and his/her historical and cultural setting. When we see bad art, we pass it right by.  

So here’s the picture as applied to the integration of faith in the classroom. Whatever our discipline, we aim to awaken the desires of the students to the wonders of the world. But this is not our ultimate end as Christian educators. We ought to teach in such a way that we are constantly pointing to God as the ultimate reality that stands behind it all and is the source of ultimate satisfaction. As it turns out, we teach towards worship and loving God with all of our minds.  

Augustine’s awakening 

A great example of this is the way St. Augustine (354–430) is set on a journey towards God in his intellectual pursuits. Long before becoming one of the most important Christian theologians in the history of the church, Augustine lived a life of promiscuity and material gain. A turning point for him was reading Cicero’s Hortensius, which is unfortunately now lost to us. Listen to how this changed him:  

“…that book changed my mental attitude, and changed the character of my prayers to Thyself, O Lord. It altered my wishes and my desires. Suddenly, every vain hope became worthless to me and I yearned with unbelievable ardor of heart for the immortality of wisdom. I began to rise up, so that I might return to Thee…The love of wisdom bears the Greek name, philosophy, and it was with this love that that book enkindled me…Since at that time, as thou knowest, O Light of my heart, the words of [Scripture] were unknown to me, I was delighted with Cicero's exhortation, at least enough so that I was stimulated by it, and enkindled and inflamed to love, to seek, to obtain, to hold, and to embrace, not this or that sect, but wisdom itself, wherever it might be.” (2)

A desire for the transcendent and the eternal—what Augustine calls the “immortality of wisdom”— was awakened in him and led him to give up the pursuit of the immediate and easy. But that’s not the end of the story. This yearning drew him ultimately to God. A discovery of philosophy enkindled and inflamed a deep desire to seek with all of his heart the eternal wisdom “wherever it might be.” And this eternal wisdom, for Augustine, was ultimately found in the Christian gospel.

 (1) Lewis, C. S. (1996). “The Weight of Glory.” The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. Ed. W. Hooper. New York, Simon and Schuster: 25-26. 

(2) Confessions 3.4.7.

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Travis Dickinson is professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University