Theme

Christian Higher Education:
Finding God’s Light in the Twilight

“For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.” Psalm 36:9 

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In higher education, we have a Christian story of life and light. Our God is the fountain of life, the one who creates and guides the universe. In Jesus Christ, our God restores reconciling light to every corner of creation; and the Holy Spirit provides the energy through which we can serve in every inch of the world.

But we and our students live with significant uncertainties that erode our life and light. Our world lurches with pandemics, civil discord, war, and disasters. It is difficult to differentiate reality from its distortions. This century complicates contexts for human choices while at the same time offering excellent opportunities for global exchange and connections.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted, we dwell in the “twilight,” a mix of light with darkness. In this twilight, Christians are called to witness in word and deed to the light and life of God. Christian higher education should prepare students to share God’s light for people and our planet through their service in various fields of study and application.

To enable our students, we need to attend to teaching and learning in the following areas:

• The future of democracy: Through democracy, our countries strive to protect life, honor human freedom, and promote justice. Yet democracy matches freedom with responsibility. Because Christians have citizenship in the Kingdom of God and in nations, our universities and colleges must articulate the foundations and strategies from which we work toward greater alignment between them. We seek to foster peaceful and just flourishing for people in pluralistic cultures. 

• The relationship of faith and the sciences: Some scholars insist that the sciences cannot and should not mix with religious belief. But we believe that there are no secular spaces beyond our Creator’s design. Thoughtfully, we will weave the Biblical story of light, life, and redemption with the sciences so that we teach our students to appreciate, explore, and utilize them well.

• The challenges of sustainability: Our graduates will have roles as God’s stewards of global development; and stewardship requires creativity to sustain resources while supporting life for more than eight billion people. We must prepare students to contribute ideas and creativity that address these global challenges.

• The role of technologies: Powerful technologies change our individual and worldwide patterns for truth-seeking and behavior. We must enable our graduates to understand the structures, directions, and powerful effects of technologies, so they engage them as tools, not gods, in our personal, professional, and global choices.

In the unknowns about democracy, science, sustainability, and technology, we and our students can feel confused and helpless, paralyzed by fear. Yet the Christian university can call students toward an identity and purpose that shares God’s light in the twilight of a complex world. We can foster meaning based in our creation as God’s image bearers, in gratitude for the salvation that Jesus brings, and the Spirit’s calling to lives of discipleship. We can form graduates who reflect God’s light in service to a diverse world. How does the Christian university shape such identity, purpose, and calling for life and light?

To reflect God’s light, our colleges and universities must prepare leaders for effective Christian influence in a pluralistic and everchanging world. During their college and university years, our students must gain needed knowledge, skills, values, and behaviors that shed and share God’s rays of hope. We must enable our graduates to move us from the twilight of conflict, uncertainty, resource depletion, and technological determinism toward harmony, truthfulness, stewardship, and shalom. In INCHE member universities we teach, learn, and discover so that God’s world can flourish.  

As leaders in Christian higher education, the challenges can seem daunting. We may see ourselves as people of little strength in the crosscurrents of our times. Yet, like members of the Church in Philadelphia to whom John writes in Revelation 3, we know that Christ already controls the door of God’s Kingdom. So, we serve our Lord actively, with patience and perseverance, to give glimpses of the light that is already coming in God’s new heaven and earth.

While this future will surely come, the Christian university’s present task is to shape being, knowing, and doing for a community of God’s learners. All members of our academic community are created and loved by God for purposeful lives. Our students can discover God’s beautiful light woven in every field of study. Our graduates can be agents of integrity, compassion, justice, and action for families, churches, neighborhoods, professions, and nations. How do our Christian universities and colleges educate boldly for current times and for an eternity of gratitude to God for both life and light?