Seek Truth

Across recent decades, education has been shifting in America. Historically, education has accepted the role of producing good citizens. Character, integrity, and good will toward others lie at the heart of this historical commitment. The deliberative process of open discussion, debate, opposition, and compromise have been central in the progress of our free and democratic republic. A liberal arts education has been at the heart of such formation of body, mind and spirit.

I’ll never forget the semester when liberal arts clicked with me. I was in Paul Vincent’s English Literature class and Bob Neff’s Western Civilization course in the same quarter. Suddenly, I realized that I was studying the same thing but in different courses. I recognized the social construction of the disciplines. I did not yet know the word “epistemology,” but I had just stumbled upon its meaning. The path to knowledge was before me, and the journey of knowing was mine to take.

Dr. Dennis Kinlaw, Sr. emphasized that the pursuit of knowledge in a specific discipline would eventually culminate in the terminal degree. He wrote: "Are you searching for the center of reality? Do you know that the center is the Lord Jesus? He is the center of all knowledge and all truth. If you give yourself totally to Him, you will find yourself in the middle of all that is good and significant." I still remember the look on Dr. Kinlaw’s face and the chuckle in his voice when he asked, “What then?” What comes after the doctor of philosophy in any discipline? He grinned as he forcefully proclaimed, “Theology.”

Each academic discipline eventually takes us into the quest to understand God. When my children were in school, my watchword to them was “Study hard. Think well. Learn much.”

But the natural progress of thought from content to philosophy to theology has been co-opted in our halls of learning in recent years. The American watchword is “money.” The mandate has been “Go to college and get a degree so that you can get a good job and earn lots of money.” But materialistic pursuits prove their emptiness all too soon. Many millennial youth, college graduates, spend their days in dead end part-time jobs as baristas and bartenders.

It seems to me that the absence of God in academic and public discourse has led to emptiness in our families, communities, churches, and culture. We no longer pursue truth. We craft carefully shaped agendas. News is not objective. Politics is not noble. Wealth is not philanthropic. Self is central, folding in upon itself in an empty package.

Public discourse is not ruled by a quest for truth. It is dominated by political correctness. The carefully constructed, yet constantly evolving rules of public discourse shame the non-compliant into silence and elevate the social justice elite to dominance, until they too come crashing down in a heap of exposed shame. Nothingness encroaches in an attempt to overwhelm humanity in total spiritual and social darkness.

But just when I feel hopeless, desperate, and futile I remember. I remember that God is. God is love. God loves me. God loves all humanity. God gave His Son, made flesh, to live a sinless life among us. He died a sacrificial death on the cross where He voluntarily gave His life as an atoning sacrifice for the whole world. His crucifixion, death, burial and bodily resurrection give me hope of eternal life to come. By faith in Jesus Christ, I have that hope.

So, I too, am searching for truth. I find truth in Jesus Christ. Theology, revealed in God made flesh, helps me to make sense of the chaos. We were made for something. We are going somewhere. The journey from birth to eternity is ours to take, by faith. No, most teachers in our schools won’t aid this you on this journey.  But it remains the cry of the human heart. Take the journey. Seek truth. Build your life upon it. At the center, you find God.