The Discovery Channel isn’t Enough

The other day my grandpa handed me a Mission Frontiers magazine titled “Discipling All Peoples.” Skimming through the table of contents, I immediately flipped to the very last article: “Helping Students ‘Get It.’” In the article, writer John Stonestreet addresses the statistic that shows a significant disinterest in Christianity once adolescents reach college.

Stonestreet claims that while a significant number of Christian students reject Christianity during their university years, far more struggle to embrace a faith that is not really authentic or orthodox. As Christain Smith (professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame) puts it, students that are looking for faith look for a “moralistic therapeutic Deism” instead of one that is grounded on objective truth.

Last week I went to a lecture titled “Why America is Incapable of Ever Producing a C.S. Lewis” where speaker and editor of Touchstone Magazine Kevin Offner focused on a similar topic. He claimed that this downward spiral in our society is the result of three main things: 1) modern education 2) noise 3) fragmentation and segmentation v. wholeness and unity.

Education: Offner gave a brief description of how Lewis was taught so that we could better understand the differences between his education and the educational system today. Lewis was taught with an emphasis on rhetoric, logic and grammar. This often required him to memorize chunks of literature or to sit through tutorials that lasted hours. He was taught not just what to think but how to think, and before he even became a Christian, Lewis had established a moral worldview.

Today, learning is utilitarian. It no longer responds to the question of “how will this help you function as a human being?” but instead, it strives to answer the question of “how will this get you a job?” It’s no wonder why students flock to sports games instead of lectures. The passion for learning is absent. Students no longer yearn to be enlightened – instead, they only do what is necessary to get an A in the class and go no further.

“The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.” -C.S. Lewis, Learning in War-Time

Noise: C.S. Lewis favored walking for transportation and chose to ride on the slowest trains when necessary. He would walk out of a pub if he heard music playing and only chose “non-talkers” to join him on his hikes. Why? It’s simple: the more time to think, the better. Today, we freak out if we hear silence for more than five minutes. We have constant demands to instantly reply to e-mails, schedule the next appointment or jump to the next song. Offner continued saying that advances in technology are not necessarily a bad thing, but there is a problem when “We know more of what happened in the last 24 hours than we do of the last 24 years.”

Fragmentation and Segmentation v. Wholeness and Unity: Choices do not deepen us. Many people see Lewis’ life as a boring one because he chose to do things simply. He took time to invest in one thing rather than jumping to the next best thing. In other words, he would read the entire article, not just the headline. A large part of this fragmented mindset is due to the media. Our minds have been trained to switch from the Superbowl game to the Darfur genocide to a toothpaste commercial in a matter of seconds. It is rare to see a border of objective truth that addresses the wholeness on topics such as the nature of man or good v. evil.

So what do we do? How can we be counter-cultural in a society that makes it so easy to accept the average? Here are Offner’s recommendations:
• Make reading central: read an older book for every contemporary book
• Intentionally slow down
• Don’t be so concerned with being efficient: schedule 2 appointments instead of 4 so you have more time to go deep
• Think ahead of deep questions to ask for the next time you are in a conversation

These suggestions are not that easy to do, especially for college students. We may want to take the time to slow down but can’t because of the many demands placed on us. This is when going deeper needs to be prioritized above being efficient. People may begin to say that our lives look boring, just as they said about Lewis, but in the end it will be worth it.

Book Recommendations: Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, Meditated by Thomas de Zengotita, The Me I Want to Be by John Ortberg

Photo Credit: C.S. Lewis studying. Taken from flcenterlitarts.files.wordpress.com.