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the-price-of-excellence-2

John Walkup
Emeritus-Electrical Engineering, Texas Tech
Faculty Representative, Faculty Commons

One of the comments I frequently hear, especially at the elite research universities, is that to have a good Christian witness to colleagues, our performance, and particularly our research, has to be very, very excellent!

We are to do our work “heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men” (Colossians 3:23, NASB). Our colleagues know if we are turning out inferior quality research (or students). Clearly, that type of record quickly leads to a poor professional reputation….and most likely a poor witness too.

How Do  We Define It?

My concern here runs to how one defines excellence. If it means one’s research output has to exceed that of all of one’s colleagues (i.e. more quantity than others as well as high quality) then I have some concerns based on God’s call to have right priorities.

Surely, if our actions transmit the message that our careers mean everything to us, will our colleagues believe us when we tell them that we meant to say that knowing Christ was really our top priority?

As a professor I wanted to do high quality research. Since I frequently teamed with one or two believing colleagues, quality was important to all of us. We all had families, however, and wanted to spend time with them. Thus we frequently made a choice to pursue quality over quantity in our research output.

Colleagues frequently gossip and always know who in the department has the most research grants or contracts, the most students, etc. Should we be deterred from our focus on quality knowing that they may be gossiping about us too?

Some of my Christian friends and colleagues excelled in their teaching and, because such excellent teaching was their top priority, published less research. In some instances they were not promoted to full professor in their departments. Were their witnesses for our Lord diminished by that lack of that recognition? I don’t think I can make that judgment.

Wanting To Be Number 1

A friend at Stanford University, Professor Richard Bube, once pointed out that the price of wanting to be “Number 1” in one’s career, may well result in negative results in other areas of life (e.g. one’s health, marriage, relationship with God).

I’ve personally known professors (Christians included) who have experienced the breakups of their marriages at least in part due to workaholic habits. Can any academic recognition adequately compensate for the feeling that you’ve sabotaged your marriage and your relationship with your children for the sake of recognition in your career?

I always knew that no matter how well known I might be as an academic, I was always going to be my three daughters’ dad, and my wife’s husband, and that their evaluations of my performance in fulfilling those roles were probably loosely correlated, at best, with my job performance as a professor.

Ultimately, as believers, it’s Christ’s “well done” that we want to hear, and our adequacy to “measure up” should come from our dependence on the Lord, not from our personal ambition or pride.

As Paul said in I Corinthians 1:31 “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord” (NASB).

© 2007 John Walkup Used by permission of Faculty Commons