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life-of-the-mind

Rick Hove,
Executive Director,
Faculty Commons, Cru
[May 6, 2014]~

In his Handbook of Academic Titles, Michael Shamos of Carnegie Mellon found over 800 different faculty and staff titles.  Shamos begins his examination of the significance of academic titles by quoting Shakespeare:

What’s in a name?- that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.

Certainly, titles and ranks, the named chairs, etc. all serve a purpose; indeed it seems impossible to think of the academic enterprise without them.

Yet I wonder if our trusted ranking system can have a vertigo-like effect on Christian academics, causing us to perhaps lose track of what is ultimate.

A close associate of mine owns a large fitness club, whose slogan is “Exercise is to improve your life. It should not become your life.” When this order gets inverted, when exercise becomes one’s life, then exercise no longer improves one’s life but instead consumes it.  Such temptations confront us in every arena.

While academic titles and ranks can improve life in academe, we must watch out that they might not become our life.

Now, of course, God is deeply committed to a ranking system. It goes like this:

For thus says the Lord,
Who created the heavens
(He is God!)
Who formed the earth and made it
(He established it;
He did not create it empty
He formed it to be inhabited!)

“I am the Lord, and there is no other.” Isaiah 45:18

This ranking order is never reversed. What is created flows from the Creator, and the created owes their being and devotion to the Creator.

So God is firmly committed to a ranking system, and it is simple; all 800 ranks and titles pale compared to Him, the One who created all.   Yet, all of us are tempted to invert it.  We are all tempted as Tim Keller argues to idolatry, to trying to build our identity on something other than God.

Ultimately, we realize that it is really good news for the academy that “there is a God, and that the academy is not He.”  The academy, and all within it, find meaning and hope in the God who created all things, including the academy.

The ranking order of the universe is our greatest hope.

Have a wonderful summer! We are thrilled to serve our beautiful Christ together in this marvelous mission of the academy.