Thoughts on the Integrity of the Christian Student

“Well, why would I [mention that I’m a Christian]? … I’m not planning to run your polymer factory along Biblical lines.”

Tracey Ullman’s Show S2 E4 (2017)¹

 

This lady looks far too well put-together to be in anything but the earliest stages of essay-writing. Where is the chaos of notes, discarded plans, and no-longer-relevant books?

First off, allow me to present you with the following (probably) familiar Bible verse:²

In your hearts honour Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect. – 1 Peter 3:15

Said verse was the subject of some third of our discussion time at a Theology Network meeting earlier this week. (Theology Network, for those of my delightful readers that don’t know, offers a chance for Christians studying Theology to meet up, think through what following Jesus might look like for theologians in a secular university, and encourage one another in that endeavour.³) Plenty of value was said, and in particular I was struck by my own frequent lack of preparedness to give a reason for the hope that is in me when I’m asked about it in person; it’s one thing to spend time nicely typing up a blog post that articulates the substance of the gospel, but quite another to articulate it when the subject comes up in conversation. What I’d like to put forward in this post, though, is a point of view which fostered slightly more (very mild and courteous) contention than I was expecting when I expressed it during our discussion of 1 Peter 3:15.

Previous remarks by the group had prompted me to consider the integrity of the verse, that honouring Christ the Lord as holy and always being prepared to make a defence for one’s hope in him are very much tied up with one another. If one honours Christ as holy – if one recognises that he is completely good and perfect and worthy of worship and so behaves accordingly towards him – then of course one should always be ready to explain why; and being ready to explain why is part of honouring Christ as holy. And because we’d been talking about how this jazz applied to the everyday student situation of having to write an essay, I voiced the idea that, if we’re not honouring Christ as holy in the essays we write (as in everything), then, since the two are so inseparable, we undermine our ability to make a defence to anyone who asks us for a reason for the hope that is in us.

This suggestion was met on some sides with remarks to the effect of, does it really matter? How much has the content of our academic work really got to do with our faith? Isn’t the point of writing an essay not so much for its own sake as in order to get a degree and go on to serve God in whatever he would have us do? Isn’t it worth writing essays from non-Christian perspectives in order to better understand those perspectives? Is what we choose to affirm or deny in an essay really going to have any effect at all on how we share the gospel with our friends?

I think it is.

The thing is, if I believe that the gospel is true – more than that, if I believe that the fact that the gospel is true is more important than anything else in the world – why would I write an essay in such a way as to imply otherwise? What advantage could I possibly see in adopting the persona of an unrepentant heathen for the particular endeavour of producing academic work? Put it this way: is that a persona I could in good conscience adopt in any other scenario? Surely it wouldn’t be acceptable for me to say, yes, I’m a Christian, but when I have conversations with that group of people I’m going to behave as if I were not; or when I engage in that leisure activity I’m going to behave as if I were not; or when I use that social media platform I’m going to behave as if I were not. Why, then, should it be acceptable for me to say, yes, I’m a Christian, but when I write academic essays I’m going to behave as if I were not? Have I not been charged to do everything – word or deed – in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him?⁴ I’m not saying, I feel I should make clear, that I should be making some explicit gospel reference every paragraph regardless of whether it’s actually relevant to the thrust of the essay, or that I should pig-headedly refuse even to acknowledge that reasonable points have also been made from other perspectives, but, as in conversation and leisure and running polymer factories and so forth, should my overall approach to the thing in front of me not be characterised by a determination to honour Christ as holy?

 

What an odd expression ‘pig-headed’ is...

Do I not feel capable of approaching an essay from a Christian perspective? Do I think it will be an easier thing to write if I argue in favour of an alternative cause? But why should that be so? Does that not imply that I find the evidence for what I claim to believe less compelling than the evidence for a different view? In which case, why exactly do I believe what I do? If the topic of the essay runs up against a particular point of doubt or challenge to my faith that I’m currently struggling with, would it not be more worthwhile to use the process of writing the essay to wrestle with and resolve that issue, than to run scared from the confrontation and, for ease, throw my lot in with the arguments that are causing me these doubts?

Do I not feel that academic work carried out from a Christian perspective is going to be of as good quality as academic work carried out as if from a different perspective? Why on earth not? If the gospel is true, then surely it follows that a worldview that acknowledges as much is better able to make sense of the world – better able to comprehend and communicate what is true about the world – than any other? If the gospel is true, then surely the one perspective from which I am best equipped to carry out academic work of good quality is a Christian one? Is the prospect not in some measure an exciting one that I should have the opportunity to write an answer to an interesting question that faithfully acknowledges the truth of the gospel and is a better piece of work for it? Again, surely other perspectives must strike me as less compelling than mine, or else why do I believe what I do?

Or do I think that, much as I might find an essay written from a Christian point of view compelling, my lecturer won’t? Do I think an essay written under the assumption that the gospel is true will earn me a worse grade? But why should I think so badly of my lecturer as to assume she can’t tell a good essay unless it argues something consistent with her own personal worldview? Or, equally, why should I think so badly of her as to assume she would mark down an essay that disagreed with her own personal worldview even if she knew it was a good one? And besides, surely the question of whether I’m honouring Christ as holy takes precedence over the question of my worldly achievement? Surely, if it were a choice between writing my essay from a Christian perspective and getting a good mark for it, I shouldn’t automatically plump for the latter?

Is it not hypocritical, at the end of the day, to affirm the truth of the gospel in some contexts and deny it in others? Furthermore, does writing essays as if I weren’t a Christian not set a dangerous precedent for doing other things as if I weren’t a Christian? Does it not reveal an unwillingness to submit every facet of my life to God? And if that weren’t alarming enough in itself – which I stress it very much ought to be – to swing back round to the issue of sharing the gospel with friends, well, does this unwillingness not constitute a breach in the integrity of my Christian witness? If my friend asks me what I’m writing my essay about, is my reply not going to indicate that I don’t really think Jesus is important enough that I should be honouring him as holy in my academic work? Why, then, should my friend pay any attention to what I say about Jesus at another time? And even if I somehow manage to conceal the subject of every essay I ever write from every single one of my friends, do I really think that articulating myself in an essay is a process so completely detached from articulating myself in conversation, or online, or in any other context where I might feasibly want to communicate something of the gospel, that I won’t become better practised at attacking the gospel than defending it if I do the former in my academic work?

Of course, everything I say about evangelism is to some extent by the by: if denying the gospel in my academic work does not constitute honouring Christ the Lord as holy, then I shouldn’t be doing it, full stop. My point, in the end, is that the Christian life is a whole: one must submit all aspects of one’s life to God, not just some. Indeed, I can’t imagine there are too many Christians who would disagree with that point in the abstract. Why should the academic aspect of one’s life be any exception to that? Do we really think that academic work doesn’t count somehow, doesn’t belong to the real world, even though what’s being said in universities right now is almost certainly going to be what’s being said on the street in twenty years’ time?

In short, failing to honour Christ as holy in writing essays damages the integrity of our Christian witness because failing to honour Christ as holy in anything damages the integrity of our Christian witness. If I believe that the gospel is true – more than that, if I believe that the fact that the gospel is true is more important than anything else in the world – then the fact should be evident in everything I do. Granted, none of us is anything close to genuinely having that kind of integrity: we’re all still hypocrites, and we’re kidding ourselves to a potentially lethal degree if we think we’re not. Still, we should be striving in every way we can to honour Christ as holy and become holier ourselves. After all, if I believe that the gospel is true – if I believe that God who is alone holy looked at me in my total refusal to honour him as such, in all my hypocrisy, and chose to make me holy enough to enjoy eternity in his presence even at the cost of the life of his own dear Son, Christ the Lord, who for his one sufficient sacrifice of himself for the sake of the unholy is worthy to receive all honour – then why would I want to write an essay, or run a polymer factory, or indeed do anything, in such a way as to imply otherwise?

Footnotes

¹ Tracey Ullman included a number of ‘oh – you’re a Christian?’ sketches in the latest series of her comedy sketch show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_jzDGv0KKw. The one about the christening is even funnier.

² Here’s the whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter+3&version=ESVUK.

³ Theology Network has local branches, as it were, in universities round the country, and is looked after by UCCF, https://www.uccf.org.uk/theology-network/, which at my university makes it technically part of the Evangelical Christian Union, https://www.exeterecu.com/.

⁴ Hint: I have. Check out Colossians: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians+3&version=ESVUK.