A forestry professor spoke through tears about God’s comforting presence since her six-year-old daughter died in a tragic accident in January.

A music professor related to the students how his inaccurate view of God had for years adversely affected his walk with Christ.

The Christian professors at Stephen F. Austin University obviously relished the opportunity last month to serve as spiritual mentors for the students who attended their What I Can’t Say in the Classroom presentations.

The professors had advertised the event on their office doors, and (to our delight and surprise) 10-12 additional faculty members attended, too!  One, a math professor who did not indicate he was a Christian himself, said he came to hear his colleague tell her story.

A Q&A time following the talks prompted some great discussion. One student, who was attending a Cru (Campus Crusade’s student ministry at SFA) meeting for the first time, was overjoyed to learn it is possible to have a ”faith conversation” with a professor in her office. A new student at SFA, she learned after the talk that her academic advisor (also in attendance) was yet another Christian professor in the math department.

Another student was eager to continue this professor-student interaction:  could they regularly pray together for their campus? The professors’ enthusiastic response: “We would love to make the time to do that!”

One student asked the professors why they were willing to come and talk to the students about their faith. All responded that they sense God’s prompting to see their work at the university as their ministry. Though they are active in their churches, now God is urging them to pursue ministry opportunities on campus with students and colleagues.

Some comments from the students:

“I feel like many of my questions about God were answered fully.  I will definitely come again! Loved it!”

“I had no idea what I was walking into tonight, but God definitely did!  Thank you guys for opening your hearts to a bunch of confused “20-somethings”!  I am going to be an elementary ed teacher in a year and you are an inspiration and gave me HOPE!”

“You cannot imagine how much I need this…it’s been awhile that I was falling out of my fellowship with God.  I was in a hard place in my life and still am…this really touched me.”

“It’s awesome to see that staff/teachers here at SFA are seeking to share their stories with their students and really use their profession as a vocation to invest in their students.  I’ve been thinking of asking one of my nursing professors to be a spiritual mentor, and I think I might do it.”

—During the summer of 1994 when I was a camp counselor, a friend told me she thought I had the spiritual gift of encouragement.  She posted a little note by my bed.  It said, “You are an encourager.”

I remember exactly what it looked like–the handwriting, the color–and how it felt to have someone name something like that about me.  My friend saw what I couldn’t see.

That single comment shaped the future of my life.

To Point Others

I wasn’t just an average girl; I was a hope giver, a courage finder, and an inspiration provider. I wasn’t just a nobody.  God wanted to use me to point others towards a beautiful future.It took someone naming it to help me see it.

I had a student who told me that of all my weeks and weeks of teaching, the most memorable thing from my class was a single comment I wrote on one of his many essays.In the margin of his paper, I wrote:  “You sound like a great teacher right here.”   He was overwhelmed that I named that in him, and he later wrote about his dreams for graduate school to become a teacher.

As my husband and I discussed these comments, he told me he remembered the exact words of a Boy Scout leader who pointed out some unique gifts he saw in my husband.   Those were turning point words.

Today as I guide students through their memoir drafts, I realize that I’m not naming what I see enough.  I wonder what I need to name in my children, in my friends, and in my students.  I see this in you.  Maybe God will use it to shape a life.  Maybe those words will be a turning point for someone today.

A Celebration Of Doing Well

As a Christian professor, speaking words of encouragement goes against the grain.  Pointing out a positive trait or complimenting a student seems unusual.  I’ve been told that students normally encounter cynicism, discouragement, and criticism rather than optimism, encouragement, and a celebration of what they’re doing well.

When I go back to my own training as a teacher and scholar, I remember how much time we spent learning how to find out what was wrong with a scholarly article or a piece of student writing.  Rarely (if at all) did we ask the question, “What did this writer do well?”

It became easy—second nature—to deconstruct, rip apart, and expose weakness.  The more we could complain, the smarter we sounded.

What if I decided to take another path?  What if I used my words to heal and inspire?  What would it look like to cast a great vision within a student that could start from a single comment?

I’ve seen the devastating effects of a negative turning point comment.   I often ask students, for example, why they feel so afraid and insecure about their own writing.  They can remember a specific moment when a teacher told them they were incompetent.  They know when and where the insecurity and fear rose up in them.

I want them to know, instead, the exact moment when hope, confidence, and purpose took root inside of them.  I want them to remember my class as a turning point.

(c) 2011 Heather Holleman

During a long career at Texas A&M University, Dr. Bradley had applied his expertise to improving consumer products for companies like 3M, Dow, and Dupont. Now he addresses global poverty by developing appropriate technology for third world countries.

“Rather than helping to make the most comfortable billion people in the world a little more comfortable,” he explains, “God wants me to help the poorest two billion people—who live on less than two dollars per day—have a better shot at survival.”

Toward that end, Dr. Bradley and his team at Baylor looked for an abundant renewable resource that grows exclusively in poor parts of the world and is owned by the poor people of those countries. A former doctoral student—the first person from Papua New Guinea to earn an engineering degree—suggested they take a look at coconuts.

A typical coconut farmer lives in places like Indonesia, Liberia and Sri Lanka. The worldwide demand for his crop dropped 75% in one year during the 1990’s. Now his five acres produce an income of only $500 per year. On this he ekes out a subsistence-level living for his family of nine.

“Please God, let there be something useful and interesting about coconuts,” Dr. Bradley prayed.

And there was. The coconut’s constituent parts of husk, pith, oil and shell all have properties with numerous possible consumer applications in the gardening, packaging, and building materials industries.

But the application that captured the attention of Motor Trend magazine, MSNBC, and the Discovery Channel is in car parts—specifically trunk liners and door panels—made by blending 50% coconut fibers with polypropylene.

“People are looking for green choices today,” Dr. Bradley notes.  “Replacing polyester with coconut fiber is cheaper, greener, and has better mechanical properties. We could possibly triple the income of poor coconut farmers!”

Dr. Bradley’s group aims to work through churches and mission agencies to help poor farmers own the coconut processing facilities, for which his group then becomes a primary customer. Developing technology with patents allows them to maintain a significant price for the coconut and pay farmers a far better price than they get today.

Things are looking up for the 11 million coconut farmers of the world.  All because a Christian professor asked God to show him a holistic way to help them—meeting both their spiritual and economic needs.

Faculty Commons staff member David ZagRodny recruited the two professors to minister with the Cal Poly students and  local Salvadoran Campus Crusade staff at the most influential university in the country— Universidad Matias Delgado.

As always, the American professors open doors for ministry on global campuses. “American university professors are tremendously respected internationally, and we were welcomed by top university officials” David explains.

The two professors spoke in classrooms, at a noon time gathering of Christian students, and to a group of faculty, both Christian and non-Christian.

“Having Cal Poly professors speak really gave our student ministry credibility,” one of the Salvadoran staff told David later. “Professor Noland’s presentation was great. We made connections with 12 professors who now know more about Vida Estudiantil [the Latin American name for Campus Crusade] and are supportive.”

Equally valuable is the impact the two professors had in the lives of the Cal Poly students.  “The students loved—loved—ministering alongside professors from their campus,” David reports. “I was reminded of the incredible influence professors can have in the lives of students, and it was really true on this trip.”

Student Anna Harris agrees: “It was so encouraging seeing Cal Poly professors live out their faith in front of us, and to have them minister not only to the Salvadoran students, but to us as well.”

For the professors, that was a highlight of the trip. “I appreciated the opportunity we had to minister on campus and in the community, yet I believe our greatest influence was in the lives of the Cal Poly students. I’d highly recommend other Christian faculty consider participating on a future trip,” shared Dr. Noland.

And they are. David has already recruited two different professors to join Cal Poly students on upcoming trips to El Salvador. When it comes to impacting their campus and their world for Christ, he finds, students and professors work better together!

Greg was influenced by Cru’s student ministry as an undergrad at UNL. Now, after earning his Ph.D. at Duke University, Greg seeks to be a Christian professor who points his UNL colleagues and students to Jesus.

Months of Prayer

During 2009, Greg and two other Christian professors met regularly to study Ministering in the Secular University, written by one of Faculty Commons’ founding professors, Dr. Rae Mellichamp.  One of many great ideas in the book is to start a faculty/staff ministry.  After months of prayer, the three decided to start such a ministry at Nebraska.

Greg connected with Kansas-based Faculty Commons staff Mark Brown. In the spring of 2010, as the three professors planned the kickoff, Mark provided insight from his experience in working with similar ministries at other universities.  “Mark’s advice was invaluable to the launching of this ministry,” Greg recalls.  “I even asked him to vet the invitation email we were going to send out!”

The Kickoff

At the kickoff meeting, “We offered free lunch and a chance to hear our vision,” Greg explains. He and two other attendees funded the lunch themselves, and were delighted to receive a much larger catering bill than he had planned on: “I expected maybe 10 people there, and about 45 came!”

One of the 45 was a new faculty member who had been a leader in Faculty Commons’ ministry at the University of Florida—and was eager to be involved in a similar group at UNL.

In the fall of 2010, the group organized a bi-monthly meeting. “One of our primary goals is to be a group of action, of spreading the kingdom at UNL,” Greg explains. “In that vein, we scheduled speakers we thought would give us practical advice on how to be a light at the university.”

A core group of 10-15 has since emerged, with over 90 faculty and staff now on the group’s mailing list. “While many can’t come regularly,” Mark notes, “they still email Dr. Bashford and tell him what an encouragement and source of strength it is to know this ministry exists.”

Outreach, Discipleship, and a Vision

The Christian faculty at UNL are following God’s lead in reaching out to colleagues and students with the love of God. “They have recently begun a partnership with a graduate student fellowship to start a new mentoring program between students and faculty,” Mark explains.

These kinds of discipleship relationships pay huge dividends later on, when the graduate students are Christian professors themselves—who influence tens of thousands of students over a 30-year career.

Greg and his key leaders plan to expand their visibility on campus in the upcoming school year. “We hope to start some reach-out activities that Rae suggests in his book,” he says, “such as a ‘Favorite Faculty’ dinner and Easter advertisements in the school newspaper.”

These are two very different books linked by a similar goal. Both authors assure us that their work is not intended to convince anyone that deism or theism, much less Christianity is true. Day even opens his book by declaring, provocatively, that he doesn’t care whether the reader goes to Hell or not! Instead, both authors simply are trying to correct popular but erroneous views of the history of Christianity and its cultural influence. Both authors regard the “New Atheists,” particularly Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris, as contemptible propagators of factual errors who either are unable or unwilling to do the hard work of historical scholarship. To that list, Hart adds Jacques Le Goff (despite referring to him as otherwise brilliant), Edward Gibbon, Jonathan Kirsch, John William Draper, Andrew Dickson White, Charles Freeman, and Ramsay MacMullen. Day argues that despite Dennett’s egregious errors, he distinguishes himself from his compatriots by admitting that there are some things he does not know.

Despite their common goals and common foils, the authors differ in their approaches. Hart focuses primarily on the early history of Christianity while Day covers the waterfront from the time of Jesus to the present day. Hart is concerned with ideas and their consequences. Day also critiques a variety of ideas, but is concerned primarily with data, and presents reams of it, some of it original and intriguing.

Hart is an academic historian. Day represents the new generation of investigative bloggers who wears his lack of advanced degrees on his sleeve and mocks the errors of his academically-certified adversaries. While both authors’ impatience with the new atheists leads to a bit of name calling, neither engage in mere ad hominem attacks or what C.S. Lewis labeled “Bulverisms,” e.g., “you say that only because you are a (fill in the blank).” Both authors have an engaging writing style. Hart’s will appeal to a more academically inclined audience, while Day’s is entertaining, in-your-face, sprinkled with jokes (hopefully the reader will be able to distinguish the jokes from the serious critiques), and likely to appeal to younger readers.

The two authors emphasize different themes and offer different views of a “post-Christian” secular world. One of Hart’s general themes is that what many people think of as religion-inspired violence really is state-inspired violence in which the church was willingly or unwillingly complicit. He reminds readers that the Crusades were episodes in a history of conflict beginning with the Muslim conquests of the 600s.  (Oddly overlooked by critics of “colonialism.”)  Similarly, the Spanish inquisition was a matter of Crown policy and an office of the state. The Grand Inquisitor himself was a civil, not ecclesiastical, appointee and civil courts prosecuted heresy as treason. The Catholic Church often intervened to dampen the secular courts’ excessive cruelty.  During the “religious” wars of Europe, the state regularly accepted help from religious rivals and received none from regimes with similar confessional stances. And, interest in witchcraft actually coincided with a decline in the authority of the Christian church. Thus overall, violence increased as the state became more powerful and as the church surrendered its moral authority, reaching its climax (we can only hope) in the twentieth century when the state achieved true cult status, demanding unwavering support from its citizens, purging the public sector of its religious influence, and in the case of atheistic regimes, murdering 100 million of their own citizens in less than 50 years. Hart characterizes the current state of affairs within these regimes as “absolute state” and “total war.”

As Hart shifts his focus to Christianity’s relationship to reason, he shows that rather than impeding science, Christianity facilitated it and preserved it in the monasteries during the middle ages. Pope Urban III’s confrontation with Galileo was a clash of colossal egos, not the ecclesiastical suppression of rationality. Urban actually funded Galileo’s research (and that of some of his relatives) and ironically it was the Church that was insisting on scientific evidence that the Copernican model was correct, proof that Galileo was unable to provide because Urban was correct on a technicality. Hart also notes that states unchallenged by the authority of the Christian church have produced more than their share of horrific “science” and had the Church been successful in impeding it, humanity would have been much better off.

Hart concedes that ancient pagans were more tolerant than their Christian contemporaries, but their tolerance was not what most moderns celebrate: the ancients were tolerant of disease, starvation, homelessness, and the murder of unwanted infants, disproportionately girls, who were left to die of exposure or to be devoured by wild animals. He notes that the Christian “rebellion” was a rebellion from within the pagan ranks. The gods rejected by early Christians used to be the Christian’s gods. Christians were viewed by pagans as the atheists of their time.

Hart’s enumeration of the benefits conferred on society by Christianity reminded me of Monty Python’s skit “What Have the Romans Done for Us Lately,” in The Life of Brian. In addition to promoting and preserving modern technology and science and the modern research university, we can add the development of a “social morality” (something the pagans never accomplished), an institutionalized obligation to care for widows, orphans and the poor, a culture of generosity towards their non-Christian neighbors that embarrassed Julian the Apostate (a convert from Christianity to paganism), the concept of the universal and intrinsic worth of all human beings, the end of the “divine right” of kings, abolition of slavery in the Western world, and so forth. Christianity has so transformed our moral consciences that it is virtually impossible for modern Western society to imagine the pagan world.  The early pagans would have found the values and virtues that we take for granted not merely objectionable, but inconceivable.

Regarding a “post-Christian” future, Hart notes with faint optimism that at least the future indeed will be “post-Christian” so that for a short period, some vestige of Christian values might suffice to ward off the state’s most voracious impulses. However, despite pop cultural trends to the contrary, we cannot now return to a pagan culture. Christianity has made it impossible to believe in the pagan gods, and all that appears to remain is Nietzsche’s will to power yielding a frightening future where knowledge is the new morality, science chaffs at any moral constraint and “reason” is elevated to godliness regardless of reason’s ambitions.

Day covers many of the same topics as Hart, but includes some of the more recent misrepresentations of Christianity and some novel lists and data analyses.  My personal favorites are his six events that would falsify Christianity (in response to the criticism that there are none) and his reanalysis of Sam Harris’s data on voting patterns and crime rates that reflected what analysts refer to as the ecological fallacy.  Harris analyzed voting patterns and crime rates at the state level and Day reversed the result by analyzing the same data at the county level.  Day’s Appendix A contains a convenient list of atheist leaders who killed at least 20,000 people (not including wars).

Day’s treatment of the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition is similar to Hart’s but Day likes numbers and military history and adds some detail about the events between November 1478 and 1480 that led up to Ferdinand’s appointment of two inquisitors. The Turkish fleet attacked Otranto, killed 20,000 people including the archbishop (killed in the cathedral), sawed the garrison commander and a bishop in half and beheaded 800 captured men who refused to covert to Islam. Ferdinand’s response was to protect the state from treason, which, at that time, happened to take the form of people pretending to be Christian while holding other beliefs. Day reminds us that the number of victims during 345 years of inquisition was less than half the number of Catholic clergy killed during the Spanish Republican Red Terror in 1936. But how many people are even aware of the latter carnage?

Day does not consider all forms of atheism irrational. His three forms of “rational atheism” are (1) Somerset’s parasitic atheism in which the post-Christian culture “free-rides” on its Christian roots, at least in the short term; (2) Nietzsche’s will to power; and (3) Michel Onfray’s primacy of desire. For Day, these forms of rational atheism represent a progressive descent into madness and his vision of the post-Christian society.

Day borrows heavily from the work of philosopher Alvin Plantinga, and I wish he would have cited him, if only to encourage more people to become familiar with his work. The idea that if Christianity is true, Christians have a good warrant for believing it is true (whereas the same cannot be said of naturalism-materialism) is pure Plantinga, as is the result that if we reject all the common arguments for the existence of God we likely also will have to give up our beliefs in other minds!.

The purpose of a review is to encourage people to read the books, not to serve as a substitute for them, and I hope that this review has been provocative enough to have that effect. Saving civilization from itself may be too lofty a goal, but perhaps we at least could get the history of the rise and fall of Western civilization straight.

As a dedicated Christian, he cares that students know about Christ, but admits that the topic of faith doesn’t come up very often in the courses he teaches, and doesn’t feel it appropriate to use class time for those discussions.

Still, he has found a way to “go to the students.” He explains:

“I have found that evangelism is like fishing – going to where the fish are, and seeing whether they are biting. For me, that meant going to where students are: they are online.

“I created a website for students to learn about me and interact with me. I make it clear that this is my personal website, and not an official UCSB one.
The site includes:
• My Christian worldview – the nature of God, man, and truth
• My perspective on work and career – from a talk I presented at our Christian Faculty/Staff Fellowship
• Pictures from my vacations, and my grandchildren.”

If you want to view his website, click here.  http://mysite.verizon.net/res8nngj/

(For a complete story of my testimony, please refer to my book chapter: “From Agnostic to Evangelical: How an Unlikely Conversion Birthed a Unique Convergence,” In R. Ashton and D. Denton (Eds.), Spirituality, Ethnography and Teaching: Stories from Within. Peter Lang Publishers. 2006.)

To begin at the beginning: I was adopted as a baby in 1966, and raised as an only-child, in a nice, middle-class Catholic home. I knew Jesus as a child and received the sacraments of baptism, first communion, and confirmation in the Catholic church.

Rebellion

As a teen, I went through a typical rebellion, which (among other things!) included eschewing my parents’ faith for what I thought were more `cool’ beliefs. Basically, I would believe anything as long as it wasn’t related to Catholicism! But, I was especially drawn to the mystical & metaphysical, and topics like reincarnation, astrology, tarot cards, etc. When I was an undergrad I found a home of like-minded people at the Unity Church. However, graduate school succeeded in turning me into an even more skeptical postmodernist. By the time I landed my first faculty position at the University of Tulsa in 1995, I was sitting “in the seat of scoffers” (Psalm 1:1) and was a self-confessed agnostic.

Before long I joined the local Unitarian-Universalist congregation (along with most of the other University faculty). BUT…there is where things got interesting…and I LOVE telling people that I was “saved” in the Unitarian Church!

After a series of life-events, including a near-death experience after giving birth to my twin daughters (which precipitated a bout with terrifying panic attacks), I found myself seated in a pew at the Unitarian Church listening to a memorial service for a young colleague who had lost a short battle with cancer. I became panicked as the minister read my colleague’s vita and never once mentioned God, an afterlife, heaven (or, even reincarnation, for that matter!).

Desperately Weary

I left the church that cold, rainy day resolved that I did NOT want to be remembered like that. I went home, dusted off my Bible, and randomly opened to the Book of Ecclesiastes where 12:11b-12 jumped out at me: “…like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings that are given by one Shepherd. Of anything beyond this, my child, beware. Of making many books there is no end and much study is a weariness of the flesh.”

So, in my desperate weariness, I called my good friend back home in Florida who I had always chided for being a Bible-believing Christian–and I told her I wanted to become a Christian! At my friend’s suggestion, I enrolled in Bible Study Fellowship (BSF International ) where I began to delve deeply into God’s Word.

Now, eleven years later, I am still in BSF and have held several leadership positions therein; my three children all attend with me. Perhaps the most wonderful display of God’s grace is that I was saved in time to raise my children in a Christian home. My husband, kids, and I all received believer’s baptism and are members of a wonderful local church.

Although I did not return to the Catholic faith of my childhood, I DO work at a Catholic University–where I am constantly reminded of my upbringing and grateful that the Jesus I knew as a child never left my side, even when I turned my back on Him.

I love my job as faculty member in the Communication Department, where I teach courses in Interpersonal Communication, Family Communication, Nonverbal Communication, Mothers & Daughters, Intro. to Women’s Studies, and Research Methods. My students say I am approachable, friendly, and good at relating complex theoretical ideas to everyday lived experiences. Finally, I am very thankful that I took the advice of one of my old professors who assured me that being an academic is a “nice life”. Indeed!

My wife is a music teacher, for example, and many of her colleagues like to claim their pedagogical authority from an unbroken lineage through Schnabel and Czerny, back to the great Beethoven himself. Among scientists, the American Physical Society once sponsored a contest to see how far any of members could trace their advisor “ancestors.”

My Academic Family Tree

Not long ago, a member of the Faculty Commons staff encouraged me to compile my own academic “family tree.” I was reluctant at first, since I thought it would be little more than an ego-building exercise, but the results were pretty interesting.

After a very kind administrative assistant looked into some old records, it turned out that one of my advisor “ancestors” received a doctorate at Cambridge under Ernest Rutherford, who in turn had studied under J. J. Thomson. A few “generations” earlier, you find a certain Adam Sedgwick who had a fellow named Charles Darwin as one of his advisees.

The definition of “thesis advisor” loses its modern connotations if you go back as far as Darwin, as does physics as a distinct discipline. Still, the link to this famous natural philosopher did give me pause. I could have indeed become very prideful of my distinguished genealogy, and ended it there.

Implications Of The Tree

Instead, I began to think about implications of the “family tree” itself. Adam Sedgwick was a very distinguished scientist in his own right. He was unknown to me, however, until I started this “genealogical” exercise, and the same might be true for most readers of this essay.

It would be safe to say, on the other hand, that nearly everyone has heard of Darwin, and all physical scientists know who Thomson and Rutherford are. As brilliant as Sedgwick was, it would be very hard to believe that he had any inkling of what a tremendous impact his “descendants” would have, down to the present day.

What are the implications for us? I’m sure many of us have heard sermons on similar perspectives when it comes to the genealogies we find in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Did Rahab, the mother of Boaz, or Ruth, the mother of Obed, have any idea that they would be ancestors of our Lord? While we have an intellectual understanding of the answer to this rhetorical question, we need to ask if we truly appreciate what it means to us individually.

This is where formulating our own academic “genealogy” could help. Many scholars have pointed out that their accomplishments were possible because they “stood on the shoulders of giants.” Believer and non-believer alike can benefit from such a humbling reminder of the intellectual legacy we are expected to pass on to future “academic” generations.

Our Spiritual Legacy

Christians should also acknowledge that we have an obligation for our spiritual legacy. We are to recognize the giants whose shoulders are supporting us, but we must also remember those we are lifting up in turn. Christ provides an example for us.

When the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, many called Him “Teacher” out of respect for His knowledge and wisdom. They saw Him wash the feet of His disciples as well. We should have a similar mindset toward those in our institutions who we are entrusted to “shoulder.”

Merry Christmas and have a blessed New Year.

I can speak with some authority on dealing with difficult people, because I am a difficult person. You shouldn’t have that much trouble either, since, to at least a few people on campus or in your family, you are a difficult person also. So as difficult people, let’s consider how Jesus dealt with folks like us.

Not The Enemy

Jesus recognized that difficult people are NOT the enemy. No matter how hostile, how rude, how obnoxious we were, Jesus loved us enough to die for us, and He loves us enough to want difficult people to live a life submitted to Him. Even the people in our departments!

The apostle Paul reminded the Ephesian church: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (6:12 NIV)

There is an action plan for dealing with us obnoxious folks that is found in Proverbs 25:21-22, and repeated in Romans 12:20-21, which tells us: “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you.”

I have had personal experience with putting these verses into practice, and am amazed at how much fun it is.Because of my faith I was involved in a lawsuit, which is typically an adversarial environment. I had several opportunities to show unexpected kindness to those on the opposite side of the case.

Some of the responses I got are still very fond memories. Abraham Lincoln once said, “Do not I also destroy my enemy, if I make him my friend?”

Befriending The Difficult

Befriending difficult people can be rewarding in itself. Christ called us to minister to the neglected –the poor, the widowed, the orphaned. In our university culture some of the neglected people in a very significant sense are our colleagues whom we view as “difficult.”

They often have poor social skills,and have a poverty of good relationships. Currently I am working with a single guy on our campus with few friends, few prospects and a bankrupt spirit. God may well be calling us to cultivate loving relationships with folks just like this.
Christ calls us to love our enemies, to bless those that curse us, to do good to them that hate us, and to pray for them who despitefully use us and persecute us; that we may be the children of our Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:44-45).

Don’t quit loving the difficult people God has brought into your life. He hasn’t quit loving us!

© 2005 Phillip A Bishop