Encouragement

Last week, I was seriously beginning to doubt whether my intuition and research would ever culminate in some tangible product that would be useful for the intellectual and spiritual development of other people.  Just as I had resolved to answer only my own questions and abandon all further endeavor, a fellow teacher and great friend approached me (without being made aware of my commitments) with the words "I don't think you should abandon the idea to one day write a book".  She proceeded to tell me of a story of how she invested a great deal of time and effort developing a Sunday School curriculum that felt trivial at the time and did not have a widespread impact, but is still used in her home church to teach children.  The last we had spoken of my idea to write a book was several months ago, and I had given no indication that I was doubting my abilities and commitment.  Being a Christian herself, this would be one of those things where the Spirit clearly speaks through people to encourage and give direction.  While moments like these can certainly be attributed to coincidence and circumstance, as a Christian I find them encouraging.  With all of the doubts that I've had over the past several months about my faith, calling, and abilities, I interpret this as a divine prod to do just as was said: "Don't abandon the book idea".  At least, not yet.

My fear in all of this is that I will sacrifice everything to no one's (or perhaps only a few people's) benefit.  I want to make an impact and build the kingdom of God, so if I can't do it as an academic I will do it as a teacher on the front lines of speaking love into the lives of broken students.  I realized this week that I can count the number of students in my class who live with both of their biological parents.  Many of my students have been abused, a couple have children, and most see no future for themselves beyond what has been painted for them.  Perhaps my University of Michigan experience have left me jaded, but I find the number of students planning to attend Division 1 schools to be saddening.  There is clearly much good that could be done here, but will it be done through me?  I don't know how to fix these problems or even to encourage my students to care enough about their future to pass my class.  I wonder if I am cut out to be a teacher.  Due to funding issues, however, I am likely going to be here for at least 5 years so I have plenty of time to discover the answer.

Due to the craziness of my schedule and a recent addiction to a Facebook game that my friends are all playing, I have had precious little time to continue my pursuit of truth.  I found a series of online courses on apologetics that I might take, each lasting 5 weeks.  It would be nice to have something tangible to put on an application if I were to pursue this further.  I will say this though: the cosmological argument for the existence of God (as I understand it) is completely bogus.  The principle of causality dictates that all things must have an origin, including the universe.  Christians say that this means there must be something outside the universe to create it, and we call this thing God.  Yet to make such a claim means that there exists an ultimate "something" that defies the principle of causality and ultimately led to the conditions we now find ourselves in.  To claim that this "something" is God, we could equally define the singularity that led to the Big Bang was that something and is therefore god.  Within a Christian worldview, the principle of causality gives us great confidence in the great Creator.  Yet the claim that this evidence is universal evidence for God falls short of the absolute conviction that it affords Christians.