The Final Faculty Evaluation

On being a "faithful servant" as a professor

One of my favorite cartoons is entitled "Judgment Day for an Editor." An editor died and stands at the pearly gates leading to heaven. With his reading glasses at the end of his nose, and with an anxious expression on his face, the editor eagerly reads the slip of paper handed to him by St. Peter:

From the Desk of St. Peter, Admissions Director:

To whom it may concern: Thank you for your submission, but it doesn't suit our needs at this time. Good luck with the rest of eternity.

Ahh, poetic justice!

Happily, for those of us who have placed our trust in the finished work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on the cross, there will never be a moment of anxiety before the "great white throne." But the Bible reveals, ironically, that we professors who dish out final exams quite reflexively will ourselves be facing a kind of "final exam" which all believers will face (not concerning salvation, but rather rewards) at the end of our allotted time on earth:

. . . we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. [2 Corinthians 5:8-10]

At the judgment seat, we hope Jesus finds we were a faithful professor, commending us, "Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!" (Matthew 25:21).

The Scriptures provide keys for preparing for that day we will appear before Christ:

Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. . . . Be very careful, then, how you live--not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. . . . be filled with the Spirit. [Ephesians 5:8-18]

What "pleases the Lord" in our role as a professor? And how can we "make the most of every opportunity" as a university faculty member? These can be exceedingly tough questions to answer at the dawn of the new millennium.

Consider the implications of this historically unprecedented combination of developments for your career as a university professor:

· The emergence of English as the shared global academic language

· Widespread global dissemination of books and academic journals

· The accessibility of global jet transportation for guest lecturing

· Worldwide respect for professors' expertise by society, and

· Instantaneous global communications through the Internet

These developments have vastly expanded the university professor's potentially powerful impact on students, on colleagues, on developments in our academic disciplines, on societal leaders, and on the general public. Christian professors today enjoy unprecedented opportunities for strategic and pervasive influence both locally and internationally.

In light of this incredibly expanded platform for obtaining an attentive global audience, every professor submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ should frequently assess, "How can I be a fully faithful steward of the influential platform that God has graciously given to me in the world at this particular point in history?"

In the context of the Apostle Paul's inspired exhortation to us to live wisely"making the most of every opportunity" he instructs us to "understand what the Lord's will is"and to be "filled with the Spirit." The original Greek verb translated "filled" conveys the meaning of "being pervasively influenced by."

Make the most of every opportunity? Admittedly, that's a rather tall order for professors at the dawn of the 21st century. Paul teaches us that it is only with God's moment-by-moment help--through "being pervasively influenced by the Holy Spirit"--that we can ever meet such a huge challenge!

With the vast, unprecedented array of opportunities professors enjoy today, it will be impossible to hear Jesus' commendation, "Well done, good and faithful servant!" unless we are diligent students of the Scriptures that the Holy Spirit inspired so He can guide us with God's Word day-by-day. Considering the implications of the entire sweep of the Scriptures, we learn that we carry a continual obligation to act on the implications of [1] the "cultural mandate", [2] the "great commission," and [3] the "great commandments" for our faithful daily stewardship of our unique platform and tremendous opportunities as a university professor.

What Are Some Implications of the cultural mandate for a Professor's Career?

God's word contains certain mandates that reflect the design of His creation. By recording God's directive to the human race to have dominion over the earth, the first few chapters of Genesis (particularly, 1:26-29) provides the biblical basis for what theologians call the "cultural mandate." One of the marks of being created in God's image is the human impulse towards cultural development. God's mandate to the human race included subduing and ruling over the earth.

This cultural mandate includes the pursuit of all the legitimate spheres of academic and professional work represented in our present day universities. With this imperative received directly from our Creator, professors should enthusiastically, creatively, and energetically pursue their academic research and their professional work of teaching and service in their discipline. Christian scholars will include an integration of revealed truth with other developments in a field of knowledge.

But if a Christian professor emphasizes the cultural mandate in his or her work to the neglect of the Great Commission or the Great Commandments, he or she will fall short of receiving the "well done" commendation from Jesus. The Bible teaches that human culture itself has been permeated by sin, such that the human race is presently incapable of achieving the cultural results that would have been possible had the human race not been driven out of the Garden of Eden (A. S. Wood, in C. F. H. Henry, Baker's Dictionary of Christian Ethics, Cannon Press, 1973, p. 153).

Culture . . . aspires to an absolute autonomy which would usurp the divine prerogative. . . Hence the continuing need for culture to be reminded of its provenance in the divine plan and its need of redemption by Christ. [Wood, p. 153]

Culture (including one's academic discipline) is profoundly affected by the fall of the human race into sin, and thus to labor exclusively to fulfill the "cultural mandate" neglects the Bible's further revelation regarding the provision of Jesus Christ to save us, our world and our culture from the bondage and effects of sin.

I have known some Christian professors who believe that all Jesus Christ expects of them is to be an excellent scholar, integrating faith and reason, publishing research, teaching students, and serving the university's purposes well. But embracing the "cultural mandate" to the exclusion of the "Great Commission," and the "Great Commandments" overlooks the Bible's full revealed solution to the pervasive cultural and intellectual effects of sin, and such a scholar will live out an academic life which is incomplete, neglecting the balance of biblical revelation regarding God's will.

Any fully biblical consideration of "God and the Academy" must emphasize not only the implications of the pre-Fall "cultural mandate" for the professor's work and life, but also the implications of the Great Commission and Great Commandments given to us by Jesus Christ after the Fall. In our present, post-Fall, pluralistic university culture where the word "God" is invoked to cover a vast range of heretical meanings, the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ to be God (e.g., John 8:53-59; 14:9-14) and to be the only way to God (John 14:6; Acts 4:12; I Timothy 2:5-6) should compel us to realize that the real issue centrally at stake for our mission as Christian professors on secular university campuses should be rephrased "Jesus Christ and the Academy"as politically incorrect as that may be received at secular universities.

What Are Some Implications of the Great Commission for a Professor's Career?

Christian professors are gratified to note that the Great Commission is, in a sense, an educational or teaching mandate:

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I will be with you always, to the very end of the age." [Matthew 28:18-20]

Obedient to the Great Commission, the Apostle Paul wrote, ". . . pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ. . . . make the most of every opportunity" (Colossians 4:3-6). Similarly, Paul enthusiastically wrote, ". . .I went to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ and found that the Lord had opened a door for me. . . ." (2 Corinthians 2:12). University professors have incredible open doors of opportunity to communicate the gospel in highly strategic locations nationally and globally.

Just 15 years ago, missionary strategists identified thousands of ethnolinguistic people groups in the world that were then still unreached by the gospel of Jesus Christ. But the latest missionary research indicates that today there are only 187 people groups that remain unreached and untargeted by any missionary team (Mission Frontiers, January 2000, pages 33-34). Bill Bright's recent plea should challenge all of us: "Never has the fulfillment of the Great Commission been so near to being completed. ...Whatever the cost, I admonish, plead, beg and encourage you to help finish the task" (Worldwide Challenge, December 1999, page 5).

Many of the Asian and Middle Eastern nations where most of these 187 untargeted people groups live are legally closed to traditional missionaries. So strategically, how can Christians finish the task?

Providentially, in nations prohibiting missionaries, short-term volunteer trips by university professors are welcomed because of the keen desire for economic, social, and educational progress in these Third World areas. Professors traveling to give lectures in such countries found that they can effectively present an academic lecture on any topic within their expertise, then transition to ethical issues (such as professional ethics), and from there transition to a short, clear presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, often within a context of their own personal Christian testimony. By integrating a matter-of-fact description of one's personal Christian convictions and way of life in the course of describing our professional life in our own country, a professor can integrate the essentials of the gospel message.

For example, I lectured in the Republic of Georgia on the empirical psychological research on the question, "Do Christians have more or fewer mental disorders?" to a large group of psychiatrists in a hospital that used to persecute political dissidents and Christians by hospitalizing them as though they were mental patients. Psychiatrists would drug them to destroy their normal mental functioning until they actually behaved like mental patients. After my lecture, that group of psychiatrists questioned me about how a Christian establishes a relationship with God (and this was during the Communist era when spreading the Gospel was still illegal in the Soviet Union). After I answered all their questions, the head doctor stood up and asked, "Do we need to repent of hospitalizing Christians with the pretense that they were mentally ill just because they had a faith in God?"

I replied, "You know better than I about exactly what you did. So do you think you need to repent?" Tears welled up in his eyes as he was overwhelmed with emotion, "Yes," he replied, "I and my colleagues do need to repent of what we have done." Thirty-seven percent of those doctors indicated that they prayed to receive Jesus Christ that same hour.

In many countries around the world, there is this great openness to discuss Christianity in academic circles. By contrast, when was the last time that you heard a serious conversation about God's coming final judgment on a US campus? Vastly more attention is typically given on US campuses to the final exams of our university courses instead of giving much thought about the realities of heaven and hell.

Worldwide, when it comes to God's "final exam," the vast majority of university students are totally unprepared and, moreover, so completely distracted by the present and short-term future that they do not notice their spiritual lack of preparation for life's greatest examination of all.

When we consult God's written revelation to the human race, we observe considerable emphasis upon the final judgment (e.g.,, 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9; Revelation 20:11-15). At his first coming to earth, Jesus repeatedly warned of his future final judgment and hell (e.g., Matthew 8:11-12; 18:8-9; 25:41,46; Mark 9:43-48; Luke 16:22-26):

The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and thrown them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. [Matthew 13:49-50]

In light of this biblical teaching, we might ask ourselves, "What proportion of my time and energy as a professor is devoted to preparing students for course finals, compared to preparing students and colleagues for God's final exam?"

In Prague in the Czech Republic, a psychology professor translated my lecture on some psychological and religiosity variables in research. In the discussion after my lecture, students asked me to explain the essence of the Christian faith and asked me if I personally believed in Jesus Christ myself. After that meeting, my professor/translator invited me for tea in his office, where he eagerly disclosed that he was a convinced atheist. He vigorously gave me argument after argument against Christianity. I politely listened. My reply included my testimony in which I described my daily personal relationship with God in which I receive guidance and answers to prayer.

The next day, I saw him again. This time he apologized profusely for his atheistic arguments the day before, "I wasn't even thinking. I was only parroting the arguments I was taught in my school atheism classes." Then he made a statement that I shall never forget: "But when you told me about your own personal relationship with God, it made footprints on my soul." It was exciting to see God working in his life. For the first time, he seriously considered the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ.

What Are Some Implications of the Great Commandments for a Professor's Career?

When Jesus was asked to identify the greatest commandment in the Law, he replied:

'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. [Matthew 22:37-40]

Jesus--being both God and man--further taught, "If you love me, you will obey what I command" (John 14:15). This links the Great Commission with the Great Commandments because Jesus commanded that we make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20) and "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation" (Mark 16:15).

First Corinthians 13 provides us with a commentary on the implications of the Great Commandments for the "knowledge experts" of a society:

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. . . . where there is knowledge, it will pass away. . . . And now these three remain: Faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. [I Chorinthians 13:2, 8, 13]

Imagine that! Motive counts more than accumulating or contributing new knowledge of any kind through academic research! None of our hard work on refereed articles or books or brilliant integration essays on faith and learning will mean anything at all if not motivated by a genuine love for God or love for others.

I admire a Christian friend of mine who is a professor at another university; he is well known for regularly sacrificing his time and energy (without expecting anything in return) to help students and colleagues in their research projects--time that could otherwise have been devoted to his own research. As a professor, he lovingly applies the admonition of Galatians 6:10, "Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people. . . ."

I took my oldest son with me on a trip to lecture on psychological research on a university campus in Moscow, Russia. One of my lectures covered the international research on characteristics of strong families. These studies conducted at secular universities have identified a strong shared spiritual commitment as a common characteristic of strong families. A group of seven students approached my son to ask if he and I had a personal faith in God. When my son replied in the affirmative, they asked if they could come to our hotel that evening to ask us more questions about Christianity. We agreed.

When they arrived that evening, one group asked me questions about Christianity, and another group asked Steven questions. We answered them with our Bibles. They kept apologizing for keeping us up late, but they had so many urgent questions about what the Bible teaches about Jesus Christ, that they wanted to keep talking. Although fatigued from jet lag, we let them keep us up until 6:00 the next morning when their questions were finally answered!

Of course this investment of my time did not yield any academic product that I could list on my curriculum vitae, but it was all worth it because we were able to introduce them to Jesus Christ! We deeply cared for these seven young men and their spiritual condition. And out of our love for them and for Jesus Christ, we were willing to sacrifice a night's sleep just before our scheduled flight back to the USA. Considering the implications of the Great Commission and the Great Commandments for my role as a university professor, what was accomplished in that unplanned all-night meeting could have greater eternal significance than several books I have written on the integration of various aspects of psychology with theology.

How Should a Christian Professor Prepare for Life's "Final Exam"?

I have heard my friend, Professor Emeritus Rae Mellichamp (a National Faculty Representative for CLM), boldly ask rhetorical questions in his faculty workshops, "What would you want to be written in your obituary? When your life on earth is all over, what regrets do you think you will have? Will you regret not writing just one more refereed journal article? I think not."

We are more prone to regret that we did not do everything we could to share the good news about Jesus Christ to family members, friends, colleagues, and students. The ordinary struggle of professors to "publish or perish" certainly pales by comparison to life's "final exam" on judgment day for our colleagues and our students who are lost without Christ! Christians professors would do well to rephrase the maxim: publish the good news of Jesus Christ by lovingly "making the most of every opportunity" as a professor, or your students and colleagues may spiritually perish.

Scripture provides us a warning along these lines:

. . . each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames. [1 Corinthians 3:10-15]

How can we prevent such a loss, and instead hear Jesus say, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"?

The keys for a Christian professor are obedience to [1] the cultural mandate, [2] the Great Commission, and [3] the Great Commandments. By obeying the cultural mandate, Christian faculty will master and teach an academic subject well, publish original scholarly research, integrate faith and learning, and serve the university's purposes with excellence. By obeying the Great Commission, we will creatively use our platform as a university professor to give an effective verbal witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ locally and around the world. And by obeying the Great Commandments, we will be profoundly motivated in all we do as faculty by a deep love for God and others.