Stanley Hauerwas has some advice for young college students, in particular ones that are interested in combining their Christian faith with their planned vocations. He’s written an open letter to students and given wide ranging advice, some of it as a professor, some of it as a theologian, and all of it within the context of a person who takes faith seriously speaking to another who hopes to.
Here’s just a taste:
“The best teachers for a Christian student aren’t always Christians. In fact, a certain kind of Christian teacher can lead you astray. It’s not easy to see the truth of Christ in modern science or contemporary critical theory, for example. The temptation is to compartmentalize, to assign your faith to the heart, perhaps, and then carry on with your academic work. Some professors have become very comfortable with this compartmentalization, so be careful. By all means take spiritual encouragement wherever you can get it; these sorts of professors can be helpful in that regard. But don’t compartmentalize, because that’s basically putting your Christian faith outside of your work as a student.
Your calling is to be a Christian student. The Christian part and the student part are inseparable. It will be hard and frustrating because you won’t see how the two go together. Nobody does, at least not in the sense of having worked it all out. But you need to remember what Christ said: ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega.’ However uncertain we are about how, we know that being a Christian goes with being a student (and a teacher).
Although many professors are not Christians (at some schools, most aren’t), many professors have a piety especially relevant to the academic life. One, for example, might be committed to the intrinsic importance of knowing Wordsworth’s poetry, while another works at getting the chemistry experiment right. These professors convey a spirit of devotion. Their intellectual lives serve the subject matter rather than treating it as information to be mastered or, worse, a dead body of knowledge to be conveyed to students. English literature and modern science do not exist for their own sakes, and the university doesn’t raise money for the sake of professors’ careers. For these professors, the educational system exists for the sake of their disciplines, which they willingly serve. This spirit of devotion is not the same as Christian faith, but it can help shape your young intellectual desires and impulses in the right way by reminding you that your job as a student is to serve and not to be served. College isn’t for you; it’s for your Christian calling as an intellectual.
Eventually, you will no longer be a freshman, and American undergraduate education will force you to begin to specialize. This will present dangers as well as opportunities. You will be tempted to choose a major that will give you a sense of coherence. But be careful your major does not narrow you in the wrong way. It’s true, for example, that modern psychology ¬provides powerful insights into the human condition, but don’t allow your increasing expertise to lure you into illusions of mastery. Continue reading broadly. It may seem that the more you know about less and less, the smarter you’ve become; after all, you now know so much more about psychology! But, in truth, the more you know about less and less should teach you humility. After a couple of years spent taking advanced courses in modern European history, you’ll know more about the French Revolution, but, if you’re self-reflective, you’ll also know how much work it takes to know anything well. And there’s so much more to know about reality than modern European history.”
The full essay is here.