Best Practices in Online Higher Education

Tonight, I am going to have my final live class session of the semester in our interdisciplinary seminar on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. I have handed in both of my research papers, completed my class evaluations for both classes, and I only have a few more minor assignments to complete before we can close the books on the fall 2018 semester.

I began pursuing my PhD in Humanities at Faulkner University in the fall of 2016. I had just graduated from Houston Baptist University with my MA in Apologetics, and that had been a wonderful online experience.

I have spent the last approximately four years of my life pursuing education online, and I have been asked many times how I feel about online education. I can’t speak for every online program, and I have heard a lot of the horror stories that many of you have heard about virtual diploma mills that take your money, don’t teach you anything, and give you a worthless piece of paper.

I want to take today to share with you a little bit about my experience in online education and what both of these programs have done right. I’m sure there are ways that they could improve, but I largely want this to be descriptive of the parts of my online education that have been particularly useful for me and that, if widely adopted, would drastically improve the reputation of online education.

First, the personal connection is one of the most necessary parts of a successful online education. By its nature, online education is typically a solitary endeavor. We sit at our own houses, in our own towns, with our own laptops. We read the same books and write similar papers, but the downfall of so many online programs is that you never really get to know anyone. I took a few online classes during my undergraduate career, and even though they were through the University of Vermont, where I actually attended in person, I didn’t feel at all connected to my professor or my classmates. Just having discussion boards alone doesn’t create community as much as many online programs wish it did.

The two programs I have been a part of have taken proactive steps toward combating this sense of isolation. First, let me talk about Houston Baptist University. From what seems like the moment you are accepted into the program, you’re invited to be a member of a Facebook group where all of your classmates and professors reside. Again, like discussion boards, this in and of itself does not create community. However, the wonderful part about this community is that the faculty members are actively involved. That stimulates involvement from all of us who were students as well. If you have a question about the reading list for a certain class, you can post it in that group, and your professor will respond to you. If you have run into a particularly thorny argument against Christianity and you need some advice, you can talk to your classmates and professors about it to try to talk through how you want to respond.

I fully realize that Facebook does not replicate in-person community, but having this direct access to so many of your classmates and faculty is a big deal. They are actual people that you can get in touch with. That means a lot. They’re not just meaningless names on the screen that you interact with on a discussion board. Most of us have also become friends on Facebook, so we know a little something about each other’s lives. Again, I know it is not quite the same as meeting people in person, but it does take great strides toward combating that sense of isolation that I have heard many people complain about when they discuss online education.

Faulkner University takes full advantage of the power of technology to try to make online education feel personal. They do this through online, mandatory class sessions like I mentioned above. They are 90-minute blocks, and you have one the equivalent of every other week for each class each semester. That means you get to meet with your classmates and your professor live eight times each semester, and we engage in a Socratic dialogue led by our professor.

It really takes online education to a whole other level when you’re able to see and hear your classmates. When someone asks a question, you hear their voice. You see their mannerisms. You realize that some people have an awkward sense of humor like me. You know that some people get really worked up about certain topics. In other words, you get to know them as people. Without meeting in person, this is just about as close as it gets. It is hard to feel isolated when you have seen your classmates face-to-face.

The second major obstacle I have found for online education is the method of evaluation. For a lot of online programs, it seems to be basically a series of online exams that are open book, you take them, and you move on. It is hard to fail an open book exam, and it is a large part of what gives online education such a bad reputation in my opinion.

Both Faulkner and Houston Baptist have taken the same approach to combating this problem. Neither program used exams at least in my experience. All of the grades I ever received from both of these programs were based on papers and discussion board postings. In other words, there were things that I had to generate, and I couldn’t just look in the book and regurgitate the answers. While I’m not really a fan of discussion boards in general, I think that they are at least a step in the right direction in comparison to the exams that characterize a lot of online education.

Also, at least in my experience, all of my papers have been graded by my professors. At Faulkner, your professor reads and grades your paper while providing feedback. You do receive another level of additional feedback from another faculty member, but the professor is the one who ultimately determines your grade. This speaks to my first concern about a personal connection, and it also adds credibility to the marks that you receive from an online education. It is not just some online program determining whether you answered multiple-choice questions the right way. That’s another important way to do online education well.

Finally, one way to do all my education right is really hard to pin down. I don’t know how you would go about doing this, and maybe I am just really fortunate. You need to have the right people involved, and that includes both students and professors. Online education has a good number of challenges, and they are definitely different than the changes that face a brick and mortar college. No one denies that. However, you need to have a number of people who are all committed to making this work. We are naturally all pursuing these degrees for different reasons.

However, I have been blown away by the quality of person I have encountered in each of these programs. If you don’t have the right people involved who are committed to making this work, then they are going to fail. The previous two things I have highlighted really rely on committed students and committed faculty. It is not the type of thing that you can just put online and let it run itself. It requires small student to faculty ratios which both of these programs have. It necessitates a good deal of student time and a good deal of faculty time. It is a lot harder to write a paper than it is to answer a few multiple-choice questions. It is also harder to grade a paper than it is to let computer automate the entire grading of a multiple-choice exam. The investment has to be on both sides of the coin, and at both Houston Baptist and Faulkner, I have felt that without a doubt. My classmates are invested. I am invested. Our faculty are invested.

Thinking back then about this entire process, I am grateful with where I have ended up. Both of the programs I have been a part of have been phenomenal. I appreciate all of the excellent people I have met. Most of you know about An Unexpected Journal, a quarterly publication on imaginative apologetics where I serve as editor. Our central team and the vast majority of our contributors have been from Houston Baptist, and the more I work with them, the more I realize how excellent they are. Similarly, the more I get to know my classmates at Faulkner, the more I realize how great they are as well. Who knows what ways we might work together after we our graduate with our doctorates?

However, that’s what you need to keep in mind with any online program. The isolation can be real, and your program needs to be dedicated to helping you find that connection that you are going to need in order to persevere through these studies. Second, evaluation matters, and if you have a program where a professor is hardly looking at your work, that’s probably a red flag. Finally, and you really will not know this one until you enter, but you need the right kind of people. All the way from students to faculty, you need people who are committed to making this program work. If people do not buy in, it will not be a great experience.

Thoughts on Combating Fake News

If you have been following along with my writing in the past few weeks about Solzhenitsyn and Havel, you will remember that they were thoroughly convinced that it was important for people to live within the truth. Even when somebody else from the outside, in their case the communist regimes that they both had to live under in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia respectively, tells you that the world is a certain way but you know that it is not that way, it was an important step of rebellion to live within the truth. It was what gave power to the powerless according to Havel.

I was thinking about these two men last weekend I came across an article in the Washington Post entitled, “‘Nothing on this page is real’: How lies become truth in online America.” It was written on November 17 by Eli Saslow.

In this article, he shines a light on Christopher Blair, a 46-year-old man living in Maine, who spent his days during the 2016 presidential election creating fake news nonstop on a page entitled America’s Last Line of Defense. Ironically, he only created the fake news to get people to share it before publicly trying to shame them in front of their family and friends for sharing something false in the first place. Blair, a liberal, talks about his attempts at satire in the article. He would intentionally misspell headlines and include so many outlandish details that he thought that people would simply see through the falsehoods before deciding to share them. People would still share his content and apparently believed it was true despite the fact that there were actual disclaimers on the website indicating that all of it was false. Blair wrote on his personal Facebook page, “Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”

Saslow then highlights some of the tactics that Blair and his associates would utilize to publicly put down those who were gullible enough to buy into the false stories. “They patrolled the comments, venting their own political anger, shaming conservatives who had been fooled, taunting them, baiting them into making racist comments that could then be reported to Facebook. Blair said he and his followers had gotten hundreds of people banned from Facebook and several others fired or demoted in their jobs for offensive behavior online.”

Let’s break down a few layers of this article, but please, before you go any further, go read the article. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on background. Also, please keep in mind that I live in Vermont as I am writing this, and I assume most of the people were going to read it also live in Vermont. I have witnessed similar behavior from my more liberal friends as they share things that are simply meant to be provocative but are entirely untrue. They are not all as obviously marked as America’s Last Line of Defense, but what I don’t want anyone to come away from my thoughts with is the idea that this is only a conservative problem. Yes, it is a conservative problem no doubt, but it is not only conservative problem.

First, when we think about living in the truth, the first layer of truth are the people who are passing around this intentionally misleading content. For these people, in this case conservatives, they are living within a world that has a certain set of parameters. These presuppositions color the way that they see the world. In this case, it is pretty obvious that the content being put out by America’s Last Line of Defense is lining up with those ideas. Because they may want to believe that Barack Obama dodged the draft for Vietnam (when he was nine years old), the content from websites like that resonates with them as true. It did not so much matter whether or not it made sense. We like things that confirm our pre-existing notions.

When you think about it though, it goes even further than that. I would be willing to bet you that most people who interact with this website do not have a bias wanting Barack Obama to specifically dodge the draft. I would be willing to bet that for a lot of people, they never even really considered that possibility. What they do have a bias towards is anything negative about Barack Obama. You can see the same phenomenon on the left with Donald Trump right now. You can imagine a story that said that Donald Trump had a secret child in the 1990s that no one ever heard about. It is not that anyone on the left is necessarily predisposed to believe that Donald Trump had this hypothetical child. Instead, there is a bias towards anything that portrays Donald Trump in a negative light.

Therefore, it is a second-level process. It is not that any of these people want to specifically share an article about Barack Obama dodging the draft. They want to share an article about anything that portrays him in a bad light. It doesn’t matter what it is.

I mention this because the entire tactic that Blair is trying to take advantage of is by making people look ridiculous for sharing false information. That only works if the people care about the information, and there is a percentage of our population on either side of the political spectrum that frankly doesn’t care. If it says that Barack Obama is bad, then it must be true because he is bad. If it says that Donald Trump is bad, then it must be true because he is bad. At least as far as I can tell, these people do not really care about the content.

Let me tell you a story of how I saw this happen. I have only shared one article ever from the Huffington Post according to my Facebook activity log, but this one stood out to me. The title of the article was, “Bernie Sanders Could Replace President Trump With Little-Known Loophole.” It came out just after the election in 2016 when you might remember that some people were little bit upset about the outcome.

If you actually read the article, you will know that the headline was intentionally misleading, much in the style of Blair’s work. However, it was calling people to apply a little bit of common sense and read what was written before they shared it. That would be a good thing.

I remember that a friend of mine shared the article as well, and I remember that someone commented almost immediately after on her post that she had to give it up because the election was over. This guy was right of course, but he didn’t read the article. He went by the headline. He didn’t really care about the content because he assumed that he knew what the article was about. My friend was much more graceful than Blair and Company, and she just pointed out that this guy should probably read the article.

That’s the problem inherent in this entire thing. Content is anything but king. Half the time people don’t read it, and they stop reading after the headline. That was what happened to my friend’s acquaintance. However, the other half of the time it seems like bias is already at play. We don’t really care about whatever is in the article. Really care about the higher-level question of whether or not we like say a particular president in general.

This raises questions about the efficacy of Blair’s methodology. It probably makes him and his followers feel better. They get to rant and rave and make conservatives look ridiculous. It is probably a similar feeling to what conservatives get when Ben Shapiro wrecks a college student who really doesn’t know what he or she is talking about. It makes you feel better about your side, but it is anything but a giant intellectual victory for your side of the aisle.

However, even beyond that, if people don’t care about content, then they are not going to care very much about whether or not you just disproved the article that they shared. They may even admit that a particular article wasn’t true. I would imagine when faced with simple information like his year of birth that no one would continue supporting the idea that elementary school Barack Obama was somehow expected to be drafted.

As I have outlined it though, the problem is not this particular article. It is a higher-level problem embedded in a general dislike of a person, regardless of the content. Therefore, refuting the article is not effective, and it really is no surprise. The article was never in question. The person may not have even read the article, but even if here she did, that’s not the central point of any of these arguments.

What do we do then? If Blair’s methodology is not overly effective because, as I have suggested, the truth of the article really isn’t what matters, there must be some kind of alternative that could be effective.

I don’t have a perfect answer for you, but if the problem is the more general agreement or disagreement with a particular person or perspective, then that is the level that we need to move the argument to. If someone shows a propensity to share articles that are untrue, on either side of the political spectrum, then the question is not why they decide to share any article in particular. The question is why they hold the perspective that they do. I have found that that is a much more constructive way to start these conversations.

For example, a lot of you know that I care about pro-life issues. I have seen plenty of ignorant articles shared about abortion. I have seen tons of misleading statistics and things that really deserve to be disputed. However, I could prove one person’s article wrong. I may even be right, and the person might agree with me at the end of the day. However, I have done nothing to really change that person’s propensity towards sharing other, similar articles in the future.

I then have to ask a follow-up question. I need to know why that person decided to share that article. Once I get to that level of questioning, then I at least can have a conversation about the heart of the matter. Did they actually read the article and come to an informed opinion based on the information presented? At least I can have a conversation about that, even if I think the person is wrong. It is okay to talk about the article if the person actually believes it. I may not change anyone’s mind, but at least we can talk about something.

However, if the reason for sharing that article is simply because abortion is a woman’s right and nobody can say anything to the contrary, then I have also learned something important. It was never about the article in the first place but rather it was about sharing anything that went along with that person’s preconceived notions.

My conversation here will be a little bit different. There’s no point talking about the article. This person doesn’t care about it. Therefore, I might as well go even one level higher. Rather than even talk about the article at all, I should then begin talking about the issue in question whether it is abortion or anything else. At least maybe I can get somewhere. People like this to share articles they don’t even know about are going to do it no matter what. Therefore, if I cannot change that behavior, I simply should try to get them to a better perspective on the issue. It is probably not going to be overly effective, but at least it is potentially more useful than talking about an article that the person may not even support anyway.

That’s the important part. It is all about maximizing effectiveness, and I think maybe that is our best approach for engaging people like this, no matter where you land on the political spectrum. We need to find out why they shared a particular article. If they shared the article because they actually believe the information in it, it is worth talking about the article. If they shared the article because it is simply aligned with a higher political view that they happen to hold, then it probably isn’t worth talking about the article. By engaging with the article, you really are not engaging with their key argument but rather something that aligns with the key argument, and you would be better off finding your way to the heart of the issue.

I think that these methods would be more effective than Blair’s method of humiliation. I might be wrong, and he obviously does this a lot more than I do. That being said, it might be worth giving my method a try. I think it might be more effective.

Michael DeVito on Christianity in the NFL and the Importance of Apologetics: An Interview

I am incredibly excited to bring you an interview with Michael DeVito. He and I are both graduates of the Houston Baptist University Master of Arts in Apologetics program. Actually, we are also graduates of colleges in the America East where we both received our Bachelor's degrees in Accounting, so that is another fun coincidence. Unfortunately, I never had the privilege of sharing a class with Michael as I graduated in the spring of 2016, and he entered that fall after retiring from the NFL in April 2016. However, I know that he is an apologist you need to keep your eyes on. Check out the big things he is planning to do with his future!

Thanks Mike for being willing to enter the public square and answer some questions for all of us!

ZS: First of all, can you give me a quick overview of your academic and professional career?

MD: I attended college at the University of Maine from 2002-2006, getting my undergraduate degree in Accounting. I played in the NFL from 2007-2015 (6 years with the Jets and 3 years with the Chiefs), retiring in April of 2016. In the fall of 2016 I began my graduate work at HBU in philosophical apologetics. I graduated in the spring of 2018 from HBU and started a second graduate degree this fall in Philosophy, Science and Religion at the University of Edinburgh. My goal is to do well enough at UE to pursue a PhD in philosophy.

ZS: When did you first become interested in apologetics? For me, I had been a Christian for several years before I discovered this important discipline.

MD: My first encounter with apologetics was in 2009 when the team chaplain for the New York Jets, 14 year NHL veteran Adam Burt, gifted me Timothy Keller’s book A Reason For God. After I finished reading it, I remember saying to myself, “I want to become great at whatever it is that Keller is doing in this book.” Fast-forward a year or so to a church conference that I attended in North Carolina. One of the breakaway sessions at this conference was a brief introduction to apologetics. The instructor began the class by saying, “If you want to see apologetics done at the highest level, you have to watch William Lane Craig debate skeptics.” All it took was one YouTube video of Craig shredding the arguments of Christopher Hitchens for me to conclude that once football was finished I was going to try to become an apologist. 

ZS: Last season, the Philadelphia Eagles drew a great deal of attention for their public displays of Christianity. What was your experience with Christianity in the NFL? Did you sense a strong Christian presence on any of the teams you played for?

MD: I was blessed throughout my nine-year career to have been a part of a number of locker rooms that had strong Christian leadership. Guys like Kenyon Coleman, James Dearth, Matt Mulligan, D’Brickashaw Ferguson, Tim Tebow, Jason Avant, Dustin Colquitt, Derrick Johnson, and the list goes on and on. During the course of an NFL season you experience major highs and major lows, and without spiritual mentors like the guys I just mentioned, I almost certainly wouldn’t have made it as long as I did. These men taught me how to represent Christ on and off the field. Not only did they set a Christ-like example, they held me accountable, making sure I didn’t fall into the traps that derailed a number of NFL careers. Having become friends with players from different teams, it seems fair to say that the there is a very strong Christian presence in the NFL, and, as you point out, there is probably no greater example of that than the 2017 Philadelphia Eagles.  

ZS: It seems like a lot of athletes are very quick to thank God for any success they have on the field during press conferences or after touchdowns. To what degree do you think this is perhaps part of sports culture and evidence of cultural Christianity if you will, or do you think it is often times players who truly want to use the platform to share their faith?

MD: It always hard to determine a person’s motivation for their actions. I think it is always good to ascribe to people the benefit of the doubt and believe they are being genuine and using the platform to glorify God. That said, I don’t think it matters that much to be honest. As the apostle Paul writes, “It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.  The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.” (Philippians 1:15-18). As long as Christ is represented, it is a win, regardless of one’s motivation. But I do think a majority of the players are sincere.

ZS: What are your career aspirations now that you have completed your MA in Apologetics as well as your football career?

MD: As I mentioned earlier, I want to get my PhD in philosophy. More than that, I want to be a great philosopher and apologist! There are a number of reasons for this. First, I do feel God is calling me to do this work. For two decades I smashed my head against metal at high speeds (and I wasn’t smart to begin with). However, God has lit in me a fire to study, study, and study more. It seems almost blasphemous for me to say, but I’d rather study philosophy than watch football. I’m not exactly sure what the end goal is, but I know this is what God wants me doing. Secondly, I want to set a good example for my two boys. My dad was an engineer, and I remember seeing his degree in engineering from Syracuse on the wall in his office and thinking, “Wow, that’s awesome. I want to achieve something like that some day.” I’m hoping having a PhD on the wall at home will have the same effect on my sons.

ZS: As an academic apologist, where do your interests lie? Do you have any specific areas that you think are particularly important and require further study?

MD: Thanks to my intellectual mentor (and good friend) philosopher Tyler McNabb, I’ve come to really enjoy studying religious epistemology--specifically, the work of Alvin Plantinga. Realizing that I am warranted in believing that Christianity is true apart from argument and evidence, because of the profound religious experiences I have had that lead to this belief, has given me a confidence to study the arguments for and against the existence of God much more objectively. I do think every Christian apologist should read Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief for this very reason; your work and, more importantly, your faith will benefit significantly from doing so.

ZS: What are three resources that you would recommend for someone who is just beginning to study apologetics?

MD: My three favorite apologetics books are as follows:

1.       The Reason for God – Timothy Keller

2.       Reasonable Faith – William Lane Craig

3.       Mere Christianity – C. S. Lewis

And, as I stated above, Warranted Christian Belief should also be a part of every apologist’s library

Solzhenitsyn on the Problems in the West

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is a name that may not be familiar to many young people today, but in 1978, he gave an incredibly important speech at Harvard University’s commencement in Russian. As a political dissident, he found himself in exile from the Soviet Union, so he found refuge in the United States, and he actually lived in Vermont which is a nice tie to my home state.

Solzhenitsyn was interesting because in his address, he spoke about the crisis of the West. While he did address the problems that were present in his homeland, he addressed his Western audience about their own shortcomings.

Within the first few minutes of his speech, he found what seems to be the Achilles’ heel of the West. “Western society expanded in a triumph of human independence and power. And all of a sudden in the twentieth century came the discovery of its fragility and friability.” We trust so much in human independence, the ultimate triumph of the Enlightenment, that we really don’t know what to do now that there are all kinds of problems associated with unfettered freedom.

In 1978, Solzhenitsyn didn’t even know all of the changes that were going to hit the West in the next 40 years, but our insatiable appetites have only increased. We want more and more of everything, but we still are not really happy. For whatever reason, we think that things can solve all of our problems. At least here in the United States, we have unprecedented levels of prosperity. Beyond that, we really are pretty independent people. I was thinking the other day about how for most of human history, you would have been happy to have one of something. It was enough to have one nice coat. However, now a lot of people even have a nice backup just in case they damage the one they have. It is not just about having enough, but it is about having enough in case we lose the enough that we have now.

Providing all of these unheard-of comforts to the citizenry was thought to be something that would lead to contentment and ultimately happiness. However, Solzhenitsyn observed, “In the process, however, one psychological detail has been overlooked: the constant desire to have still more things and a still better life, and the struggle to obtain them imprints many Western faces with worry and even depression, though it is customary to conceal such feelings.”

You probably have heard about keeping up with the Joneses, but it isn’t just about keeping up with them. Even if they have reached a certain level of material wealth, once we catch them, we still want to have more. It really isn’t much a matter of comparison. That is one significant part that we miss out on. We might say that we just want our share of the American dream or whatever other standard we might set, but if we are honest, we only care about comparisons when there is someone above us. Once we hit that standard that we have been talking about forever, then we still want more.

As a result, we are free from the state by and large. We are not dependent on state provision. We have our own stuff, and we have enough of our own stuff. However, we still want more. We want more possessions. We want to be able to purchase more and make more money.

We have simply traded one master for another.

This approach lends itself to some other vices. Solzhenitsyn highlights an obsession with legislation. After all, if we want to protect our own things, we have to build legal system that gives us a solid mechanism for defending our own property. Property is good, but an unhealthy obsession with more and more property means that we push ourselves to the legal boundaries rather than a concern for a good amount of what we need. “Nobody may mention that one could still not be entirely right, and urge self-restraint, a willingness to renounce such legal rights, sacrifice, and selfless risk: it would sound simply absurd. One almost never sees voluntary self-restraint. Everybody operates at the extreme limit of those legal frames.”

Again, this isn’t rocket science. If Solzhenitsyn were alive today, I don’t think he would be surprised by our current society. The situation didn’t get better. It got worse, and he noted this trajectory 40 years ago. If it isn’t illegal, most of us feel entitled to do it. Never mind what impact it may have on our culture or on anyone else. We push the boundaries right to the edge. We are not willing to sacrifice for other people to make it better for everyone. Rather, we want to push the boundaries to the edge for our own benefits.

One of the most powerful quotes from his entire lecture concerns the legal system. “Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man's noblest impulses.” Because we have built the culture of our society around our own independence and our chief concern is our own individual pursuits, we do whatever we can to advance our own situation. The law is the only thing that we see holding us back. Solzhenitsyn frowns on that development.

The problem is that it goes on even further. We want everything, and the only thing that keeps us in place is the legal system that we push to the limit anyway and would probably violate if we could do so without recourse. If it could possibly get worse, it does for Solzhenitsyn because we have idolized the individual, who potentially has the type of character I outlined above. This is not saying that there aren’t good people in the West, but he is saying that it is really dangerous when certain people are able to run, unhindered, in the path of individual choice. He said, “The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals.”

This leads to a great deal of freedom being used for horrible things, but that should not be a surprise. Solzhenitsyn points to something that is really unpopular today, and I assume it was unpopular in his day as well. “Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually, but it was evidently born primarily of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent in human nature.” For the Christian, this should be a red flag. We understand sin nature. We understand that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke and others argued that man was really just a blank slate. There is nothing inherently evil about humanity, and in the right environment, man would just be good. Solzhenitsyn kind of mocks this understanding of human nature by saying, “Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society.”

Some in the West have realized this and turned to socialism, an idea that Solzhenitsyn rejected. However, he understood that this turn to socialism was responsible for a genuine human emotion. “After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer, and purer than those offered by today's mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor, and by intolerable music.” In this quote he is obviously speaking about media, but it extends far beyond that. We realize something is wrong, and we realize that our society is moving in the wrong direction. We realize that there are problems with what is going on. We start to turn to other things because we want to feel something. We think that there has to be something better.

That’s the question then that we all need to answer. Where do we turn if we are unhappy with where we are at? We have a great deal of freedom and independence. These are good things. I would never argue against them by any means. However, we need to keep in mind that it is one thing to diagnose a problem, and it is quite another to find a solution for that problem. It’s hard because there are always a million possible solutions, and most solutions sound pretty reasonable in theory.

Humanism isn’t always a problem. Humanism can be a really good thing. It is good to embrace a philosophy that puts a great deal of importance on humanity. After all, don’t we want to love our fellow man and try to do what is best for society? I think most of us do, and it scares me to think of a governmental system that does not have the good of humanity at heart.

Nevertheless, Solzhenitsyn hits the nail on the head one more time. Humanism has problems when it stands alone, problems we have already diagnosed throughout this entire article. “Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition.” The competition he refers to speaks about the intellectual competition with communism in the West. It is an intriguing intellectual exercise in the West because it seems to align very well with much of what we are missing. Communism seems to establish a higher system that provides meaning and order. We’re sick of what we have, so we want something to fill in the gaps. Humanism on its own, perhaps referred to as secular humanism by some, doesn’t have an answer. Instead, in the West we just see the disorder and are unsatisfied with it.

That’s why Christianity is so important. Christian humanism, on the other hand, believes in the inherent value of man not because of the faulty belief in our perfection but rather because we are created in the image of God. As soon as the myth of human goodness is busted by the evident corruption in the East and the West, humanism has nothing. Christian humanism does not make false claims about human nature. That is a substantial difference.

Not only that, but Christian humanism points towards the sense of order and meaning that the West seems to be missing. Solzhenitsyn does not go on to endorse Christian humanism. However, it is a rather obvious implication of his worldview. If there is a lack of meaning and structure in the West, something I would agree with, then there are a few alternatives that we can use to fill in that gap.

Maybe that is the answer to the question then. People are simply unsatisfied with where we are at. We have tried to find meaning in so many places. Why don’t we try to think about where we have found meaning in the past? As we have drifted further and further away from our Judeo-Christian roots and embraced more and more Enlightenment philosophy in its stead, you can see Solzhenitsyn’s argument play out more and more obviously.

Don't Be Afraid to Dream

When you are a little kid, you are always asked what you’re going to be when you grow up. When you’re in high school, you take a variety of personality tests that sometimes point you towards careers that may be suited for your interests and individual propensities. In college, you make a decision to pursue a major that you hope will lead to an eventual career in that field.

In terms of vocation, your entire childhood is practically based around hoping for something that you are going to be able to do. It is dreaming about a career that you really want to pursue, that you feel passionate about. You may not have it yet, but the encouragement is there to think about what could be. So many little kids dream about being professional athletes, and while we know that it is probably an unrealistic dream, we don’t automatically tell them not to dream. We tell them that if they work really hard, that dream might come true.

We may know that the fulfillment of that dream is unlikely. Playing in the NFL is an opportunity that very few people actually have, but it is not impossible, so we encourage our young people to dream. Even at the college level, while our dreams might be a bit more tempered by that point, we still know what we want to do, even if it is not incredibly likely. For all of your art history majors that want to work at the Louvre or the physics majors that want to work at NASA, their dreams very well might come true. Nobody is saying that they won’t. However, the majority of art history or physics majors will need to find their careers on some other trajectory simply because neither organization can employ everyone.

Something interesting seems to happen when we get out of college and start to work. So many people start to lose their dreams, or if they don’t leave their dreams entirely, they write them off as unrealistic or unachievable. They stop taking steps to pursue them for a variety of reasons.

I know some people who gave up their dreams because they had a family, so their priorities started to shift. That is a great reason, and I don’t question anyone about making that choice. Some people just give up entirely though for seemingly no reason other than the fact that they have gotten older, and that is what I do not understand.

Naturally, we have a limited amount of time on this earth, so when our future on this planet is shorter, there is less that we are going to be able to achieve. I can do more in 50 years than I can in 40 years presumably. However, that doesn’t mean that there still isn’t a lot that I can do in 40 years. There is a lot that I can do in 10 years or even one year.

It strikes me as really odd then that we are so quick to give up our dreams. After all, maybe I love to play basketball and it finally dawns on me that I am never going to play in the NBA. However, what does that really mean in the grand scheme of things? Does it mean that I can’t dream anymore? Absolutely not. That particular dream might be dead, but it doesn’t mean that I have to surrender to a life of meaningless existence. It may mean that I have to change my plans a little bit, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t ever hope for anything ever again.

That’s what I seem to notice about people. They were forced to give up on a particular dream, whatever that may be, and they all of a sudden decide that they can dream anymore in general. Because one thing did not work out, nothing is going to work out every again.

I don’t understand how people function that way. I am one of those people who always has another plan. Some things work out while others do not. However, that doesn’t mean that I never try consider some other type of dream ever again. I just keep thinking. The dreams never stop; I just keep jumping right in to figure it out.

I think there is a sense of hope that is required in order to dream, and I think that is the part that so many people are missing. If you don’t have hope, then you can’t dream. Without hope, a dream is simply a fantasy, an unrealistic one at that. Therefore, why bother dreaming? Why bother talking about what might be because it isn’t going to happen anyway?

You see, that’s why I think that we have these dreams when we are young and gradually lose them as we get older. Young people generally still have hope. They have not become so incredibly jaded in their short time on earth, so they are still willing to think about what may be. They are willing to think that the future may be better than the present. Some may call that unrealistic, and that’s fine. However, they are willing to at least be open to the possibility that the future may be better. I think that is a huge step in the right direction that all of us can learn from.

I’m not suggesting that we go through life assuming that everything will be perfect and will work out the way we want. Our experience has shown us the folly of that. We know that life is not perfect. I am saying that is better to go through life with a type of hope. Am I advocating for some type of wish fulfillment? Not at all. Rather, I would suggest a more balanced approach. We cannot assume that everything is going to be perfect. We live in a fallen world after all, and Christians need to recognize that reality. However, we also cannot assume that everything is always going to be terrible or everything is going to be full of disappointments. Again, Christians believe that God created this world perfectly, and while it is marred by sin, it still retains elements of its original goodness. There is still beauty in the world. There is still hope in the world. It is not perfect, and we feel the problems associated with sin all the time. We see it around us, in our own lives and in the lives of others. However, we also know that there is no question that God is still with us. He has not abandoned this planet. As long as God is here, and He always will be, there is always hope.

Here’s my suggestion then as we think about hope and dreaming. Dreaming is good because dreaming aligns with the way the world is. Hope is still here, and that hope transcends any jadedness we might have or feel. Why not think about what could be or should be? Why not talk about what we hope happens in the future? Why not think about making the world a better place? It certainly is not too late. God is still here.

I personally think that when we dream, we are doing what God calls us to do. We are hoping. I think it is part of God’s design for us to be entirely honest for you. Why do you think we have this tension between God’s kingdom here on earth and God’s future kingdom that we see presented at the end of Revelation? It is good for us to want that which is good. It is a type of dream. We are looking forward to something that we are anticipating with great joy. We hope that it will come true because we know it will be a great thing if it does. And the great part about God's hope is that we know it is going to come true. Therefore, we have something better than just a hope; we have a sure hope.

It is far too easy for us to get wrapped up in what is true here and now, but it doesn’t have to be that way, and if you are a dreamer, I say that you should keep dreaming. Think about something that could be or should be and take definite steps to try to make that happen. Maybe your dream will never come true the side of paradise. That’s possible. However, don’t let that turn you off from the process of dreaming altogether. In the words of Fleetwood Mac, “Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.” I believe it is biblical to dream and to hope, and I think that the world could use more of it. Think about the implications of a world full of Christians that were not afraid to dream. They could do so much, and they would have the disposition to give it a try.

They could dream about what may be or could be, and the funny thing about things that may be or can be is that sometimes they turn into things that are.

How much good could be done with a group of people who had a vision to dream about something highly beneficial, and they actually started to take that dream and give it a try? Think about it. In fact, dream about it.