Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

David Horner

Book Review: Mind Your Faith

Mind Your Faith: A Student’s Guide to Thinking & Living Well by David Horner. InterVarsity Press. 2011.

Ideas have consequences. The Holocaust began as an idea, argues David Horner*. Thinking well and loving God with our minds is thus an essential calling for Christians. Horner dedicates Mind Your Faith: A Student’s Guide to Thinking & Living Well to helping university students, especially undergraduate first years, grasp what it takes to think and live well in their university years and beyond.

Horner begins with our minds. He talks about what we mean when we talk about something being true, how to think about the distinction between belief and knowledge (often deprecating of belief), finding common ground with those we disagree with and then thinking logically and worldviewishly as we seek to think critically about the ideas we encounter. [Read more…] about Book Review: Mind Your Faith

Headed to Graduate School: Begin with the End in Mind

Rick Mattson sharing wisdom with students on campus.
Rick Mattson sharing wisdom with students on campus.

In my travels to campuses around the country (40 in the past two years), I meet up with a lot of students who are headed to grad school someday. Here is what I wish I could suggest to each one of them:

Begin with the end in mind.

The “end” is the final goal, the destination of one’s schooling. For many students, that would be to get a good job in their field and make a significant contribution to the overall good of humanity. Not bad! But in my view, for the Christian it’s shooting too low. Let me suggest a goal that is more lofty than making a living and doing good – that, in fact, will encompass these lesser goals into a higher calling. I believe the ultimate goal of an education is to develop into a person. Period.

[Read more…] about Headed to Graduate School: Begin with the End in Mind