What is your "Major"?

Here follows an excellent commentary that recently was featured at UMC.org (The United Methodist Church's homepage) in response to a recent article on "The 10 Worst College Majors."  I am happy to highlight this insightful article all the more as it comes from a United Methodist Christian educator in Louisiana. 

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The magazine industry is interesting to me, especially with regard to rankings. It seems these days magazines attempt to capitalize on rankings that purport to provide factual data the consumer desires.
The strategy is smart to a degree, as the United States has a love affair with rankings — but only certain ones. We highly debate the BCS football rankings every year while never mentioning how our nation continues its slide in the world in terms of educating our children. Our priorities are in the wrong place.
Our misplaced priorities revealed themselves in a recent ranking by Kiplinger’s of the “worst majors for your career.” Using a set of metrics they determined, 10 majors were identified that would damage students’ careers, generate low pay and could have higher levels of unemployment. I have no qualms with this methodology because this is a magazine that focuses on personal finance and business forecasting.

Little surprise in metrics

There was little surprise using these metrics that majors such as philosophy and religion, English, film and fine arts made the list. The humanities fields, which speak to the human condition, are viewed as less valuable because they don’t generate enough money. But I ask, “Enough money for what?”

For the past few years, political leaders have debated a deficit that has grown under both parties. This is because we have a consume-at-all-costs culture that causes us to spend recklessly, using our resources in an attempt to buy happiness. And, the sad fact is that people aren’t any happier, even with all of the material goods they possess.

Back in March 2003, the editors of Fast Company Magazine had it right when they wrote, “We are better paid, better fed, and better educated than ever. Yet the divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide rate has tripled, and depression has soared in the past 30 years. The conclusion is inescapable: Our lifestyles are packed with more stuff, but we lead emptier lives. We’re consuming more but enjoying it less.”

As president of a United Methodist university, I value all fields of study that students select. My overall goal is for them to find something they love doing, that they would do for no compensation, and then find a way to be paid for that work.

Leading fulfilling lives

If they love their work, they will lead fulfilling lives. Yes, in this hyper-consumer culture, some will have to live a lifestyle different from the one the advertisers in Kiplinger’s want them to purchase.
If they fulfill their purpose, their calling, maybe we can build communities where these domestic terroristic acts that we’ve seen recently will not occur. James Holmes was in a neuroscience program, definitely a lucrative field. But he had no peace, no connection to humanity, and we witnessed the carnage that he created.

We have all heard the Scripture from Mark 8:36 — “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” A more modern translation [paraphrase] simply reads, “What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?” What good is it for young women and men simply to pursue careers to make the most money possible, only to find themselves alone, afraid and angry? That’s what we are seeing today, over and over again.

I can appreciate what Kiplinger’s does as it meets the wants of its audience. But this nation at this moment needs something different. We need people who are fulfilled in their careers so they can live fulfilled and meaningful lives. Humanities are valuable to that end.

This recent string of tragedies continues to serve as a lesson that we attempt to ignore. I pray that my students find their purpose and live it to the fullest.
I am sure Kiplinger’s would agree. For all of our sakes.

* Walter M. Kimbrough is the seventh president of United Methodist-related Dillard University in New Orleans.

Busted at Mass

A Protestant minister has secretly been receiving communion at a Roman Catholic mass on a regular basis, until one day he gets "busted" at mass.  Read his story here.  He speaks of finding something at the Lord's Supper service of the Catholic church that he felt was often missing in his own church's experience. 

I suspect that "something" was (at least in part) the reverence and passion that accompanies the belief that Christ Almighty is here (in the Supper) and we can experience union with him here.  Though many Protestant churches believe that on paper, we often have many members who do not (either having not been raised in our tradition or simply having had poor teaching).
 
Another factor in his more affecting experience at mass may simply stem from the fact that sometimes it is easier to appreciate the worship service when we are not in charge of leading it.  I have enjoyed attending weekday services and receiving communion at Anglican/Episcopal churches from time to time for both of these reasons: the service is always reverent, and I don't have to worry as much about what comes next as I do when leading the service myself.

John Wesley on Predestination

While some Methodists (and others) wrongly believe that John Wesley (and the Methodists with him) taught that there is no such thing as 'predestination,' Wesley produced numerous writings (including a whole sermon) on the proper understanding of the Bible's true doctrine of predestination.  Here is a snapshot of his understanding from his "Notes on the New Testament" comment on Ephesians 1:4-5:

1:5	Having predestinated us to the adoption of sons - Having foreordained that all who afterwards believed should enjoy the dignity of being sons of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. According to the good pleasure of his will - According to his free, fixed, unalterable purpose to confer this blessing on all those who should believe in Christ, and those only.

John Wesley's understanding is that God predestines and "foreordaines" that 'all who believe in Christ' will enjoy the blessings of salvation.  This is quite different than the teaching that God causes certain individuals to believe or to disbelieve simply by virtue of his predestination of those particular individuals either to salvation or to damnation.  So the type of Calvinism one is likely to meet nowadays is ruled out.  It is also noteworthy that Wesley's last words here, "and those only," rules out any possibility of universalism in Methodist theology: only those who believe in Christ will be saved. 

It is important to note at this point that the Notes on the New Testament as a whole do form one of the doctrinal standards of The United Methodist Church, in accordance with which our pastors are bound by oath to teach (though some may perhaps take that commitment more seriously than others).  For some this may raise the question of whether there be any salvation outside of the visible church - among adherents of other religions, for example.  It seems to many of us that Wesley's words, in and of themselves, do not necessarily rule out the possibility that some might believe in the eternal Logos/Word/Christ, that is, believe in his essence "without knowing his name or his incarnate history."  Some of the Early Church Fathers taught that precisely this had happened with famous seekers, such as Socrates, who surely was not a professing Christian.  Wesley's words do not rule out this reading for Methodists, yet nor do these words affirm this possibility either.

The Friday-Tuesday Prayer

At least since being moved to my new ministry setting last year, I have endeavored to pray through the office of Morning Praise and Prayer from The United Methodist Book of Worship (BOW) as my primary prayer office each day.  I have long since come to believe that there is great spiritual value in the ordered rythms of daily prayer offered to us by the Daily Office, also called the Divine Hours.

In the past I have used similar forms of the Daily Office as such as the "Tan Card Rite" of the Order of St. Luke (of which I am a member) or the office of Morning Prayer from The Book of Common Prayer (BCP).  Using the rites of our Book of Worship over the last year has helped me to discover and celebrate the liturgical treasures of my own United Methodist Church, and has helped me to recognize that so much of our liturgy is nothing other than a maintaining of what we received from Anglicanism's Common Prayerbook.  At its best The United Methodist Church is a strand of the Anglican tradition that maintains its beautiful liturgical heritage as well as Anglicanism's "via media" vision of a church that is both reformed and catholic, while also putting a special - and evangelical - emphasis upon the personal experience of Christ and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian.

When I was frequently using The Book of Common Prayer (1979) form of the Daily Office, I discovered several wonderful prayers (such as the prayer for mission at the top of page 101).  One of my favorite prayers is The Collect for Fridays on page 99.  Friday is the day that Christ died for our salvation upon the cross, and the Friday collect reflects this.  This prayer is simple, yet very challenging to pray earnestly in a world where the Christian message is often reduced to a self-help technique of "getting prosperity and our best life now." 

I was delighted to discover that, like so much of Anglicanism's Book of Common Prayer, this prayer has also been 'inherited' by the Methodist tradition and is appointed in our worship book for the Tuesday of Holy Week (see BOW 347), though, of course, it may profitably be used on other occasions:

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was cruficied: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.  Amen.