kata Drew

To be honest, sometimes I wonder how practical a seminary education is. Will I graduate from seminary and be in the same situation that I was in when I graduated from college? College degrees are a dime a dozen, the same as graduating from high school nowadays. How practical is a Masters of Divinity from a seminary then? It depends on what you want to do when you graduate I guess. I want to be a full-time minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s my ambition. Seminary equips for that “vocation.” (Formal education will never be an adequate ends in itself. It can only feed the intellectually hungry to learn on their own. Formal education equips autodidactics. Seminary equips pneumadidactics and bibliodidactics.) Still though, I can’t help getting the feeling sometimes that what I’m learning is not very practical. Read my September post, A Plea for Multi-Learnedness, for an example: the lemon crisis that changed my life. I guess it really depends though on how you define “practical.”

Anyways, check out what happened today that gives seminary practicality. Sitting in church today for a children’s nativity presentation the young girl with whom I was sitting (aged 9) turns to me and asks, “Drew, do you believe in God?” Not something I was immediately expecting considering the farcical spectacle going on at the front of the church.

“I do, Martha. Do you believe in God?”

“No.” Blank stare.

“Well, why don’t you believe in God?”

“He ain’t done nuffink for me.”

“Are you breathing right now?”

“Not very well. I’ve got a cold at the moment.”

Haha. This was going to be fun. From here, she and I had a lovely conversation about the reliability of Scripture, the historicity of Jesus, the eyewitness accounts of Jesus contained in the Gospels, intelligent design, the teleological and cosmological arguments for God, the transmission of the Bible, the law of non-contradiction and persecution (she had been laughed at by the boys at her school for going to church). Of course, in talking about these things, I didn’t use all this hifalutin language, but these are the very subjects about which we spoke. She was intelligent, asking pointed questions about the the veracity and reliability of Scripture. Nine years-old mind you! I ended by sharing the gospel with her. Martha was for whom the gospel was meant. It’s not meant to be locked up in a bricked building in Wake Forest.

I get frustrated at seminary often. Will I have a “proper” job when I graduate? Is it even worth it? Do I even care about having a “proper” job? (I just want to provide for my wife and future family.) Is the stuff I’m learning practical? Today it was worth it: being able to share the firm foundation that has been laid for our faith in his excellent word that speaks of Jesus coming to rescue us. As Dr. Lanier reminded us in Greek this past summer “Do it for Jesus!” I add, “and do it for Martha.” Study for the nine year old that wonders about God and asks questions that most adults push out of mind. Jesus loves this little child and desires to have a relationship with her. That I can play a part in that gives me tears.

Yesterday in Bath I saw and heard a toddler drop the f-bomb.

Salisbury Cathedral was, for me, a thin place. What is a thin place? This is a concept that I just learned of this evening at Emily’s (my wife’s) parents’ home fellowship Christmas party from a Newscastle medical student named Ellie. She asked if I had heard of whom the British refer to as Tom Wright (we Americans call him by his academic nom de plume, N. T. Wright). “Yep. He’s a bit of a controversial figure, isn’t he?” “Oh, he is? I’ve just heard his talk on the resurrection and thought it was fantastic.” The Bishop of Durham, however, wasn’t really our topic of conversation so much as he supplied the words for us to talk about Christian spirituality at certain locales, places which Ellie pointed out Wright refers to as “thin places.” Thin places are places at which the separation of earthly and spiritual is “thin.”

I was sharing with her how this past week I’ve visited Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral in the same afternoon. Some friends in American hyped up Stonehenge to me as a spiritual place where one encounters a certain amount of spiritual energy. Sorry to report that I found it rather unimpressive as a spiritual monument, but loved it nonetheless. Spiritual energy? Nope, just cold wind, runny nose, and tourists. After leaving the millenia-old enigmatic stones, we headed some ten miles south to Salisbury to see the towering spire of Salisbury Cathedral demonstrating its title as the tallest spire in the United Kingdom. This place was thin. Not to sound too dramatic but walking around inside I very nearly cried. Here stood an Ebenezer, a connexion through 750 years to the Medieval church. Our common connection: faith in Christ. This building placed my hand in the hand of the Medieval church. Me, a scrawny white American kid from West Virginia connected to the Christians of 13th century Wiltshire County England. It was too much. They loved Jesus. I love Jesus. The stones at Stonehenge, though impressive, diminish to a whisper at the sound of the glory of God sounding from the Gothic architecture of Salisbury.

(My pictures of Salisbury)

[HT: Ellie, David Bole, Carmen Andres]

Hillsong London Christmas 2007 from Drew Maust on Vimeo.

Your love O Lord is like the oceans
Deeper than endless seas
Your faithfulness is like the mountains
And Your Word never fails

Glory to God
Let every heart sing
Glory to God
In the highest

Leaving on Wednesday (12/12), we’re heading to England over Christmas and New Years. We’ll be back just in time (the day before) to start our respective schools on January 7th. J-term Hebrew I, here I come.

I didn’t post a weekly review for last week because we were on Fall break, which isn’t to imply that I did no learning during this week off, but that it was a week off! Today I’ve got a bunch of miscellanies for you since I had something due in each of my four classes this week, exam or paper or otherwise. Garn.

• Evangelical Textual Criticism has quickly become one of my most read blogs since hearing an interview with two contributors, Simon Gathercole (Cambridge) and Peter Williams (Aberdeen), on the new perspective of Paul. It’s a team blog so there are regular updates by a multifarious group of scholars. “A forum for people with knowledge of the Bible in its original languages to discuss its manuscripts and textual history from the perspective of historic evangelical theology.”
• Lots of freely downloadable Christian hip hop can be found at the Sphere of Hip Hop. You’ll definitely want to hear how “Jesus did walk with the ladies.” Intrigued?
• We’ve booked our flights to go back to England over Christmas. I have a mental list of things to try to remember to do: get a peak at Codex Sinaiticus, visit Bunhill to see the graves of Johns Owen, Bunyan and Gill and Isaac Watts…(Can you say supererogatory acts?), and my list is still growing. Of course spending time with the extremely jovial and congenial Hayes family is top priority. =)
• I took two semesterin of German in college and now it’s time to shift into Retention Phase. Thank you, http://ergebung.wordpress.com, a theological German blog. Klingt mir gut!
• That’s it. I’ve got a paper to write.