Integrative Essay

Jenna Kennedy

1/25/2011

Professor Ribeiro

DCM Integrative Essay

            If I had to summarize this whole interim, it would be in one cycle.  It would be a cycle of learning new things, changing our world view, and then changing our behavior.  C.S Lewis and Plantinga both stressed the importance of learning more about your faith and then letting what you learn affect what you believe and how you act.  I believe this is a cycle we need to continue to go through our whole lives.

            Learning is one of the keys to our humanity.  Lewis says in “Man or Rabbit”, “One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he has become something less than human.” It is this thirst for knowledge that helps us learn.  Since we were born we have been learning.  We had to learn how to walk, how to communicate, and we had to learn how to learn.  These are things we learn though experience and education.  However, C.S. Lewis (in “Learning in War Time”) differentiated between education and learning.  He explained education as what prepares us to be good human beings.  This is the mandatory kindergarten through eighth grade education we have that helps us develop the basic skills of reading, writing, and finding meaning.  In high school we start learning how to learn and interpret what we are learning.  We learn to make connections between classes, and bring in example from life experiences and books we have read.  Than in college we start really learning.  We start learning for the sake of learning. In the Plenary session, Laura Smitt talked about the autotelic experiences.  She encouraged us to take at least one class per semester that you learn just for the sake of learning.  This is true learning. C.S. Lewis challenges us in the English Syllabus that, “the proper question for a college freshman is not ‘what will do me the most good?’ but ‘What do I most want to know?’”.   This is a radical concept because our culture tends to tell us that we need to go to college to get at degree, to get a job.  At times it seems like people get so focused on getting the degree they don’t actually learn all that they could.  C.S. Lewis wisely says, “though you may come here only to be educated, you will never receive that precise educational gift which a university has to give you unless you can at least pretend, so long as you are with us, that you are concerned not with education but with knowledge for its own sake”.  In my own experience if I cram study for a test, no matter how well I do on that test I will not remember the material nearly as well as if I am paying attention throughout the entire section and diligently do my homework.  When you are just working for a degree this wouldn’t matter because the grade is all that matters.  But what then after college, mediocrity in the work place? It becomes an ongoing cycle of less than excellence.  When we learn for the same of learning not only do we get more enjoyment out of the learning but learn better.  C.S. Lewis says in “Learning in War time”, “Real learning occurs when we face something new. It is a struggle for which we are unprepared, a challenge to the rhythm of our thoughts and actions. The heart of learning appears when we learn how to change, to grow to adjust, to become something different. Universities can help, but it's the leper colonies, the demands of humility or courage, that teach us best.” In is not only at school that we should be learning for the sake of learning; in everything we do we can learn.  We can learn through our work, even if we have a dead end, minimum wage job, through our relationships, with our friendships as well as our business relationships, and through our experiences, no matter how humbling.  We must seek truth in everything we do.

However, we should not learn just to know only for the sake of knowing.  We must contemplate what we learn and how that affects what we believe.  If what we learn doesn’t change us, if it doesn’t help us to see things more clearly, if it doesn’t influence what we believe than why we are learning it.  Our worldview should be constantly changed and improved by what we learn.  What we learn will either strengthen or weaken our preexisting beliefs.  In “Man or Rabbit” C.S. Lewis explains that whether you believe in Christianity or believe that it is a huge myth you should still fight to show people the light or the error of their beliefs.  He says, “Either that's true, or it isn't. And if it isn't, then what the door really conceals is simply the greatest fraud, the most colossal 'sell' on record. Isn't it obviously the job of every man (that is a man and not a rabbit) to try to find out which, and then to devote his full energies either to serving this tremendous secret or to exposing and destroying this gigantic humbug?”.  This quote just shows the importance of learning and then taking what you learn to be true to heart. In Prelude we talked a lot about worldview.  We discussed how everyone has a worldview and how important it is because it shapes how we see the world.  In Chapter two of Engaging God’ World Plantinga talks about how just the knowledge that God is the creature of the world should shape our worldview so dramatically that all our actions would be worshipping this all-powerful God.  Our world view is also affected by our own selfish ambitions.  We have a tendency to take what we want from what we learn.   We take to heart what is convenient as well as true, not just all that is true.  This is another thing that C.S. Lewis warned about in “Man or Rabbit”.  When talking of Christianity he says, “If Christianity is untrue then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all”.  We must make sure that we don’t separate what we learn and will affect our world view by its usefulness but rather but by its truth.  In this way our learning should affect our worldview. 

Our worldview should affect how we live.  In Prelude we talked about how there can’t be a great difference between our actions and our worldview because eventually start to converge; either your actions will conform to your worldview, or your worldview will start to conform to your actions.  This became much clearer throughout this interim.   If you really believe what you say you believe than your actions will follow.  Professor Ribeiro told us “theory needs practice, ideas need action, beliefs need behavior”.  I couldn’t put this better myself.  Just as we need to test out theories and our beliefs need to be acted out.  In Chapter 5 of Engaging God’s World Plantinga describes vocation not as an occupation but a lifestyle.  In “Learning in War time” C.S. Lewis suggests that our lives as born again Christians are like soldiers.  Although we will do a lot of the same things we did before we were born again, they are also different because we go about them as Christians.  Everything we do should be affected by our vocation to be Christians just as everything is affected by the vocation of being a soldier.  I think this is a great description of our vocation as Christians.  He talks about how there is much more to being a soldier than combat.  There is continual training, and even on leave they must act like soldiers and even where their uniforms for certain occasions.  This is also the life of a Christian; we must be continually growing in our spiritual life.  Professor Ribeiro also talked about although our spiritual life may have highs and lows it will always be tending up as we grow closer to God, or down as we fall away from God.   Just like a soldier moving up the ranks and becoming a better soldier, we must also be growing in our faith and wisdom.

 What we believe should affect everything we do.  That is perhaps what I like most about C.S. Lewis.  He was continually changing his worldview as he learned more, but also changing how he thought we should as.  Him humility was always present in his writing and he taught the importance of this virtue both indirectly and directly.   This cycle of learning new things, modifying our worldview as we take it to heart, and then living out what we believe is so important because it helps us to live a contagiously virtuous life.  I was drawn to C.S. Lewis’ writings because they elegantly showed wisdom, but it was his life that made this genuine.  In the same way we must also live out our beliefs.  However, we cannot give C.S. Lewis all the credit for teaching us this wise way to live.  C.S. Lewis was simply following Christ’s example in such a way that we could see Christ through him.  Our vocation is also to live a life that is so centered on God that others can see him through us.  As C.S. Lewis wisely says, we must “die daily” to ourselves in order that we may fully give ourselves to Christ. 

Works Cited

Lewis, C. S. “Learning in Wartime.” God in the Dock; Essays on Theology and Ethics. Grand Rapids.            Eerdmans, 1970. Print.

Lewis, C. S. "Man or Rabbit. God in the Dock; Essays on Theology and Ethics. Grand Rapids. Eerdmans,   1970. Print.

Lewis, C. S. "Our English Syllabus." Rehabilitations and Other Essays. Philadelphia: R.

West, 1978. 81-93. Print. 

Plantinga, Cornelius Jr. Engaging God's World. Grand Rapids. William B. Eerdmans, 2002. Print