This is a thrilling Christmas break for the Nielson family, the highlights of which are the weddings of two of our sons. Our oldest son Jon was married on December 20 in Chicago, at the historic Moody Memorial Church, and our middle son Dan (2008 Covenant graduate) will be married on New Year’s Eve at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Waco, Texas. What a delight to welcome into our family two beautiful, wonderful daughters! After living in a household with only males, Kathleen is very, very happy to have some female companionship!

I have the privilege of giving fatherly charges to both couples during their wedding ceremonies. Click to continue »

On this Thanksgiving weekend, Covenant students have scattered to the homes of families and friends for a few days’ break from the ordinary routines of college life. During these days, we have watched and heard the reports of the violence in Mumbai, learned more about the key Cabinet and staff members whom President-elect Obama will gather around him, and enjoyed a bit of a break from the whip-lashing volatility of the stock market. In the midst of momentous events in the world, we have been blessed with the privilege of Thanksgiving feasts and fellowship, reminders all of the enormous mercy and generosity of our faithful God, and of the remarkable gifts of faith and family and freedom, which seem even more precious in light of the news from around the world. Click to continue »

John Piper recently reminded readers of WORLD Magazine that, in elections, “outcomes are not our greatest joy when they go our way, and not demoralizing when they don’t…. Politics…is one more stage for acting out the truth that Christ, and not politics, is supreme.” His essay provides a glorious and profoundly biblical corrective to our common tendency to make too much of the temporary and not enough of the eternal, too much of Caesar and not enough of Christ.

For Covenant College, whose motto is “In all things Christ preeminent,” Piper’s words call our attention to the glories of Christ not only in the wake of elections but also during this period of severe economic crisis. Click to continue »

In his thoughtful essay, “Why I Am Hopeful,” author Andy Crouch offers his reasons for hope in the midst of the troubled and uncertain environment in which we find ourselves.

(The essay was posted October 20, 2008, on the Books and Culture website.)

Crouch first clarifies that his hope does not lie in any of the following:
• the belief there is an easy way out of the economic mess we’re in;
• his confidence that our next president will be able to solve our problems;
• the assurance that we are well-prepared for the challenges that lie ahead;
• the hope that life will get easier, or even be as easy as it has been, in America.

He is careful to distinguish his view of our current situation from that of others, who tend to see our troubles, in some cases celebratively, as the demise of capitalism and the market-oriented economic system. Click to continue »

In a recent column in WORLD, Gene Edward Veith offers comments on the views of Richard Rorty, one of the most influential American philosophers of the last forty years. Veith summarizes Rorty’s argument in the essay “Universality and Truth” as “…all education is indoctrination.” (“Rorty’s rebels,” WORLD, September 6, 2008)

Rorty candidly confirms that there is a conspiracy among the “American liberal establishment” in higher education, a conspiracy to discredit “fundamentalist parents,” “to strip your fundamentalist community of dignity,” and “to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.” Favorably comparing his particular brand of indoctrination to that practiced by the Hitler Youth movement, Rorty contends simply that his indoctrination serves a better cause, and that “students are lucky to find themselves under…people like me, and to have escaped the grip of frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.” Click to continue »

I’m giving the space in this week’s blog to some work that our Dean of Students, Brad Voyles, has done recently in identifying trends among today’s college students. Dean Voyles and the staff of the Student Development office (including resident assistants) have a unique view of the rising generation, and their insights are extremely valuable as we pursue our mission. I am very grateful for Dean Voyles’ leadership, grounded in the Scriptures and also in sound thinking about college-age students.

This fall I am taking the Student Development staff through Richard Kadison’s book, College of the Overwhelmed: The campus mental health crisis and what to do about it. We have noticed not only an increase in the number of students visiting our campus counselors, but also an increase in the number of students who report feeling overwhelmed. Each year we have more students who come from broken homes, who report a history of sexual abuse, and who lack strong family support systems – all of which connect with the feeling of being overwhelmed by life and all its demands. Further, the “overwhelmed” phenomenon can be linked to three other traits of today’s students: they are overconnected, overprotected, and overserved. Click to continue »

This week’s blog calls your attention to a characterization of evangelicals – actually the “new evangelicals” – which has become somewhat commonplace in recent months. E. J. Dionne, in his Washington Post editorial “The new evangelical politics,” says: “The era of reducing Christianity to a narrow set of ideological commitments is over.” A Newsweek article (“New Evangelicals,” Aug. 18, 2008) states:

As the evangelical world continues to fracture, schools once known mainly for their conservative politics and their no-sex-before-marriage policies are adapting to a generation of students who see the world in a more subtle way…Old hot-button issues are cooling, somewhat.

Much has been made as well of mega-church pastor Rick Warren’s call to broaden the evangelical social and moral agenda. Warren has said:

Jesus’ agenda is far bigger than just one or two issues…We have to care about poverty, we have to care about disease, we have to care about illiteracy, we have to care about corruption in government, sex trafficking.

Click to continue »

In the summer 2008 Wilson Quarterly, Wilfred McClay, SunTrust Chair of Humanities at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, calls us to consider once again the importance of study of the humanities, i.e. a collection of disciplines including literature and language, history, philosophy, comparative religion, ethics, history and theory of the arts – and related sub-disciplines and interdisciplinary realms of inquiry.

He provides a helpful account of the unique role of the humanities:

The distinctive task of the humanities, unlike the natural sciences and social sciences, is to grasp human things in human terms, without converting or reducing them to something else: not to physical laws, mechanical systems, biological drives, psychological disorders, social structures, and so on. The humanities attempt to understand the human condition from the inside, as it were, treating the human person as subject as well as object, agent as well as acted-upon.

Hence, the knowledge the humanities offers us is like no other, and cannot be replaced by scientific breakthroughs or superseded by advances in material knowledge.

It comes as no surprise that the humanities in higher education have suffered under the increased focus on technical proficiency and job skills preparation. Click to continue »

Two recent articles point to a phenomenon of our age, and particularly of the rising generation: the obsession with keeping one’s options open.

In the February 26 New York Times, John Tierney describes MIT professor Dan Ariely’s experiment for which he devised a computer game that paid real cash for players to look behind three doors on the screen (you can play the game yourself here). Each player is given a set number of clicks, and with those clicks he or she can switch rooms looking for higher pay-offs – although a further click is required to open the new door. The most rational strategy would be quickly to check out the three rooms and settle on the one offering the highest rewards. Click to continue »

My wife and I were on the road last week, not on college business, which is what usually takes us out of town, but to visit her parents, who live in Quarryville, PA. While en route, we received the sad news that one of our students, Ben Entwistle, became extremely ill and then died. Ben, a rising junior and a roommate of our son David, was with his family in Kenya where they serve with African Inland Mission. Ben had had some previous health problems, but seemed to be doing very well, participating in the men’s soccer program at Covenant and enjoying a lively life on campus.

While in Kenya Ben developed a severe bacterial infection which progressed so rapidly that it was necessary to med-evac him to another location for emergency surgery. With his father Dan at his side, Ben died on board the airplane as they were approaching Johannesburg, South Africa. Click to continue »