Being Graded on One's Faith

*** I wrote this post a few years ago, when it was inspired by the conversation between C. Thi Nguyen and Ezra Klein from the Feb. 25, 2022 Ezra Klein show podcast***

Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, works on games. Because of his focus on games and their functions/structures, he provides an interesting view on things like social media, conspiracy theories, and even exercise in our contemporary world. He invites us to explore how games with their point systems offer “a distillation of reality” showing us clearly what the values are within the constrained system a game offers. This allows for us to view both the game itself, its objectives, its framework, its incentives, and also for us to view ourselves as we interact with the game and are shaped/formed by it. 

This entire structure opens up some new avenues for me in a conversation I regularly have with my colleagues in the Department of Bible, Missions, and Ministry. As a department we teach every student at the university five required classes within the “Bible” curriculum. (I put “Bible” in quotes because this is the university word for the broad theological disciplines including classes like theology, ethics, history, missiology, and ministry, on top of biblical text classes and biblical languages classes.) Good resources and conversations exist around the formative and deformative power of grades in education, though I would very much like to see more, but here I am particularly interested in how that might play out in the context of a required class for a general undergraduate student. Let’s take the required first semester course as our example. 

In their first semester, every student must enroll in and cannot drop the course titled “Jesus: His Life and Teachings”. The course generally covers the four canonical Gospels and, in the rhetoric of accrediting bodies and higher ed big data, has as its objectives educating students on the “basic message of the biblical texts” and on “historical, literary, and theological interpretations of a particular topic”. In other words, the course claims to value and assess student progress on understanding these two broad areas. One set of questions Nguyen invites us to consider is whether the “point system” of the courses actually measure those things (and closely connected, are those things what one actually wants to measure) and the second set of questions invites us to consider, if they do measure those things, what that kind of point system does to a student. By way of framing those two questions further, let me state clearly that the context here is a faith-based university that claims in its mission statement to bolster the faith of its students.

Let’s begin with the first question. Can a point system measure a student’ understanding of the “basic message of the biblical texts” and the “historical, literary, and theological interpretations of a particular topic”? Well, I suppose it depends. It depends on what one thinks the “basic message” of sacred texts means. Should one suppose that the basic message is some kind of discrete piece of knowledge and is, therefore, not only understandable, but reproduceable, then yes, a point system can measure whether or not a student has apprehended that discrete knowledge. However, if the basic message of sacred texts is instead some kind of an encounter with divinity and human ancestors who have also encountered that divinity, then perhaps a point system is inadequate to the task. How does one measure encounter with the utterly other and mysterious? Should such a thing even be measured? The same line of thinking could apply to the second objective. I wonder, therefore, whether our own learning objectives limit not only our imaginations and faith as instructors, but also whether they limit the possibilities for our students in the classroom. 

This worry for our students leads me naturally into the next consideration: how does such a point system impact those who labor underneath its tutelage? To me, this is the much more pressing question and one that haunts my mind on those late nights and early mornings when sleep eludes me. Several years ago, one distressed student came to me shortly after an exam. The cause of the distress? “Dr. Boyles, I’ve been in church my whole life! How am I going to fail Bible?” Now, this is neither the time nor do I have the space to address this phenomenon where a “C” or a “B” somehow becomes equivalent to failing in a student’s mind, which was the situation for this student; an “F” was a remote possibility, probable only should the student cease doing anything in the class or should they skip an exam or fail to submit the paper. What is of greater interest, though, is the experience of cognitive dissonance that reveals a major effect of this point system: the student’s self-identity was one of faithful Christian life, and yet the point system communicated to them that this was not an accurate self-image to hold. I suspect a variety of sources play into this narrative, but the one I wish to highlight here is the fact that the boundaries between academic success/capability at a Christian college and the understanding of one’s faithfulness to Christ have been eroded, if they ever existed at all. This is one in a long line of markers of “success” that have been substituted for Christian faith and one which I suggest we must work to erase in our student’s lives. It is not the case that the 4.0 student is more faithful to Christ anymore than it is the case that the rich are more blessed by God than the poor. In fact, Jesus has something to say about this in Luke 16, where he tells a provocative story about a rich man and a poor beggar named Lazarus who sits at his gate day after day. In one of those customary Jesus moments of irony, the rich man receives torment after death simply by virtue of being rich while alive and Lazarus receives comfort with Abraham simply because he was poor in life (see Abraham’s words in Luke 16:25). I wonder how many of us at Christian universities and in Christian churches are working alongside Jesus to overturn this false structure inherent to the game we play in higher education classrooms and in our broader society. How many of us are even aware of this power acting on us from all around? Perhaps the games we play are not really games at all, but the tools of idols and false gods.

An Election Reflection

***NB: This is meant neither to minimize the real vulnerabilities that many people face in our world depending on the winds of political change nor to minimize the real import of who may win the US elections in 2024 or who may serve in political office around the world. Rather, as is all too apparent from the experience of early Christians under Roman rule, it is meant to show that we have resources and forerunners in the faith whose example can challenge our own ways of living in the contemporary world, whether the best or worst political outcomes should come to pass.***

This year, 2024, has been an oddity for me as we have been living abroad in Leipzig, Germany. I can imagine, mostly by the use of my memories from 2016 and 2020, what it must have been like in the US leading up to Nov 5, 2024, but in my life in Europe, the US elections are a distant thought. I have only had one conversation with a European individual about US politics in all of August, September, October, and the beginning of November. I don’t think this is due to uninterest on their part as I have seen individuals consuming news about the US elections. (Perhaps it is more due to a subdued manner with respect to broaching the topic with a US citizen.) But it has led to a different experience for me when it comes to my regular pre-election meditations and prayers. 

For almost two decades now, I have spent time in the lead up to major elections in the US meditating on Paul’s words in Philippians and, more recently, on a small comment from a beloved mentor and friend. As to the first, early in my life, Paul’s comments in Phil 3 lodged themselves in my brain according to the NIV translation: “But our citizenship is in heaven…” Yet, this translation takes considerable intellectual work for me to understand what Paul’s words really intend. Paul uses the word politeuma here to communicate a particular idea, one which is served by the addition of the alternative translation, “but we are a colony of heaven…” See, citizenship is a fine idea to communicate everything, but as a US citizen living abroad in Germany, I have not only desired to obey German laws and behave in ways that will be appropriate to my current host country, but I have also been interested in minimizing my “Americanness” broadly. However, what Paul intends in Phil 3 is much closer to what life is like at an embassy in a foreign country. For Paul, the Jew who has lived in the world of Jewish Diaspora and the legacy of first Greek empire and Alexander’s vision of cosmopolitanism leading to the Hellenizing of the ancient Mediterranean, being a politeuma means a life of resisting the host culture and way of being in the world even as one lives amidst it. Hence, we must balance the idea of citizenship – that one‘s ultimate loyalty and responsibility lie with a different polity than where one resides – with the language of colony – the idea that one lives among a community who actively work to resist accommodation to ways of life that are not our own. As a citizen of heaven/resident of a colony of heaven, I am neither subject to the laws and customs of an earthly nation nor am I to allow the culture and way of life of an earthly nation to colonize my life. I am a member of Christ’s resistance, of heaven’s beach front, of God’s initial cultivation of a land gone to seed.

In terms of U.S. elections, then, I consider it paramount to remember that neither my ultimate duty nor my ultimate responsibility rest in the US electoral system or the changing winds of power in various capitols and city halls. Moreover, my hope is directed towards the future victory of God’s reign in Christ, as it is already manifest in my life and in the Church. This foundational reality and hope, then, can determine my choices and my emotional outlook. Ironically, this exact reality is ever-present on the US currency: “In God we trust”, not in the US president, not in the US constitutional system of governance, not in the US economy as it is represented in the world through the US currency wherein those words are written, or the US military force, or the US diplomatic corps, or in any other political economic, or cultural power. Instead, elections serve as a reminder of my need to resist all the ways that it could be so easy and unconscious to rely on US global prominence, and often dominance, as a source of peace and strength and hope. No, my hope and my life must be built on nothing less or other than Jesus’s love and righteousness. Practically, this challenges me to neither live in fear or pessimism based on a majority of US citizens seeing an election as other than how I see it nor to live in exultation or hope based on a majority of US citizens seeing the election exactly how I see it. Salvation and condemnation will neither be found in US political power or any other human power. 

This leads to the second element of my recent meditations: through which circumstances will I trust (have faith in) God? Should I be living in a colony of heaven, a natural corollary arises: I live on the territory God controls and over which God has ultimate authority. Now, unlike with an embassy, I am convinced that God’s outpost, the colony of heaven, is neither a gift from a host polity nor does it continue by the goodwill of said host. No, the Earth and all that is in it is the Lord’s. Thus, living in an outpost of heaven does not mean God’s authority over this colony where I live is in trouble, even should hostilities increase between the world and God. The New Testament regularly reflects the experience of early Christians living in an empire that was hostile to God’s reign and so these texts imagine and describe the world and its powers as in opposition to God. Even in this experience, though, the authors are convinced of the ultimate authority of God and therefore of the certainty one can place in God’s authority. For example, Paul himself in Phil 2 quotes a hymn by which early Christians reminded themselves that the day is coming when every knee will bow before Christ and every tongue will confess him as Lord (one of the imperial titles). As Paul would say elsewhere in Romans 8, he is convinced that nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Certainly, my circumstances in the US and the world are more secure and fortunate than most if not all early Christians and so it is worth reminding myself of their example should I be lulled into a sense of comfort through worldly political circumstance or should I be jarred into a sense of fear based on political shifts away from my own desired outcomes. Thus, I ask myself whether those for whom I voted win or whether they lose, will I trust in God? Will I rely on and put my faith in the love of God and the already but not yet reign of God, no matter the current, coming, or future reign of any political candidate for office or the military, economic, or cultural reign of any nation, whether my own or another? In whom/what do I trust?

The Worlds of From Software and the Post-Decadent Society

 

Over the past few years I have enjoyed (I say with a bit of sarcasm and sincerity) some of the well-known games of FromSoftware. From Dark Souls to Elden Ring, these games are often acclaimed for two things: 1) unapologetic difficulty (signified in the mocking pop-up text “YOU DIED”) and 2) atmospheric lore that receives very little exposition. My gateway to these games came through other cult classics that imitated these elements and remixed them with other gameplay modes and mechanics: Hollow Knight, Salt and Sacrifice, Ender Lilies, etc. In my most recent foray into the Lands Between of Elden Ring, I was struck by a central conceit in all of these games: their setting in the post-destruction of a decadent world. 

Perhaps it is exactly because Elden Ring had so often been called a beautiful game in my exposure that caused this realization to sink in so deeply or perhaps it is this particular social-cultural moment in our own world, but as I stepped out of the opening cemetery area into the open landscapes of Limgrave, I was struck by how beautiful the sight was, but I also noted that it was beauty in the midst of great decay. Not only are there hanging bodies, which may or not be the dead, but are definitely tortured, but there were ruins everywhere. Partially collapsed edifices of a former age of grandeur function as a kind of spice of the landscape. As one wanders through the ruins, it quickly becomes clear that not only were these structures massive, but the people who built and used them must have been much larger as well. The military forces of any given regional war lord in this once united land begin to appear the small and petty forces of the small and petty bosses that one defeats along the journey. 

Take, for example, Godrick the Grafted. Godrick is the first major boss players are likely to encounter and he was my first major challenge. His soldiers were the first enemies my character dispatched. (I avoided the initial Tree Sentinel boss because it seemed ill-advised to fight a large calvary man when I had just stepped out of the grave.) At first my character could take down one of Godrick’s men with a sneaky backstab and a couple follow up strikes, but it was not long before the sneaky backstab would take down a soldier. I learned of Godrick himself from a number of characters and their accounting of him continually mentioned his “grafting”. A local noble I met criticized him harshly stating that he hardly qualified to even rule, despite his lineage from the former “golden” lord. The critique asserted Godrick’s own smallness. I discovered what all this meant upon walking into the courtyard before Godrick’s throne room: Godrick had attempted to make himself large like his ancestors and those past people by cutting up the bodies of other people and attaching their body parts to himself, a process he called grafting. Even with his numerous arms and numerous weapons, though, he remained quite a bit smaller than even the throne he supposedly used. Limgrave and its ruler are a pale shadow of the former glory of this once great society. Not only that, but in his desire to become great, he became a twisted monstrosity that bore no resemblance to the splendor of the former age of prosperity.

This pattern is true throughout the lands I’ve visited in FromSoftware titles. An age of glory gave way to an age of complacency or decadence, a tragedy occurred, and the world as it now exists is not only a pale shadow of its one-time glory, but has become a twisted, monstrous shadow of that glory. It is an image that springs to my mind often in the US, perhaps pointing to the beginning of a turn from Ross Douthat’s “decadence”. In middle America, in the places not experiencing great economic revival or continued economic prosperity, empty, run-down buildings spot or dominate the landscape. People lounge or walk listlessly in streets. Occasionally loose animals can be seen roaming around. Stories from these locales show the same: drug overdose deaths rise, full employment remains elusive in spite of continuing demand for workers, people have less hope for the future, fewer young people are pursuing education, and most Americans believe some version of a horror story awaits on the other side of the 2024 elections. (Moreover, one presidential candidate’s vulgarity and disregard for law and custom is perhaps more than a bit reflective of Godrick and his own vulgarities, disregard for responsibility, and pursuit of self-aggrandizement…) Mayhap, the desolation of the post-decadent society does not await us, but I have found myself wondering whether FromSoft’s success with these titles may have a little to do with their possible prescience for a future many may instinctually predict in our inner selves.