Book Review - An Invitation to Academic Studies (Faithful Learning Series) (29/8)

If you’re in college or university you might be wondering how to integrate what you learn with your faith. This is especially true for me as I read psychology in my university days. So should be budding students handle their faith and studies?

Jay Green hopes to be able to encourage this generation of students to be able to understand their studies well and at the same time be able to hold on or even grow in their to the faith. First he examines and evaluates the 3 common models of how Christians in the past have tried to handle these two dichotomy. The first paradigm is avoidance, avoiding to study in higher education; the second is to be defensive, to equip students to the be able to handle the ‘attacks’ they will receive in higher education; lastly, to see the two as dualistic, to see them as wholly separate realms. Green then briefly show the strength and weakness of each of them and proposes his fourth way.

Green suggests that by being a christian, we can not only learn legitimately from our disciplines, we can also renew or even transform them, to show how man ought to think God’s thoughts after him in every field. Green then moves on to exhort budding students to be able to thorough soak up the individual disciplines that they are in so as to learn the trade of their crafts. I feel that this is an important point that ought to be raised, far too often christians are not as rigorous as their non-christian counterpart in trying to learn within their discipline. Green is right to point this out. Lastly, Green highlights the importance of Christian students to be living within a christian community so we will sharpen ourselves not only with the tools of the trade, but also stay faithful to the biblical framework given to us by God.

What I think is lacking within this book is an example to show how the transformation paradigm affects one particular discipline. It does sounds like a very good idea, but how does it really look like practically? Other than the one small issue, this book is really a good book for any christians that are currently in a college or would in going into one soon.

As with every faithful learning series, I look forward to other booklets on the various disciplines that will be published in the near future.

Rating: 3.75 / 5

Disclaimer: I was given this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

If you're interested you can get it here, and here (free international shipping).