Pushing Back the Curtain

I've been thinking about this faith/learning/technology mystery for a while now, and am only just now getting around to posting. I see a little bit of the integration when I'm writing papers and studying for New Testament class. For papers, sometimes I use Bible verses. It's a lot easier to go to Biblegateway.com and type in the phrase I want than to dig through my Bible for a reference. But that seems a weak integration. I could get along fine without the technology. It doesn't really have much to do with my faith, quite frankly.

I really need to define technology. It could mean computer technology, obviously, and that's what I've been thinking about, since this is, after all, a computer class. But really, technology is anything human-made. An axe is technology. So is the physical equipment I use in biology lab. So that's where I turned to next.

Just yesterday, I extracted my own DNA from my own cheek cells and poked at it with an unbent paper clip. The fact that all my genetic makeup was contained in that stringy glob of clear, thread-like structures was amazing. God made me out of that? That's how he told my body what to look like? He knit me from that tiny, delicate yarn? He knit everybody from such yarn? It seemed so impossible, at the same time so simple, and yet still amazing. My God is very great. That's what I learned from using the seemingly simple technology of test tubes, salt water, and ethanol. The technology helped me to learn about science, and about my God. Now that's integration!

Faith, Learning, and Technology

I finally saw an obvious integration of faith, learning, and technology. It was in biology class. We watched a video about DNA replication and protein synthesis. It was made by a Christian group of scientists, and touched on things like Irreducible Complexity while also teaching us about the science of it all. Irreducible Complexity is the idea that many things are so complex that if one component was removed, it would cease to function. So, there's really no way such a system or object could have come about by change. The complexity is so irreducible that it shows definite signs of intelligent and intentional creation.

It's been hard for me to comprehend the integration of faith, learning, AND technology. I've done faith and learning together, but I'm an environmental studies major-- technology is not necessarily big in my mind as something that can be integrated with my faith and schooling. It was obvious to me that you could integrate learning and technology, but how do you mix faith into all of it? That's the question I will seek to answer.

Cam Studio

As I type this, I am running the recording software, CamStudio. It is taking a video of everything I do on the desktop. Pretty cool. I could use this for dozens of things. I could even make tutorials of games and Microsoft word and stuff. See attached video.

Easter Break

For Easter break, my friend Marta and I went to Marta's aunt and uncle's house. They live about 40 minutes from Montreat, and it was much too far for Marta and I to go home to New England.



Two baby bunnies on the farm.


Unfortunately, I am allergic to bunnies. I swelled up like a balloon and had to take my asthma inhaler after this. =(


Marta and I on Easter morning. We got Easter baskets!


My mother had sent a package. Inside was candy and a stuffed bunny. This one didn't give me asthma!


After church that morning, we hiked Max Patch, a bald mountain that has a 360-degree view for miles and miles and miles.


Taking pictures on top of Max Patch.









Me, Marta, and most of the Ostergaard family on top of Max Patch. Sarah was taking the picture.


Quite the view.








Us and the kids at our creekside picnic lunch.









An amazing picture (I think) that looks like the head of... something. I thought a dragon. Marta said a fish. I think we should say parasaurolophus and call it even.

Authonomite

Just before spring break, I found out about a site called Authonomy.com. It's a website for writers, where you can upload your novels for other people to read. I decided to join, and uploaded the novel I wrote for Nation Novel Writing Month last November. Everyone who reads it and comments seems to like it, so I am content. It still needs work, obviously, but I guess it's pretty good.

Anyway, I know that God has given me a gift for writing. Maybe Authonomy is the way he's going to share my writing with the rest of the world. I hope so. That would be awesome.

Threads

Last Friday, there was a dessert banquet for all the Montreat students who achieved the Dean's List and Distinguished Scholar. I had wondered what that "Distinguished Scholar" blurb meant at the bottom of my GPA summary. Apparently, it means any student with a GPA of 3.9 or higher. I'd gotten perfect grades in all my classes last semester, so of course I made the list. (Uh-oh. Where did I put those ego pins?)

At the banquet, Dottie Shuman gave a little speechy-thing on the integration of faith and learning at Montreat. I started to think about my own faith and learning experiences.

"All knowledge is interconnected," Brad Daniel said today in class. "We just organize it into groups for our own convenience." New Testament class goes with biology goes with English goes with history goes with environmental studies. Maybe it's just me, but I can see how everything I'm learning fits together. Sometimes I get mixed up about which class I learned something from. It seems just as likely to have come from Chaplain Steve's class as Dr. McCarthy's. It all just matches so well in my mind.

Faith is just one of the many continuous threads in my studies. In history, we examine how human nature and religions have led to the shaping of the world as we know it. We see how worldviews affect how people treat the environment. We study the spiritual veins in the literature we read. And, perhaps most of all, we marvel at the complexities of the human body. How can you read Pride and Prejudice and think the words fell into place by accident? No one claims that. How can you look at a tree or a cell and say it came about by chance? God has embroidered his authorship all over creation. If we ignore the title page and the writer confronts us about copyright, what can we say? We are without excuse. And so men are without excuse when they ignore the handwriting of God.

Christians and the Environment?

One day last week, in my introduction to environmental studies class, Dr. Brad Daniel brought up the fact that, oftentimes, Christianity is not mentally connected to the environmental movement. We just often don't display that much interest in what happens to the world around us. We'll fight for unborn children and the sanctity of marriage, but we seldom show concern for the creation we inhabit.

Many are surprised to find that Montreat, a tiny little Christian college in the backwaters of western North Carolina, is very environmentally aware and active in the environmental education movement.

This is really a sad fact. Many non-Christians find our apparent lack of interest in the environment a turn-off to our beliefs. We contradict ourselves. "If you say that God made the whole world, why don't you care more about it? I mean, it's the work of his very hands, if what you say is true! So why don't you take better care of it?"

I, for one, want to break this mold. I am both an English major and an environmental studies major. I may want to be an environmental educator later, or an environmental lawyer. Tonight, I saw "Kilowatt Ours" for the kickoff of the Dorm Energy Competition. It gave me some ideas for living an environmentally sound lifestyle once I graduate from college (and probably grad school). But I've also got ideas for living in a more "green" fashion while I'm still here at Montreat, and the energy challenge is a good start. Also, I want to keep on top of things. I want to learn about God's creation-- how it works, and how best to care for it.

I'm a gardener. Have been for almost as long as I can remember. I have a beautiful and extensive flower garden in front of my house in New Hampshire. I love birds, too. They are the tiny little passions of my life, next to words and punctuation. But some day, the birds might be gone. That won't be for hundreds of years if it happens at all, but still. I don't want that to happen. And, as demonstrated in several episodes of Star Trek, if you alter the course of something by just a few degrees a long distance from its target, it'll end up lightyears off-course. If I can make a tiny little dent today, it might someday have enormous reverberations. The same is true of living in an environmentally injurious fashion. Your small action could even mean human lives in later centuries. A sobering conviction.

So how 'bout it? Are you ready to break some stereotypes? 'Cause I sure am!