Dear Professor Theophilus:

I believe that God wants to use my life in some areas such as law, politics, philosophy, or possibly education, to help bring morality back to this country and promote a Christian worldview in a society that's overwhelmingly mixed up. Your example has encouraged my life goals, and I'm beginning to learn that I truly need to be "fully equipped" to give an answer for the hope that I have within me. If you have the time, I'd like to hear about your education and experiences.

Reply:

You don't want to follow my early example; I made every educational mistake in the book, and even abandoned my faith for 10 years of my intellectual formation. How God rescued and found a way to use such a fool as myself is a mystery of His providence. My early educational decisions were made on the basis of the radical politics I followed at the time. I didn't even begin to study ethical and political philosophy until after I had already earned my M.A., and when I did study it I learned all the wrong things. If you want to hear more of that story you can read my personal testimony here. The only sensible things that I did during that period were to marry a fine woman (though I didn't deserve her) and drop out of school for a few years to learn about real work (though I didn't do it for the right reasons — I was waiting for the revolution and thought I had better join the proletariat.)

But I do think I can offer you some advice. Get a classical liberal-arts education. Read the great books of Western Civilization, both Christian (like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvin) and non-Christian (like Plato, and especially Aristotle). Follow the advice of the great Christian scholar C.S. Lewis: For every single contemporary book that you read, read three or four old ones. This will keep you from being shut into the narrow little views of our time. When you read, read not only "books about," but also literature, including the great poets like Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton, and the great novelists like Jane Austen and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Among the more recent Christian authors, I've mentioned C.S. Lewis; be sure to try not only his books about Christianity but his Christian novels. And don't forget that unique and preeminent in great literature is the Bible itself — no mere human work, but divinely inspired.

You should do this kind of reading no matter what your field of study — even if you pursue a mathematical or scientific major, like computer science, rather than a liberal-arts major, like philosophy. Besides, even if you do take a liberal-arts major, you may have to do such reading largely on your own anyway; the modern university is increasingly hostile to the things which the liberal arts used to teach. If your major is in math and science instead, be sure to learn what Christians are doing in your field — for example the biochemist Michael Behe and the philosopher-mathematician William Dembski. There is a revolution going on, although the secular world hasn't noticed yet.

One more thing: Remember that there is no such thing as a solitary Christian (I say that all the time). When you go off to college, don't think "It's just you and me, God." Instead, gather together for fellowship and intellectual support with other Christians. Find Christian faculty mentors too.

Here is a great Christian Web site where you can find vast numbers of Christian works, including several that I mentioned above: Christian Classics Ethereal Library. A lot of good articles for Christian students are also archived at Leadership U.

May the Word of the Lord be a lamp to your feet and a light to your studies. Remember that intellectual pride is from Satan — but intellect is from God.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

ALL THE SORDID DETAILS

Dear Professor Theophilus:

I read a syndicated column by religion writer Terry Mattingly, featuring what seemed to be your view that parents should admit their past sins to their teens. As a mom, I've always followed the advice, "Don't share details about your past, because your teens may think 'If Mom did it, I can do it too.' " That's just how my son thinks; he says that to learn about something, he has to experience it. Would you comment?

Reply:

You're the nice lady who asked about that column during a radio interview, aren't you? You mentioned at the time that you'd emailed your question too. Of course you know my answer already because I gave it to you over the air, but here it is again for everyone else.

No, I don't think parents should confess all their old sins to their kids. The point didn't come across clearly in Terry's column (which may be my fault rather than his), but here's what I meant. Parents need to confess their old sins to God and repent of them. If they fail to do that, their consciences stand over them as accusers, telling them "How dare you tell your kids not to do what you used to do yourself?" That weakens their ability to teach God's law with authority, confidence, and conviction. But if they do repent and receive God's forgiveness, then the memory of their sins no longer reduces their moral authority. In fact, it increases it. They remember what their sins did to them, and, having been forgiven, they no longer need to run away from the knowledge.

To put it another way, I think that when parents feel ashamed to teach their children right from wrong, the root cause isn't that they sinned when they were young, but that they haven't yet fully repented.

Here's how to answer your son. (I'm plagiarizing myself; these words are adapted from my book How to Stay Christian in College.) Is it really true that you have to experience something to make wise choices about it? It's certainly true that there are some things you can't decide about from the outside. You need inside knowledge. As a Christian, for instance, I've found that in order to know Jesus Christ you have to just trust Him; there is no experiment that you can perform, no test to which you can subject Him, except trust itself. But there are other things in this life that aren't like that at all. Drug addiction is one; suicide is another. Nobody would say that you have to be a drug addict in order to become wise about drugs; nobody would say that you have to commit suicide in order to find out whether it is a good idea. In fact, in these cases experience is the one thing that keeps you from being able to choose wisely about them.

Over the centuries the human race has discovered quite a number of cases like this — behaviors that impair instead of enhancing the ability to choose wisely, experiences that subtract from rather than adding to understanding. That's one of the reasons they have been called sins and vices, and that people have been warned away from them instead of encouraged to try them. Another example of things like that is sex outside marriage. If you really want to understand it, you have to stay away from it. If you plunge right into it, you will no longer understand it. The only way to understand sex from the inside is to understand it from inside marriage.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

WHAT IS IT ABOUT YOU AND WOMEN?

Dear Professor Theophilus:

Your Office Hours dialogues seem to feature more conversations with young women than with men. Is there a reason for this, or is it accidental?

Reply:

Now I wonder what made you ask that question! But your observation is mistaken; Office Hours dialogues actually feature more conversations with young men. The main reason is that there are certain topics which need to be discussed, but which it would be inappropriate for me to discuss with a young woman in my office alone.

Young women do seem a little more likely than young men to send questions for "Ask Theophilus." I'm not sure why.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

THEOPHILUS THE HYPOCRITE

Dear Professor Theophilus:

I would like to begin by expressing my admiration for the style and manner of your column. My atheism notwithstanding, I can appreciate well-written propaganda. (And that is not, I might add, meant as an insult, quite the contrary.) Now that I have flattered you (sort of), I will stab you in the back by accusing you of hypocrisy. When someone wrote to say that "Crisis of Faithlessness" was unrealistic, you wrote

I've noticed that critics are more likely to protest my characters when they are taken from actual conversation — as this one was — than when I make them up. The greater the realism, the sharper the protests. Hmm.

Now this is transparent (you must have been off). This is not nice. Implicitly claiming that you understand your opponents' mind better than he does is not goodwill by a long shot. And incidentally, I don't imagine that you would consider it a favor if one of your philosophical opponents wrote a dialogue where the Christian rep was an insincere drip who considered his worldview false and was himself overcompensating with anticlerical hostility while being inwardly racked with self-doubt.

Reply:

I thank you for your letter and assure you of my goodwill. But what can I say? The conversation with "Standish Wanhope" really occurred. The features you dislike in my portrait of him have the disadvantage that they happen to be taken from life. You guys just don't want to believe it.

Personally, I liked him. He was a nice fella — just confused.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY

Dear Professor Theophilus:

I enjoyed "To Marry or To Burn." Like you, my wife and I married young (I was 19, she was two years older). Soon we'll celebrate our 30th anniversary. We've counseled our children and other young people that it's not just marrying young that causes problems — waiting too long to marry has consequences too. It's nice to hear from someone who thinks likewise.

Reply:

Thanks for your kind and encouraging words. I rejoice with you in the blessings of marriage and family.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

If you have questions you’d like to Ask Theo, send us an email and we'll pass it along to him.