Showing Love to our Alma Mater

Posted by admin on Nov 3, 2009 in From the Editor | 0 comments

When someone asks why you spend $18,000 a year on your university tuition, you’d better have a good answer.

For most of us, we do. Still, some mindless souls are without a response. Others have rescinded their reasons for first enrolling at Trinity – the most common answer I have heard being because they have “outgrown” Christianity or the evangelical movement’s application of it.

For the overwhelming majority of us, TWU’s aspiration to be a Christ-centred university played a significant role in our decision to enroll. Of all of Trinity’s defining characteristics – its liberal arts focus, its small and communal atmosphere, its location in one of the warmest climates in Canada – it is its Christ-centredness that defines it.

At the risk of sounding like a mindless IDIS 400 student, just as our worldview defines and encompasses all other aspects of our life, so too does TWU’s Christ-centred approach define its identity and approach to education. As with everything within Protestantism, the room for interpretation on how to achieve this is never-ending. Obvious examples of this approach to education seemingly veering off the course of Christ-centredness are the university’s previously held Puritan values, which barred social dancing, the consumption of alcohol, and employed a de facto Essenic approach to the world outside the university’s walls.

What makes the mission of a Christ-centred university so difficult to achieve is easily understandable when thought of in the same light as an individual’s relationship with and understanding of God. While most religions may serve a god and hold a book as holy, it is Christ and Christianity’s dynamic nature that define the Christian faith, making it a much more difficult and personal faith to live out.

Rather than following a book of rules or even a socially acceptable value system, Christians follow a living God that is not static, simple or straightforward. Detractors to this sentiment may reach for the oft-quoted Hebrews 13:8, reading “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

We’ll trust the author’s (likely Paul’s) understanding of Jesus in his letter to the Hebrews, but as can be evidenced on numerous occasions throughout the Old and New Testaments, God’s heart is malleable and subject to change – sometimes on request, sometimes without warning.

This truth, among many others, makes Christianity an impossible faith to master. When understood in the context of a living relationship, TWU’s aspiration to be Christ-centred university almost seems foolish. When one understands the necessity of having a living relationship in order to be Christ-centred, the aspiration becomes admirable.

With peace + love,
John Hennenfent
Editor-in-Chief