The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness: A Guide for Students

I had no idea this book would be so engaging! Read it if you are looking for a refreshing challenge; an encouragement that your faith should--and CAN--impact every area of your life.

This book turned on the high-beams in my faith journey through life. It gave much greater clarity and insight to long standing struggles with relating and applying my faith to my work - to my learning - to my parenting - to my interests. While I had previously recognized and framed these challenges in a dim light, the authors explain in vivid manner an effective means of understanding how my faith can be made relevant - how it can make a real difference - in this world and in this American culture. Having read this book, I've become charged up for bringing glory to Jesus in every facet of my life!

The idea that the Christian faith and academic endeavors should be allies and not enemies is an outrageous idea to many Christians and non-Christians alike. It should not be. Secularists want to banish faith from the public square. Unfortunately, and unbiblically, many Christians do too--by retreating into a cave where personal and private piety prevails--coupled with a stealth-like strategy of laying low when outside of the cave. Or, some Christians go too far the other way, hoping to transform society primarily through excessively antagonistic actions and political means. Both the retreat or attack approaches fail. Authors Opitz and Melleby have the audacity to believe that faith in Christ informs all of life, including the life of the mind, and that such a confession needs to be worked out gracefully and truthfully in the day-to-day experiences of college students both in the classroom and outside of it. Many recent surveys demonstrate that teenagers raised in the church don't bring their faith to the college campus. Instead, they leave it at home like some discarded item from their youth, such as a toy or doll that they would be ashamed to show their peers. This book is accessible and understandable to teenagers without being too heady or too simplistic. It is sufficiently grown-up to help young people envision a life of faith ahead of them (and) not just as some relic from their past that they might dig out of their parents' attic when they hit 30 or so, get married, and have kids of their own. Hopefully, many copies of this book will be in the hands of future college students, and after being read, be in their minds, hearts, and actions, on the college campus and beyond.