Author Archives: mhick255

Francis Collins Stepping Down

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Francis Collins, director of the Human Genome Research Institute and one of our featured speakers at Following Christ 2008, announced yesterday that he is resigning in order to “explore writing projects and other professional opportunities.” Here is the official news release. 

Dr. Collins has been one of America’s premier scientists, and he is also a Christian.  His book, The Language of God, is subtitled “A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief.”  He’s also an incredible speaker, who is very comfortable discussing both his professional work and his personal testimony. 

Back in February, Dr. Collins spoke at Stanford University at an event co-sponsored by the InterVarsity chapter there; you can download audio or video from his talk.  It’s well worth it.  In addition to presenting a clear case for Christianity, his personal testimony is inspiring – from hardcore atheist to devoted Christian, all while being confronted daily with the realities of suffering and death as a practicing physician. Like so many other thoughtful Christians, Collins credits C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity as one of the key influences in his journey toward God. 

I will be very interested to see what he does next.  May God bless him in his endeavors. 

Greatness in the Kingdom of God

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In my work with the Emerging Scholars Network and Faculty Ministry, we call Christian students and faculty to be “redemptive influences within higher education.”  People often ask me what that means, and it’s tempting to paint a picture of thousands of C.S. Lewises, spiritual giants at every college in the country.  First of all, that would be unrealistic – someone like C.S. Lewis comes along once in a century.  But more importantly, it would give a distorted image of what a faithful follower of Christ in the academy looks like.  C.S. Lewis is famous because of his many acclaimed books, now being made into blockbuster movies, and his justified fame as both an apologist and scholar. However, as Lewis himself pointed out in The Great Divorce, greatness in heaven is very different than greatness in the world.  Worldly success, such as that enjoyed by Lewis, is not a guaranteed result of faithfulness to Christ.  The very opposite may be the case. Continue reading →

OneManOffice: Last.fm

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Ok, so maybe this doesn’t exactly fit into to my series on free (or cheap) tools for your single person office, but I think it does.  The right music helps me work better.  When I’m writing, instrumental jazz (especially John Coltrane) or choral music (especially Zadok the Priest) keeps me in my groove.  When I’m taking care of repetitive tasks, music that I haven’t heard before eats up all of my “distraction energy” and helps me stay on task.  Physical work, like cleaning my office, is when I turn to podcasts.  

Here’s the problem, though: I’m cheap, I haven’t added substantially to my music collection since college, and I get bored listening to the same stuff too much.  I purchase maybe 2 CDs a year, usually for my wife, and I worry that if I get too used to buying stuff from iTunes, I’ll blow my entertainment budget.  So where do I find music? 

That’s where Last.fm comes in.   Continue reading →

Religion as a Conflict of Interest?

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This morning, an interesting article from the UC student newspaper caught my eye.  Here’s the lede:

The University of Cincinnati’s Student Government Association and Faculty Senate recently voted to support including “gender identity and expression” in the university’s non-discrimination statement. 

I don’t think that is too surprising: the city of Cincinnati passed a similar law in 2006 and, as the article notes, UC was just following the leads of Ohio U. and Ohio State. 

However, near the end of the article, a comment caught my eye: Continue reading →

Meditation on Scripture

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I recently read Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a book I had long wanted to read and which I wish I had read much sooner.  Among the many wise things Bonhoeffer writes in this short book, he describes “the day alone,” and counsels Christians to spend time alone – really, alone with God – in what he calls “meditation.”  This meditation 

is to be devoted to the Scriptures, private prayer, and intercession, and it has no other purpose.  There is no occasion here for spiritual experimentation. 

The whole time, though, is to be guided by meditation on Scripture.  Both your private prayer and your intercession for others, Bonhoeffer advises, should be guided by the Scriptures you meditate upon. 

In another book that I have started reading, Why Church Matters by Jonathan R. Wilson, Wilson describes theology as “the language of faith, not the language about faith.” Bonhoeffer centers our prayers in the words of Scripture so that God’s language will shape us, rather than our false ideas of God shaping our reading of Scripture.Â