HNRS 3301 Journals--
Ethical Reflections & Self-Examination

"When the miser prefers his gold to justice, it is through no fault of the gold, but of the man; and so with every created thing. For though it be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evily, when inordinately. It is this which some one has briefly said in the verses in praise of the Creator: 'These are Yours, they are good, because You are good who did create them. There is nothing in them of ours, unless the sin we commit when we forget the order of things, and instead of You love that which You have made.'"
--Augustine, The City of God

"Carefully laying aside all legalism, perfectionism, and the idea of earning our position before and life in God, these should be the kind of people we are talking about when we speak of "graduating 'good' people." They should be people who easily and routinely do the things that Christ said and did because they are permeated with, pervasively possessed by, agape love."
--Dallas Willard

"Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God�s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."
--St. Paul (Romans 5:1-5)

One of the goals of the University Honors Program is to help sensitize you to the possibility of ethical and moral development. Indeed, as part of a Christian university we want to do more than make you aware of this, we want to encourage you to pursue it in your life. As Dallas Willard puts it, we want to "graduate good people," people who desire to be like Christ. All the texts we'll be reading this semester, whether intentionally or not, have ethical implications to them. Some directly reflect on matters of character and virtue; others model them for better or worse. Some engage matters of social and economic justice; others look at personal vices; some involve reflections on truth and worship; and others are calls to church reform. All our readings offer opportunities for reflecting on the world and our places in it.

C.S. Lewis in his little book, The Abolition of Man, warns against an education that tries to deny the presence of the moral law in all cultures and that tries to treat traditional codes of ethics as simple subjective feelings rather than real information about the real world. The study of another time and place carries with it the advantage of meeting a world different than our own, but it also carries the risk of simply treating that world as a curiosity removed from ourselves. Despite their imperfect, often contradictory mores, cultures reflect the continuing deposit of God's truth in a fallen world, and are thus worth paying attention to and learning from. They may even make demands on us, calling us to self-examination and repentant change.

Augustine spoke of the need to order our various loves under the love of God. He believed that even the good things of God's good creation could be turned into idols by being exalted above the Creator. When we spend time examining ourselves in light of what is right and wrong, we often discover how far we have to travel to be the people God intends for us to be; we discover our hearts are full of little idols. We are all works in progress in the divine life, and as your professor, I would be lying to claim anything other than this about myself and my own sins. Nonetheless, as Paul tells us, "hope does not disappoint" because God has given us his Holy Spirit in order to pursue the life of holiness and, therefore, wholeness for ourselves and others.

In light of these things, your weekly journal will focus on the ethical ideas, models, and dilemmas you find in each week's reading. You should respond to at least one selection per week. This need not be the whole reading; it can easily focus on one particular element, pattern, or theme if you wish. On a regular basis, I will try to suggest some topics or questions, but you are in no way bound to these.

Your journal should involve three areas of reflection:

1) A clear discussion of the ethical matter in the text. This will likely include judicious quotation and summary of the text in question. I should be able to to tell that you are clearly responding in some way to an assigned reading.

2) An honest, personal reflection on what this means to our own culture, to your life, or to the lives of those around you. Of course, use some discernment in the kind and depth of personal information you include. (I'm neither your pastor nor your counselor.) At the same time, write with telling the truth in mind. The journal is of less value to you otherwise.

3) A consideration of the change required. I'd like you to include some consideration of whether the week's reflection causes you to change your mind in any way or calls on you to change your life. If it calls on you to change, what means are necessary to effect this change? If not, why not? Thinking about the means of change might require you to talk with a pastor, professor, or respected friend. It is permissible to include some speculation about this at times.

Journals will be taken up each week at beginning of class on Wednesdays, and they should be at least two typed double-spaced pages in length. While journals allow you the luxury of freewriting, I do expect to see some care taken in the exposition of your ideas.  You should observe all the marks of strong college-level writing. You are more than welcome to be experimental or creative in how you present your ideas; however, choose your words with a sense of craft. This, too, is a good.

[Click here for alternative journal assignment.]