Salient Comments from The Book, Part 2
By David Baggett | Bulletin Roundtable
In this roundtable, our team is discussing Scripture verses that are particularly significant for them, and sharing some spiritual insights we hope you’ll find helpful. You can find Part 1 here.
Christopher Reese
Editor-in-Chief
David Baggett
This month’s Roundtable is about formative biblical texts, those that have shaped us, been particularly significant to us, in one way or another, personally, academically, or otherwise. Since arriving at Houston Christian, I’ve kept a journal every day chronicling, besides lots of mundane personal details of my life in which exactly nobody save my buddy Zak Schmoll would have the slightest interest, the unfolding development of the Center for the Foundations of Ethics here at HCU of which I’m privileged to serve as director. I just began my fourth volume of such journals, and each year, right from its inception, a different verse has impressed itself on me as a guiding theme for the upcoming year. In each case it’s proved altogether apropos.
The first year’s journal, during the height of the pandemic, was about how we are not to hate humble beginnings. Zechariah 4:10: “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin….” Whenever we launch out on a new venture, however strongly we feel compelled to pursue it, challenges are sure to come, and an avalanche of questions will occur. Will it succeed? Will we cast a compelling enough vision? Will the project capture people’s imaginations and spark their interest? Will others see what we see? Will it make a difference?
At the start of the initiative, there’s no track record of successes to point to, nor, usually, a big budget to rely on. Resources can be scarce, and if you’re the one spearheading the project, nobody else is likely to see quite what you see, at least at first. Part of your job description is to help them see it, and to believe in the mission before anyone else does. This can be lonely, but God promises to be with us every step of the way. If our marching orders are from God, he can be trusted, and it is time to walk by faith and not by sight. Don’t despise those humble beginnings. God’s as much in them as in the later successes. Those first fledgling steps are important to get right, committing your way into his hands, bathing the project in prayer right from the start.
The second year’s journal theme came from Ecclesiastes 11:1: “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days.” 2021 was a time to get busy planting seeds, casting bread, exploring possibilities. It was a time to sow, in the hopes of seeing a harvest later. So we undertook an array of initiatives—we kept running our website MoralApologetics.com; we started a small desktop publishing outfit; we applied for grants; we inquired into starting a Certificate program at HCU; we began a Student Fellows program; we invited a speaker to campus; we encouraged scholarship in moral apologetics and the foundations of ethics; we started planning for a major conference; and plenty more besides.
The third year’s journal, for 2022, had for its theme Galatians 6:9: “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” This verse turned out to be tremendously prescient in light of what transpired last year. Admixed with some great things were real challenges and occasional discouragements; such is life. We should be neither surprised nor inordinately disappointed at life’s lows that are bound to come. God often has vitally important lessons to teach us in the valleys.
I’m confident the Holy Spirit inspired those words in Galatians because he knew we’d need to hear them. Growing weary in well doing is natural, but this verse tells us to persevere, not to give up, knowing that we will reap a harvest if we hang in there. The work is not in vain. It is less our fears that put us in touch with life’s deepest realities than our God-given hopes and visions and dreams.
The fourth year’s guiding motif can be found in 1 Corinthians 3:6, where Paul wrote, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” From day one we were acutely mindful that, if the Center were to succeed, it would be God’s doing. He may use some of our efforts to plant and water, but God’s the one to give the increase. We never labored under any other idea; we knew we were desperate for God’s blessing and favor; and for such things we earnestly prayed.
This is actually quite liberating—it has lessened the pain of disappointments and helped us remember whom to thank when victories took place. Right at the end of 2022 the Center received a major financial gift, along with smaller ones we appreciated just as much. It really did and does feel like God is moving in a fresh way, enabling others to start catching the vision of the Center and coming alongside to make it a reality.
The idea of such a Center came to me fully formed and unbidden almost seventeen years ago. What started as a vision when I was a young man persists as a dream now that I am becoming an old man. I have changed, but the vision/dream has not. It remains this: a culture-building community of Christian scholars from an assortment of disciplines working collaboratively to engage in cutting-edge work plumbing the depths of moral apologetics and the foundations of ethics.
Nor has God changed, who’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. And now his track record of faithfulness in which we can invest our hope and trust is longer than ever. Aslan is on the move, and the best is yet to come.
— David Baggett is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for the Foundations of Ethics at Houston Christian University. He is the author or editor of about fifteen books, most recently Telling Tales: Intimations of the Sacred in Popular Culture written with Marybeth Baggett.
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