Welcome to Students Incorporated. I'm your host, Mr. Jason. Join me weekly as my team
and I produce content that's informative, positive, fun, and uplifting. This podcast
is created and produced with the help of students from the International Community School of
Bangkok. In today's episode, we have the privilege of hosting Dr. Jim and Sarah Drexler, both
experienced educators from the U.S. with connections to higher education and journalism. I'm joined
by co-host Mia and Premi today. This episode is sponsored by the InSpark Club of ICS. InSpark
aims to promote the spirit of culture and innovation among the youth. So thank you for
sponsoring this episode. But before we get into our guest segments, let's hear our quote
of the day and get some headline news. Our quote of the day comes from Thomas Hendrik
Ives, the former president of Estonia. He's quoted to have said, fake news is cheap to
produce. Genuine journalism is expensive. While fake news is cheap to produce and easy
to share, trustworthy news is harder to find. In a digital world flooded with misinformation,
we must be discerning about the content we consume. Fake news spreads quickly because
it often triggers strong emotional reactions, making it more likely to be shared. By questioning
what we see and verifying information from trusted sources, we can reduce our vulnerability
to hoaxes and help promote a more informed society. And that's our quote of the day.
Now onto some headline news. For this episode's news segment, we thought we'd bring some
headlines from the World News Group since today we have the privilege of having the
founders' family members as guests on the show. You'll get to meet them shortly. But
first, here are several news headlines from the sound journalism, grounded in facts and
biblical truth from world that can be found at WNG.org. Our first headline reads, Church
bookkeeper sentenced to prison after $875,000 embezzlement. Florida church worker Derry
has been falsifying the church's financial records and writing herself fraudulent checks
from October 2023 through March 2024. The grand total estimate of $875,000 embezzled
was utilized to cover mortgage payments, credit card bills, vacations, and concert tickets.
Her attorneys state that Derry's scheme was a result of psychological stress from the
news of her daughter's necessary open-heart surgery. She is sentenced to more than two
years of prison for federal wiring fraud, but the church's spokesperson says that she
will be welcomed back at the church once she returns. Our next headline is, new study suggests
link between cancer and marijuana usage. The legalization of marijuana for its recreational
uses, given its risks and drawbacks, have long been debated and is seen as controversial.
Possible new studies and results reveal what could be important in reconsidering the framework
and perspective in which marijuana usage and legalization is viewed. The Diction Biology,
the research from the University of Western Australia published, suggested that cannabis
use could cause cellular damage, increasing the likelihood of the damage on genetics
in cells, including such impact on fetuses. However, other notable professionals have
questioned the validity of this research and deemed the source as speculative. And finally,
our last headline touches on speculation as well. Speculative fiction even. DLD report
says no evidence that UFOs are adversaries. Aliens. The Pentagon states that there were
over 750 reports of UFO sightings from May 2023 to June 2024, of which only 7% were closed,
34% waiting final review and 60% couldn't be analyzed effectively. This said, the report
begs the question of, if they weren't UFOs, what were the sightings? The AARO director
states that most of the objects sighted were birds, balloons, airplanes or drones, with
only few being genuinely anomalous. And that ends our headline news brought to you by the
World News Group at WNG.org.
Hello, and thank you so much for joining us today. Could you please introduce yourself
and tell us a little bit about what you do?
Sure. My name is Sarah Drexler. I am from Chattanooga, Tennessee. I have been a school
administrator for a high school administrator for more than 40 years. I am retired from
full-time administration and just helping out the school now, but that's been my career.
And hi, my name is Jim Drexler and originally from Florida in the US and with my wife have
been working in education in a variety of places. 23 years in St. Louis at a middle
and secondary school teacher. I was the high school principal and now I'm a professor at
Covenant College in the education department, but also serving as a dean and visiting schools
and doing a lot of fun things in Thailand.
Oh, wow. That sounds so cool. It sounds like you both have been into so many different
places and educational fields. We were wondering if you could give us some insight into the
journey you both took to where you are now and what are some of those defining moments?
I was born into a family of teachers and writers and I just always assumed that I would teach
or write. And then when I went to college, I got, I would say distracted a little bit.
I was trained to be a teacher in college, but towards the end, maybe I got a little
cocky and thought, oh, well, I don't just want to do what my family did, so I'll go
figure something else out. And that was a wrong idea, but it led me into some other
places. And one of those was in prison ministry. And I did some writing there and helped with
that. But it was during that time, interestingly, that I observed some teachers teaching in
prisons and thought, oh, I think I would be really good at that. And it was funny because
I was sort of detached from my original education and it was just a few years later. But I really
think that God used that in helping me get a calling. And also, when I got into education
and started teaching, the school that we were with in St. Louis really wanted a community
service program, a whole, a full-fledged program. So they asked me, would you be the person
to organize that, to bring that into being? And I got to do that. But I look back on my
life and think it was interesting that I had this opportunity to do prison work before
and come back to education and then realize there really are broken, needy, difficult
situations that we need to meet, prison and many, many, many others. And I think my heart
was probably softened by that experience coming back into education. I did that for many years,
did community service projects and a capstone similar to what you have here. I think after
all is said and done, that is the thing I cherish most in my career and that I actually
right now would love to write a curriculum for a school like this, K-12, so that from
their very tiniest kid to the oldest, there is a systematic development of teaching, care
for the community. So that's my dream. I've given you the whole thing, how it all came
about and the dream I have for kind of semi-retirement to do that kind of thing.
I have known people over the years who from the very earliest time of their life, they
knew exactly what they were going to do. Well, praise the Lord that God works sometimes in
people like that. That was not my story. I often say I did the next thing. But one of
the markers in my story is that humanly speaking, I never should have gone to Covenant College,
didn't have the church background, the educational background, but I ended up going to Covenant
College and decided at some point to pursue a double major in history and in biblical
studies and people at the time would ask me, why are you doing that? I said, well, I just
like the classes and I like the professors. I didn't have a plan. One of the Bible professors
once or twice, it wasn't a regular comment, he said, you ought to think about going to
seminary and that just scared me. I didn't think about working in that situation would
be for me. But eventually we got married, we spent our first year in the Washington,
DC area and then we went to seminary in St. Louis. Sarah got a job at a pretty new Christian
school as a teacher because she had trained for that. I also had a job there. I was a
janitor cleaning classrooms and bathrooms, paying my way through seminary. The last year
of seminary, the principal of the school said, we're growing, enrollment is growing, we need
to hire some new people. We need somebody next year who can teach a few Bible classes
and a few history classes. And I don't think I said it out loud at that point, but I thought
it very soon after. Oh, that's why I did that double major. And I've been doing that throughout
my career in education. I did not have a big plan, a big scheme to be a professor at Covenant
College. My goodness, that was the furthest thing from my mind. But the Lord through conversations
with people and circumstances introduced these things and by faith we followed through with
it and here we are recruiting for Covenant College in Bangkok, Thailand. So that's my
short story. All right. Thank you guys so much for your
answer. I think you all have really inspiring story and relating to what Ms. Sarah said
actually about writing, I also am a writer. I'm finishing up my first rough draft for
my first book. So that's been coming along behind the scenes. That's wonderful. Thank
you. All right. Now moving on to higher education, could you explain to our listeners what the
terms liberal arts means when talking about a college or a university?
Yes, happy to. We have the privilege of traveling internationally. And I know from experience
that sometimes when that phrase is used, people assume the word liberal means liberal in terms
of morality or politics and they sort of shy away and back away from it. But historically
it's a great phrase and for simplicity's sake, the idea behind it is a well-rounded education.
So at a place like Covenant College, if someone comes to study to be an engineer or economics
or biology or whatever it might be, they don't spend four years just in that subject. We
have a pretty extensive core set of classes where every student will have some exposure
to history, the sciences, math, the social sciences, Bible and theology. The idea is
not that you're going to learn everything there is to know about everything, of course,
but it's rooted in the idea that all truth is God's truth, that Jesus created all things.
And the more we can know about the world that we live in, the better. And also as you study
those different subject areas, the liberal arts, languages and so forth, you begin to
see by God's grace the interconnectedness of the curriculum. It's not just these isolated
topics and subjects out there that never have any connection with one another, but there
is an intention in that core to see the overlaps. And some people call it the integration or
the connection between content areas. And so the liberal arts historically were to provide
a well-rounded education for someone as they were pursuing college and university.
Yeah. Thank you so much. And I think it's also definitely important to kind of differentiate
the, as you said, historical meaning and maybe the meaning is taken on now. Personally, I
love the idea of a liberal arts colleges as well. I think it's really important no matter
what profession you go into to have that kind of connection, like you said, but also more
specifically the interdisciplinary kind of approach or the intersectionality of different
things. Because I think it might, regardless of what you do in your career, I think it's
important to have an understanding of different disciplines and how they connect. So definitely
really important. Yeah. And there's a major at Covenant called
interdisciplinary studies where students have the core set of classes, but then they select
two or three concentration areas. So they don't have a major in biology or a major in
math. They may have strong concentrations in two or three areas. And that people who
go into that major with the intent to have that interdisciplinary liberal arts, it's a
great pathway for students. Yeah. Yeah. I think also at a liberal arts college and
in particular, I suppose at a smaller liberal arts college like Covenant, it is a beautiful
thing to watch roommates learn a little of each other's majors and to watch the respect
and really affection grow for, I guess admiration is also in place for like our daughter was
a music piano major, but one of her roommates was a biology major and one was an education
major and they just were all in different fields and they couldn't help but learn from
each other and at least respect one another. And I think that plays out in real life when
you live on the block and your neighbor is somebody, he's an engineer and I'm a musician,
I'm not an engineer, but you learn to respect and appreciate the world of career and life.
For sure. And I think it's also important like that learning that is in classroom and
outside of classroom and I think you were talking about earlier about how you were saying
like Jesus connects like the different disciplines and it's really beautiful to see which connects
really well to our next question that has to do with the balance between faith and academia.
What sort of challenges do Christian colleges and universities face when trying to balance
faith based education with the demands of a changing culture and modern academia?
Yeah, that's a good question and it is a challenge and I think in the most simple terms to say
it's a challenge if again I work in the field of education so if you have a math teacher,
she has to know the content of math whether it's algebra, geometry, whatever and how to
teach that effectively, but at the same time to be a consistent and coherent Christian
educator she also has to be increasingly day by day, week by week, familiar with and learning
about what scripture says about truth and life and the purpose of life and so forth.
So to pursue that is really a lifelong work. I don't know that any brand new teachers going
to be able to do that and even a teacher who's five or ten years and if they haven't again
intentionally and consciously pursued looking at their content area through the lens of
scripture it doesn't mean that what the math that she's teaching is neutral. It just means
that other narratives, other stories are guiding the decision she makes in the classroom about
content and assessments and relationships and classroom management and discipline and
even how you arrange the furniture in the classroom. There's a reason those decisions
are made and to do so that connection between faith and content and practice is a lifelong
pursuit to do that again I use the phrase consistently and coherently if that makes
sense.
I have a friend in education who says he does not believe that we integrate faith and learning.
We're not the ones that put that together. He's a Christian educator and he says he believes
since we believe all things belong to God, education belongs to God and so faith and
learning are already integrated. It's us that kind of have mucked it up and I remember him
saying to us you kind of have to we are scraping off the trouble and the brokenness to get
to the beauty of faith and learning being already integrated and together.
And I'll say that ties in with the story of scripture that God created all things, created
all things well and good. The fall has distorted and corrupted. It can't destroy the good creation
but it tries to pull us in other directions but Christ came to redeem all things to himself
and in Colossians 1 it says he came to reconcile all things. He doesn't say all people, all
things to himself. In other words to restore and renew and that's the coming completion
or consummation of things and so as she just said it's already won in Christ. The realities
of the fall have had a real negative effect. Sometimes people sort of in a joking way will
say you know if the fall had not happened would Abraham have flown in an airplane? Would
Moses have been using the internet? In other words the development of creation that we're
called to do is always slowed down. The pull and the tug of the fall has slowed things
down so that we have those things now but anyway I'm getting a little off a feel but
yeah. For sure I think that achieving two things
at once such as focusing on faith but also being academia focused is at times it can
be very hard but I think that here at Guys's College such as you know Covenant College
I think that executes it tremendously well and at sometimes it may be hard and challenging
but I think it is also very rewarding when you see you know when when you see your students
come out and graduate and you know become more than their major so as to speak. Now
moving on to impact and outcomes and just generally speaking what are some unique ways
a liberal arts Christian college or university prepares young people for the challenges of
a modern world as compared to a state school or a non-Christian institution?
Another really good question. You guys are great interviewers. It's interesting in recent
years there have been some articles in business type of publication Forbes magazine and others
that have talked about this and have talked about the desirability of hiring college university
graduates who have a liberal arts education and part of what they have been getting at
as to why that's important is that liberal arts institutions like Covenant and there
are others around as well. They have encouraged students to learn how to think, to learn how
to write, to learn how to articulate truth and what they believe and information about
their content and these magazines, the articles I've seen have talked about what an advantage
that is in hiring somebody in a variety of settings could be management, could be in
other levels because of that reality of being able to think and write and communicate clearly
about whatever field that they're in and that's one of the benefits that came to mind when
you said that.
I would also say virtues that are associated with faith commitments make a big difference
and even in sitting here your courtesies to us as visitors make a difference. Not just
to commend you but it facilitates the whole thing. It makes everything better when we
practice good virtue and kindness and respect and I think also in Christian faith and that
when we believe as Dr. Jim said earlier, when we believe that God made the world it's really
good and so the study of it needs to be really good and really excellent and it's not diminished
by having faith influence but made greater and more wonderful by believing that the God
of all creation is in this.
That is absolutely beautiful and I think to touch on both your points, you were saying
different virtues or different skills of communication. I guess more advantageous to a liberal arts
college would be the soft skills that I learned because I think in different professions all
graduates will have the knowledge, the hard skills that is necessary but then what differentiates
each person from the workforce? It's the virtues, it's the soft skills, it's the ability to
communicate and to do it well.
Our final question for this segment is and to give us some hope for future generations.
In what ways does the integration of faith and academics impact students personal development
and future career paths?
Well I was thinking a minute ago of an example that I remember is actually a professor that
Sarah had in her education training, Geraldine Steensma and she was advising in working with
teachers in training that going back to the example of a math educator that and she used
the two eyeballs as an example that the one eye is on whatever the lesson is for the day,
factoring or the Pythagorean theorem or whatever that here's the particular topic in our class
but always again by God's grace you can't do this completely or perfectly but also have
an eye on the other disciplines where factoring or the Pythagorean theorem might come into
play and you can begin to think of connections in construction or in engineering or in the
medical field or in just a variety of ways where math knowledge is key to success in
the work and she wrote about that working on the two eyes it's hard to do.
It's hard to do just talk to a math teacher. It's hard enough to plan a lesson where you're
going to get through that material but at the same time to have the rest of knowledge
in mind that I'm trying to weave this together in but that is a gift that I think the Christian
liberal arts approach to education and related to that the Christian school like ICS, like
covenant should be the best of schools academically because we know the source of all truths and
have a connection with the creator of all things and the one who is going to redeem
all things and never an excuse for half-hearted efforts educationally but the very best because
of that knowledge.
Yeah I think that's a beautiful beautiful metaphor and that ends us on with a great
note for this first segment and we'll be right back after the PSA.
For today's PSA we will be introducing the InSpark club to you all. The club's aim is
to promote the spirit and culture of innovation among the youth. InSpark advocates for youths
exploring the field of innovation and creative thinking specifically by providing informative
resources in those areas in an engaging way. Furthermore InSpark is also providing different
innovative company visits as well as competitions to see innovation and technology applied in
real life. The club tries to create a space to promote innovation out of the box thinking,
technology and creativity at ICS and possibly spread the connection to other international
schools in Bangkok. For any further questions please don't hesitate to contact them through
their Instagram at InSpark club and remember keep thinking creating and learning.
Hi Sarah we understand that your family the Belles family started the World News Group
and also the World Magazine so you must have some experience with news and journaling.
So could you give us a quick history lesson on how that all started and where it is today?
Sure I have to confess that writing and journalism are my dream not my reality but watching my
brothers and my sister-in-law in particular work has been really fun over the years. Our
dad my Belles father Max Belles was a farm guy well yeah he was a grain dealer out in
the countryside of Iowa and he became a Christian and one of the things that he did as a
very young man was go to work for a small newspaper in southern Minnesota and he just
kind of got the printing bug and so later not too many years later when he was married
and he was a pastor one of the ways that they earned money was to have a print shop in our
basement so we had printing presses we had a thing called a linotype and my older brothers
were the worker bees down there really on the printing and so my brother Joel really
loved the whole printing business my dad was a great writer my mom was a good writer and
they just became you know increasingly in publishing for our church denomination and
for people who hired them so Joel after college after journalism school worked for a magazine
called the Presbyterian Journal which was a good magazine but very what do you call
it not narrow but narrow audience and he always thought a better idea would be to have news
that was written from a biblical perspective a little bit along the lines of what we talked
about in the first segment that and that's one reason that the news group and the magazine
have been called world because it's based on I believe Psalm 24 that says the world
the earth is the Lord's and everything in it what a verse so his goal was to have a
magazine that told the news from a Christian perspective told the truth wasn't afraid of
topics or of whatever the news story was because the objective was tell the truth about what
happened tell the truth about what's going on in the world and at first I think the magazine
was not a success you know started and failed a time or two but then they started children's
news magazines weekly that went to kids schools and they were world kids magazines I think
they had I don't know what they were called exactly but that became very popular in schools
and then shortly after that the adult version which was world news magazine took hold and
it's still in existence and now has a podcast and news I think most people who would talk
to you about world probably have heard the news arm that is the world and everything
in it and the magazine is still there an online version of the main I mean they have a full
fledged very thorough presentation my brother who started it passed away in February of
this year so this has been kind of a big year of kind of looking back on world and and how
it has developed and become quite a strong magazine thank you so much that's super super
inspiring and I think it's like you said it's great to see and reflect like how far it's
come right especially despite like so many setbacks and challenges and how big it's grown
and how much impact it's made on people's lives I'm sure and on the topic of that news
the world magazine and you mentioned like it was found on like with the mission of like
having the biblical perspective being integrated into the news so we'd like to hear your thoughts
on the role of news organizations especially faith-based ones like world news group in
combating misinformation and how journalists today can distinguish truth from propaganda
wow it's kind of a loaded question with the current political situation in the US both
sides claiming misinformation disinformation hacking foreign influence you know where can
you find the truth and kind of from my perspective almost any news outlet or media outlet is
subject to propagating things that we would call misinformation even sometimes I think
by accident passing on stories or information that has not been vetted and and so I say
that because I think even Christian publications like world magazine another famous magazine
Christianity Today I don't know is that a weekly magazine I think or monthly I don't
even know now but they have to be careful because those reporters might be Christians
but they're also human beings and human beings make mistakes and errors so I'm kind of getting
at saying this that I think I don't think that Christian publications are immune to
making mistakes or in putting out an agenda that they believe is the right one that objectively
speaking might not be the truth am I being too vague I think no I think I think that
was a great answer and I think like when it comes to like more heavy I guess topics where
there's many differing perspectives at hand it's hard to define what is misinformation
in the first place or what is what are the lines or what are the boundaries that are
drawn and I think especially like you were saying like there's definitely a lot of work
like the word agenda I think is being used a lot in today's political climate or like
the word indoctrination I'm also seeing a lot from both sides I think that was a great
approach to like seeing it because I think there are many many differing perspectives
and especially in something that seems to be objective as like a new source it's also
important to remember that some aspects of it are still subjective to many people's different
beliefs so yeah thank you so much you're welcome I think we can speak individually right yeah
of course speak the truth in love sometimes the truth is hard but right there's always
that potential potential for in a fallen world with right beings mm-hmm there's also a wonderful
statement in scripture from Jesus himself that says the truth will set you free and
I think of that a lot that you I think I said at the outset that I had been a school administrator
and oftentimes if a student chooses not to speak truth which happens sometimes I did
that too when I was a kid but when you choose not to speak truth you get in deeper and deeper
and deeper and the cover has to be more and more thorough but the truth sets you free
even if it's painful at the outset and I think I I know when I think about my brother Joel
that that was one of his driving inner messages was it will set a lot of people free if we're
if we give as much truth as we possibly can all right thank you for both of your answers
now on the topic of perspectives what are some of the unique perspectives Christian
journalists bring to the media landscape I would like to use my sister-in-law Mindy Bells
as an example she has faithfully told the news of the church in the Middle East the
church at large for 30 years at least and gone there and walked with people there walked
with churches there just spent time deferring to them being with them letting them show
her what was happening like letting them tell her and then telling their story back to us
through actually through World magazine for a long time and now she's independent but
my point in that is I appreciate that she has allowed the story to be before her not
going with an agenda of I bet the church is doing that or I bet they're not doing that
but rather letting it be its own story and I just feel like she her writing has been
blessed and been I don't know what you would call it just underscored in its truth because
she has faithfully delivered it that way and hasn't wavered and it's really easy and to
go in with an agenda like you said or a perspective that you want to prove and I appreciate her
for doing that because describing anything about the Middle East to us being on the ground
is so so valuable to us but if she doesn't speak truth we haven't gotten a picture at
all and your your question used the word perspective and I thought of a silly example that I've
been doing lately so we're traveling on behalf of our college and I have told a number of
people that we visited a school last year for the first time and half of their grade
12 students enrolled at Covenant and people like your faces they think wow that you're
really good but then I always go on to say there were two seniors so we you know but
this is the perspective you know you could say something in this in this silly example
that's true but the way I chose to say it sounded like wow you are really good at attracting
students well there was one and so and I think that can happen in journalism as well and
getting back to a comment I made in there in the first segment that if if a journalist
is a Christian if a journalist says I belong to Jesus it's incumbent on her or him to by
God's grace be informed by truth and guided by truth and praying and asking for the wisdom
to say things accurately not just two plus two is four but even the words to give a perspective
you can give an angle on something as my silly example gave that is misleading and so I do
it for the laugh line but I know it's misleading yeah.
My mom used to tell me when I was young and learning to speak truth she said she would
say truth is what you hope the other person hears not just your words you don't have
permission to just put words out there you have to think what what do I hope they're
hearing and you know that's what you're saying actually.
I love that I think that's a beautiful quote and I think it really like underscores and
emphasizes the importance of communication too like what you think is the truth and what
you're trying to convey is the truth might not be what the person on the receiving end
hears and interprets and I loved your example as well I think that that is funny for sure
and I think it does prove a point that like truly so many times both accidentally and
intentionally the words you say every single word could be meaning something or implying
something so I think it's definitely important to like acknowledge that defect so I think
it's really important that yeah that acknowledgement is there and I think that's I love those
examples in those quotes they're wonderful and our next question helps us sort of transition
and guides us into this area in what ways can colleges and universities prepare students
to critically assess the media they consume other strategies or methods that can help
young people navigate in this area.
This is just right off the top of my head but in answer to that I really believe that
every one of us needs to read more think more discuss more in a in an environment that is
listening and that is constructive and unfortunately I think in America at least and this is probably
true a lot of places your algorithm is what's really directing what you are reading and
thinking and reflecting on because you know the very nature of an algorithm I believe
and you can correct me is that it continues to tighten the focus into what you like and
so you start agreeing deeply with yourself and you're not getting a perspective at all
so I think that is one of the most important things choosing a broad reading discussing
with people who are wise discussing with people of like mind yes but also getting a perspective
so that you contribute something to the conversation after you've been feeding yourself you've
got to spend it on others.
I was thinking one of the things that Jesus said he was actually at being asked being
quizzed by the religious leaders in his day you know how do you summarize the Old Testament
law well the Old Testament law is huge you know that's a task and you probably recall
he said two things love the Lord your God with all your heart soul strength and mind
love your neighbor as yourself and I thought in response to your question about trying
to be truthful and guard your perspective remembering to love your neighbor as yourself
is a it's a good guardrail for a lot of well for all of life but if you're wanting to be
a truthful honest journalist or writer or you write novels you want to speak the truth
and one of the big motivators is to love the Lord and to love your neighbors yourself and
I'll just mention very briefly we have one of our favorite singer and songwriters is
a Canadian named Bruce Coburn and he's pretty old now I think he's close to 80 but on his
newest album he has a song called orders and the verses describe in brief phrases people
that you encounter every day and sometimes you hear a description you think oh man he'd
be a really great guy to get to know a lot of times the descriptions are you're just
you have this visceral that kind of thing but then the chorus he keeps coming back to
but he says he sings but as I recall our orders are to love them all not to be selective in
who your neighbor is going to be but you know and if that by God's grace is really embedded
in deep ways I think that you know back to my silly example keep you from intentionally
misleading people with the words that you use or the phrases that you pick words are
powerful things and how you say things could be you know we live in this cancel culture
and we want to we want to call out everybody who disagrees with me and put them down and
but as I recall our orders are to love them all you can look them up Bruce Coburn C-O-C-K-B-U-R-N
all right I will and Miss Sarah like one thing that stood out with what you said I think
the qualities that you mentioned you know being a listener being a reader and also thinking
deeply I think it's all very critical and I think it's what ICS practices a lot and
like I'm recognizing a lot of that in my classes and also just kind of like opening up your
horizon and being in an environment that respects all perspectives because what happens is that
it helps you feel safe when you have different perspectives from others so I think that was
you know a really nice highlight that you said all right now back to some advice and
assuming the news source is both truthful and transparent why is it good for a young
person to stay knowledgeable about current events and world news and not just live in
this bubble what I'm thinking of people who do that and why do I see it as virtuous and
I guess on the surface of things it just makes you more interesting you bring more to the
table you bring more to the conversation but also I think we've learned this in our travels
and it's a little bit along the same line of reading makes you so much more tender-hearted
towards the brokenness of things when you take a good look a good fair look in the US
immigration is a huge issue and people are upset about it for very good reasons and people
are upset at those who are upset about it for very good reasons and listening to both
and bringing a heart of justice and kindness to that discussion is essential and so the
first reading of course as a Christian that I would recommend is God's Word because it's
going to teach those things but then moving on out from that people who represent are
consistent with those principles of justice and mercy and what Micah 6.8 says about you
know this is what the Lord requires of you those things and so I just think it makes
you a wiser person makes you a more interesting person it turns your face towards other people
and that's it gets you out of your navel gazing and I think that's good for every one of us
I definitely agree and I think yeah all your points I love that I think you use some really
beautiful words there too like saying for instance like people being able to just contribute
more to the conversation be more interesting be more wise or like as you said giving hearts
to the brokenness I think that's a really beautiful way to phrase it and I think reading
being more aware being more open to perspectives in general just really increases your empathy
and I think that's also real important so I love that and definitely virtuous or pursuing
virtues is a great thing to keep in mind as well as biblical perspective and worldview
however that might be for each person and we would like to end all our guest segments
with advice so here's our final question what advice would you give to young people today
particularly those entering college or starting their careers about navigating a world filled
with misinformation and saying grounded in both truth and faith that is a great question
I think that the number one thing I would say is obviously you're saying this in the
question itself to consider the source and then choose the source right and you all of
us must look at what we're listening to the algorithm back to that are we paying attention
to the ever tightening picture that's just reflecting back at ourselves and telling us
that our our own opinion is so worthy you know it's not that but my guess is that you
would recommend Dr. Jim you would talk also just about objective truth and and having
having a source outside your own broken heart to speak and give you a framework yes I was
thinking you know the Sunday School answer that prayer and daily learning from the word
and counting in that sense not on your own wisdom or I am the ultimate authority on truth
but there is someone who is and being plugged in to him and his word and guided by the Holy
Spirit it's the Sunday School answer and it's familiar because it's a true answer and and
I think that would along with what you said help guide put some guardrails keep people
in check I think remembering that you're if you have
a worldview that says everybody's right then someone who thinks you're wrong is right because
they're right that's I mean that's a little bit of a goofy answer but it's it's very interesting
to think if we all have rightness complete rightness within us and my rightness begins
to develop into a murderous feeling towards everybody named Mia right you know what that's
terrible it can't be right and so something there's right and wrong somewhere yeah I would
encourage that checking yourself thank you and this concludes our second segment such
good advice about how to seek out truth are we living in echo chambers only consuming
things we agree with and fit our own personal preference as what is true or not true let's
all be truth seekers seeking truth not only involves engaging with people we may not totally
agree with but also it involves the understanding that we are not holders of the ultimate truth
as dr.
Jim and Sarah have pointed out I'll end with what mrs.
Sarah said she encouraged all of us to check ourselves stay tuned for our next episode
as we focus on the topic of design covering the principles and elements of design as well
as having a discussion about design no-nos and a list of design best practices thanks
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