“Eliab” (not his real name) was older, taller, tougher, gruffer, and grizzlier than any student in my “Introduction to Ethics” class before or since. His silent, steely-eyed stare from the middle of the front row, a few feet from me, felt like a wall.
While I knew what God said when Samuel thought David’s brother Eliab was just the right size to be king – “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” – my problem with my modern-day Eliab was different yet similar: I thought his appearance made him unlikely to be open-minded to God.
So, with all too little faith, I tried to sow seeds in Eliab’s life – and my other students’ lives — in ways that fit the content of my course and the character of my classroom.
For example, on the first day of each semester, I’ve made it a habit to casually identify myself as a Christian, and in explaining the goals for my classroom, I said this:
“I try to convince my students that respectful tolerance, critical thinking, and firm convictions are not enemies but allies. As G. K. Chesterton said, the point of having an open mind, like the point of having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid.”
During the semester, I assigned students readings on both Christian and non-Christian thinkers on ethics -so they could compare for themselves C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and Dallas Willard’s Divine Conspiracy with Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism and the Dalai Lama’s Ethics for the New Millennium.
I also read to the class the opening story from J.P. Moreland’s Kingdom Triangle to show how different worldviews might handle the same data—in this case, an apparently answered prayer from an African child in a missionary context.
On the last day of the semester, I put this question on the in-class final: “Compare and contrast Plato, Aristotle, and Jesus on the question of what ethics has to tell us about living well in relationships and communities.”
Eliab’s answer to this question was three pages long, and it floored me. He wrote movingly about his marriage, his family, and his journey from doubt to belief in God. The African child story impacted him deeply and prefigured something similar that would happen in his own life that semester. He wrote:
“Intro to Ethics was meant to open my eyes about the existence of the greater power of God. He preordained this class and my participation in it. God has taught me through this class about his involvement in our lives. He has a purpose for all of us and I am excited to see what he has for me in the future.”
Eliab finished with a line that both reminded me of Chesterton and humbled me for my own little faith: “You will not open everyone’s mind, but you sure have opened mine.”
Russell DiSilvestro
Philosophy
Cal State University – Sacramento