As graduate school centers on intellectual pursuit, Campus Edge’s mission is to be a place where a strong inquiry into truth is brought into account when looking at faith, the Bible and our understanding(s) of God. There have been many deep and fruitful conversations in the last months. The following things have been focused on:

• How does one’s faith and field of discipline integrate: a challenge considering the wide range of fields.
• The book of Jeremiah: The God presented there is surprising and sometimes uncomfortable (i.e., you deceived me: Jer 20:7). Yet, this complicated God could speak into our own complicated circumstances.
• The book of Colossians: Who is God? Do Christians worship the same God as Muslims, a question raised by the recent incident at Wheaton College? How do we deal with the command to submit, especially when too many within Christian subcultures have allowed these words to condone abuse?
• The origins of the universe: evolution, creation, or what? Why does this conversation matter so much?
• All of these topics have led to fascinating and thoughtful conversations.

In order to be more intentional about naming what has been learned and gained in the studies, a closing question has been used: what are hopes, fears, truths or motivations to action that you have as a result of the text and/or the conversation this evening? As a result of this, hope has been expressed that our understanding of God would continue to grow and expand, even if God does not change. Another person named a desire to understand more what the Bible has to say about gender and gender roles, even if there is trepidation about the outcome of such a study. It has led to an admission that science seems sometimes to have failed us: one person expressed deep disappointed that even though she’d gone into biology dreaming about how she’d get to spend all this time studying animals, it turned out to be a lie: her time is spent primarily with numbers and data crunching. At the same time, in the question whether science and faith can be compatible, if there had to be a choice, many of the graduate students would find it easier to trust and choose science.

This blog forum contains some of the things that we have discussed and learned, along with the questions that still remain.