Shaping Society's Values:

The Role of the University

by Glenn Van Wyhe

The role of the University is to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord!

Now the battle line is drawn. Hear the roar now rising on both sides of the line, even from your own lips. There are few other statements which can pull from your heart such angry denunciation or such joyous affirmation. That quick and strong emotion is a sign that the statement is somehow reaching to the heart of the issue.

Do you equate the statement with the statements of racial and other types of bigots? Does it disgust you that anyone would dare say such a thing, or suggest such a perversion of the ideal of the University? Or is the statement to you a key to the very salvation and happiness of the world and of every person in it? And are you made glad that someone seeks to purify the University and make it worthy of shaping society's values?

The statement causes division. Those who try to ignore such powerful and swift division are deliberately ignorant. They close their eyes in the futile wish that the figure with the sword will go away. But closed eyes are a weak defense against a falling sword.

"Jesus is Lord even of the University." That statement goes to the heart of the issue--but what is the issue? The issue is: what is truth? If Jesus is truth, then the statement is self-evidently correct. If Jesus is not truth, then the statement forms a terrible danger to the University. For the University is engaged in the task of helping students to find knowledge, to find knowledge of what is true, to find truth.

Should the University seek to shape society's values if it does not know what values are true? Should someone teach another to fly an airplane if that person knows nothing of the rules of flying airplanes but has only sat around guessing about the rules with others who admit to being equally ignorant? Such teaching out of ignorance would be criminal negligence. Is teaching someone how to live, yet claiming no knowledge of the truths of life, any less criminal?

If the University is to shape society's values, then it must be presumed that society cannot do it by itself without the University; it must be presumed that without the University society's values would go awry. Else what good is the University and how is it not redundant and unnecessary for the shaping of values? But, if the University is necessary for the shaping of society's values, then it had better have a clear idea of what the proper values are!

From where does the University gain its knowledge of what are the proper values? Does it gain its knowledge from society? If so, how can it improve society's values, and how shape society's values into anything other than they already are? Does it gain its knowledge from the values of the majority of people; does it go along with the crowd; does it socialize young people into the prevailing beliefs?

If the University is free from the influences of society and of the majority, then from where does it learn its values? From the great thinkers--the philosophers and theologians, the poets and the dreamers? What of the fact that the great thinkers argue bitterly among themselves? How does the University choose among them? Should we let them all be heard and make no choice? Are we then back to saying that we know nothing about values and should not be teaching them at all or shaping society's values in any way? Even so, there are too many great thinkers to let them all be truly heard; we must make a choice even about which ones to have our students hear. We must make a choice! WE MUST MAKE A CHOICE! How?

Where can we learn truth? I teach in the School of Business Administration, and there are many business and economic students and professors who believe that the market teaches truth. If, in a competitive market, you can earn a profit at something, then it must be good and what you are doing must be good. There is the source of value.

In my sophomore introductory course, I teach that in business it is necessary to consider the good of the other, and I note that a person's willingness (or unwillingness) to do that comes from that person's total world and life perspective--from his beliefs about what is ultimately real and true. While this discussion pleases some students, one student this semester wrote in response, "I wasn't very comfortable with your religious overtones. I came into this class expecting strictly a business course." He wondered what business has to do with such impractical things? To many students and faculty, profit maximization remains the basic rule--the ultimate truth--in business.

Those in the humanities, on the other hand, often despise the profit motive of business and economics. Many of them believe that beauty is truth and truth beauty--however you personally define beauty. If you have done something creative, then it must be good and what you are doing must be good. The creative person is Nietzsche's "superman" who is above the laws which govern lesser mortals.

Each area of the University has set up its idols. Profit is often the ultimate value in business; creativity is often the ultimate value in the humanities. The biologist may teach physical survival as the ultimate value. Philosophers may teach justice as the ultimate value, but one philosopher may argue that it is just that all people be treated identically while another may argue that it is just that "better" people be treated better. Some in the social sciences may find the ultimate value in statistical analysis, wallowing in empiricist muck and pretending that they have never heard of Hume's critique of the naturalistic fallacy: that what is and what should be are not necessarily the same thing. Others may proclaim relativism and appeal for students not to believe what others have said--present teacher excepted, of course.

If the University is such a babel of values, how dare it claim any right to shape society's values? On one issue only do the competing proponents of differing values come together. They all agree that the belief that Jesus is Lord of the University must be false. That is because Jesus has opposed all of their positions. Jesus says that profit is not the ultimate value, nor creativity, nor physical life, nor even justice however defined. Jesus clearly says that what is is not what should be, and that there is an objective and absolute value. For Jesus, all real value comes from God, the Father who created all things and who is Himself Love. Love, and not anything else, is the ultimate value to Jesus.

If what Jesus says is true, then that is what the University should be teaching. It should be teaching people to follow the words and life of Jesus, whether in business or the humanities or biology or philosophy or the social sciences. Each area of the University should be submitting itself to Jesus as Lord, because otherwise it is not in accord with truth. Teachers should be submitting to Jesus, not because they happen to agree with Him rather than with someone else but because they know that He is the true Son of God and what He says is ultimately true.

When that happens in a University (and when that happens at Pacific Lutheran University), then the University will as a unit shape the values of society, and it will have a right to shape the values of society. Then the University will be making efforts to improve the values of society because it knows what values are best. Then the University will know what values are best, not because it took a poll or sided with one great thinker rather than another, but because it learned from the God who made all knowledge what things are true. Until that time, all talk of "the University" shaping the values of society is merely idle chatter blowing in the wind.