This past Saturday morning I ran the Chickamauga Chase. Usually I find it hard to drag myself out of bed on Saturdays (since I don't have to be at work), but the anticipation of the race woke me before my alarm did.
15 kilometers seemed like a really long distance to run (9.3 miles) until I started running. The sun was shining, it was about 12 degrees Celcius (low 50s Fahrenheit), a moderate breeze was blowing, and there were lots of other folks running with me. I started out too fast, finishing the end of the first mile a minute and a half sooner than I'd intended to, so I started looking for someone to pace with.
Around the three mile mark I found a guy and girl (John and Michelle, who I later found out were up from Atlanta) who passed the mark and commented to each other that they were doing nine-minute miles and wanted to keep that up until mile 7.5 or 8, and then increase their speed 10 to 20 percent, so I said hi and asked if I could run with them to keep pace.
The three of us ran together to mile 8, and then pushed forward. I think I understand a little more now why longer distance runners always say that distance running is mental-- you just keep going. I pushed ahead of my fellow runners and crossed the finish line to a time of 1:23:31. Michelle came in about 20 seconds after me and John about a minute after me.
Talking with John and Michelle afterwards I learned that they are both lawyers in Atlanta, and were both running in the 35 to 39 year old age group. I'm excited to have finished the race, with energy left over, and I had loads of fun running it, but its humbling to realize that I was running in pace with folks about 10 years my seniors, and that in the 1 to 19 year old age group an 11 year old boy from Hixson beat me by about 16 minutes.
Run a 15k race sometime. Its fun.
There was a bit of a discussion on Jeanette's blog regarding whether such a thing as "Christian scholarship" exists. You can read the inital posts there, and I've copied mine below. In a given academic field, the resources and work of Christians and non-Christians may look similar, but Paul Baxter pointed out that their end purposes are different: the Christian strives to glorify God in his scholarship, and the non-Christian has some other goal. I believe that there is another crucial difference in the area of epistemology.
The resources a Christian and a non-Christian drawn on may be the same, their work may look the same to an observer, their end purposes may be different, and yet there is another area of difference: their foundational assumptions are different. A Christian professes certain truths about the world, and an atheist (for example) holds to differing beliefs. I believe that the Lord keeps his word, and that He has covenanted to sustain the creation in an orderly manner, and I therefore expect that scientific laws can be generalized through observation of experiments, and inductive reasoning. An atheist who believes in an impersonal chance world has no foundation (in his or her worldview) for a belief that the cosmos is consistent or regular--and yet atheistic scholars regularly assume the consistent and regular operation of physical laws. The research of the two scholars (Christian and atheistic) may look identical, but the former has proceeded in a manner which fits with his professed beliefs, and the latter has done his work in spite of his professed beliefs.
Both Christian and non-Christian scholars may have access to the same resources and their work may be comparable, but only one of them has the epistemic foundation for his work- the person of Christ (Col 2:3). A Christian scholar should understand the foundational issues in the field, and opportunity may arise to call attention to the lack of foundation the non-Christian scholars have. Pointing out the foolishness of building scholarship on a foundation which does not comport with the non-Christian scholar's professed beliefs does not invalidate the quality or acuracy of the scholarly work; rather, it shows that the non-Christian scholar is using his academic abilities in a manner which critiques his own worldview and leaves him without excuse before God.
So lets read the pagan scholars, learn from them, and call them to repentance and faith in Christ.