John Patrick: It started with my reading Bernard de Clairvaux's work on knowledge -- that some people seek knowledge for its own sake and that is curiosity, some for the sake of being known and that is vanity, some so they can sell it and that is exploitive, and some so they can edify others and that is love.

That started me thinking about the students

I was teaching in the public university. I discovered that most evangelical students lose their faith at university. John Bowen [Wycliffe professor and IVCF leader] persuaded me to talk about my view that Christian students coming into medical school will emerge at the far end with either no faith or a schizophrenic faith. When I did, some students came asking me for help in not losing their faith, so we held a weekly Bible study.

Then on my way to Africa, I read author Alan Bloom, a Jewish atheist who said that if you don't know the Bible, you can't read literature because you can't understand the metaphors. I thought, that's probably true, and I tested it by asking people if they could recite the Beatitudes. I then learned the Sermon on the Mount by heart for penance. That changed the whole of my thinking.

Soon after, I met with philosopher Graeme Hunter, who said, "You're always complaining about the formation of students, what would proper formation look like?"

That was the start of Augustine College ten years ago. Together with David Jeffrey and others, we realized we needed a course that would teach as though we were the product of Hebrew thought and Greek thought, modified by the church, and we thought the way to do this was with history. We teach the history of math, literature, philosophy, music, art and science, and it has been stunningly successful in character formation.

TAP: What do youth need to understand in order to survive a secular institution?

JP: Five main issues determine whether a student will survive. They need to be able to defend legitimate tolerance and the sanctity of life (and say why abortion and euthanasia are wrong); they need to be able to deconstruct moral relativism and multiculturalism, talk about sexuality -- and homosexuality. Otherwise, they will go nowhere. The university will eat them up.

The key to teaching a student how to deconstruct something in this modern society is to bite your tongue and always reframe your statements as questions. Questions can never be politically incorrect. The two greatest teachers, Socrates and Jesus, always asked questions as a form of teaching. You don't have to answer rhetorically but first you give their answer, then you deconstruct it, then you give the Christian answer. After that, when you've got them to see that both sides are rational, you can look at the outcome of the two stories side by side. [see below, for example, on the abortion debate]

In education generally, there's a need to get back to the trivium [Grammar as the mechanics of a language; logic as the mechanics of thought and analysis; rhetoric as the use of language to instruct and persuade]. We're always trying to make children creative when they wish to be memorizers and memorizers when they wish to be creative. Instead, you have to memorize some material, then think logically about it, then apply rhetoric.

You must also understand the four levels of happiness.

TAP: Would you explain the four levels of happiness.

JP: This is an old idea starting with Aristotle and expounded by later Christians.

Happiness One (H1) is on an animal level - when you're hungry, thirsty or tired, you eat, drink, sleep. You satisfy an animal need, and it feels good, but then it's over. Misused, eating can turn into anorexia or obesity, and sex without love becomes boring, going from one-night stands to anonymous sex. If you live at level one, abortion and assisted suicide would make sense.

Humans can't live that way for long because it's the source of unhappiness one (U1) - boring sex and eating disorders.

The way out is to go to happiness 2 (H2) - the use of the disciplined mind informing the will to control the passions.

With discipline in sports, you complete the training; the disciplined academic struggles with concepts until that satisfying "aha!" moment. Unhappiness 2 comes from competitiveness and results in anxiety.

Happiness 3 is a need to be needed, as in motherhood, or for doctors on medical missions - it's altruism because there's no reward at first sight. Unhappiness 3 begins when the job ends or the children leave home.

Happiness 4 is knowing and loving God, and is best described by stories. Diane Komp, professor of pediatric oncology at Yale, lost her faith at university and became an existentialist believing that life had no meaning, until she was brought back to faith by her dying patients, who were children and saw God where no one else did.

You can only talk about H4 in terms of witness. We're not called to make people know that sin exists - they know already - because it's the Holy Spirit's job to convince people about sin, righteousness and judgment.

We just need to tell the stories, like Diane Komp's. The world cannot argue in any logical way that you, as a Christian, are being hysterical, confused or suffering from wish fulfillment.

TAP: Why does the temperature drop when you talk about Jesus at university?

JP: First of all, the cross is foolishness to the rational Greek mind (which is the university mind). G.K. Chesterton declared that taking history seriously can make you very cross - his view was that the eastern Mediterranean world of 2000 years ago was not a backwater but a place where all cultures met. Into that environment came a fisherman and a man with a seizure and convinced them that a dead Jewish carpenter was God. If you see how foolish it is, then you see how amazing it is. Secondly, most of us are unable to talk about our faith because we don't have the vocabulary that makes it meaningful to those around us. We try to fit the gospel into the university model, rather than vice versa, and so we end up with a propositional gospel and tick off the items of the creed. Jesus told us it didn't work that way. And it doesn't. What Einstein did was to know the answer first, then do the experiment to prove it. Therefore, let us start with an understanding that our conversion story is non-explanatory and applies to us and no one else. C.S. Lewis could only describe his conversion in terms of what he now believed -- the proof was the rest of his life trying to work out and explain what God had done to him.

TAP: What's a schizophrenic Christian?

JP: Schizophrenic Christians are those who believe the story is true, but it doesn't control their lives or give them much joy, and is reserved for Sundays only. I was an invisible Christian, well trained at keeping faith apart from work. For 17 years, I sat in church so my children would go.

TAP: So how does one inhabit the story?

JP: I was in Zaire where my wife was working with refugees from Rwanda. She arranged for me to teach refugees who wanted to understand why they, who called themselves Christian, kill each other. I taught for three to six hours a day. They cried; I cried. And I ended up giving back to God the talent of teaching and expounding the Scriptures which I had denied for so long. It was the happiest day of my life. The Jewish insight is that you lay the story in their memory so that later it will serve as a moral reference guide when they face moral dilemmas. Children inhabit the wrong story because they watch too much TV - that's where they're getting their stories from and the ethics in those stories are libertarian -- have what you want and get it by whatever means - that's not going to produce a good society. Above all, Jesus wants you and me to be a lover. That's how you inhabit this Christian story - accept the invitation to love and be loved.

(see also www.augustinecollege.org)

An addition to what was printed in May 2006 TAP Article:

TAP: Can you give an example of how to deconstruct an argument and then reconstruct it?

JP: Take the abortion debate:

Step 1 Acknowledge that there can be no agreement between pro-life supporters and pro-choice people in the usual discussion but that it is possible to help people see that both groups are rational according to their view of life.

Step 2 State the pro-choice position: it is the woman's right to kill her unborn child because she sees things from the standpoint that there is no greater purpose than the net happiness of the present and an unwanted pregnancy is destroying that happiness.

Step 3 Then state the Christian position: the Christian woman sees that both she and her baby have eternal significance and she must save both lives.

Step 4 Insist that both these positions are rational given the different views of the world the two individuals have.

Step 5 At this point we can begin to look at the consequences of the two different actions: abortion versus keeping the baby. The discussion is no longer on an emotional level but is about how we see the world and the consequences of our belief system.

---Dr. John Patrick retired from the University of Ottawa in June 2002. He had been Associate Professor in Clinical Nutrition in the Department of Biochemistry and Paediatrics for twenty years. Dr. Patrick's medical training was in London, England. Dr. Patrick now lectures throughout the world working for the Christian Medical and Dental Society in Canada and the Christian Medical and Dental Association in the United States. He speaks frequently to Christian and secular groups and is able to communicate effectively on moral issues in medicine and culture and the integration of faith and science.