We learn to practice virtues in specific contexts. Thus, academics always need to think about how to apply Christian virtues in their particular learning environment in specific ways. In particular, as academics, we should have special reasons to be thankful during this season.
Anyone who teaches has received intellectual gifts that God does not bestow on everyone. Although we all worked to hone these gifts and steward them properly, they are still unique gifts that are evidence of God’s grace upon us.
In Augustine’s Confessions, he recalled how he originally failed to recognize his intellectual abilities as gifts.
Whatever was written in any of the fields of rhetoric or logic, geometry, music, or arithmetic, I could understand without any great difficulty and without the instruction of another man. All this thou knowest, O Lord my God, because both quickness in understanding and acuteness in insight are thy gifts. Yet for such gifts I made no thank offering to thee. Therefore, my abilities served not my profit but rather my loss…1
May we, as Augustine later did, confess any lack of gratitude for our academic gifts. May we also recognize that all our academic abilities are gifts from God—and give thanks for them. This practice can save us from the vice of academic pride that plagues the academic world. Even better, it habitually reminds us that we can engage in this wonderful calling only by God’s grace.
God, thank you for our academic gifts, our academic training that we received from others, and the institutions in which we can practice them.
Editor’s Note: We will not be posting during the rest of Thanksgiving week.
