Are You Trying to Create Experts or Mentor Students toward Excellence? The Two Are Not the Same

One factor behind the recent populist revolt in North America and other parts of the world stems from an increasing distrust of various experts (esp. medical scientists, journalists, and general scientists). There are numerous reasons for this distrust—some of them consistent with a Christian theological perspective, but other reasons have led to a problematic undermining of excellence. In this blog post, I will focus on understanding the relationship between expertise and excellence, since I think one of the major problems with academics is that they confuse expertise with excellence. Although expertise can be helpful, we should prioritize pursuing excellence and helping our students do likewise.

Defining the Terms

“Expertise” is a recent word. The first example, from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is from 1868, “I have distanced my competitors in expertise C. Reade & D. Boucicault, Foul Play vol. III. x. 120.” I find it interesting that OED’s first known example draws on a prideful comparison. Indeed, this prideful goal is often the goal of many academics. The OED defines expertise as “Expert opinion or knowledge…skill… in a particular branch of knowledge.”

It should be no surprise, then, how the word is used in contemporary English translations of the Bible. Nine of the ten times that “experts” is used in the NIV or RSV New Testament, it is used to describe “experts in the law” such as the Pharisees. In other words, it is associated with people who have specialized knowledge but who are not actually excellent at living life (the other reference is also a negative mention of experts in greed, 2 Peter 2:14).

Excellence is a much, much older English word with the first known English use dating back to 1384. The OED defines it as “the possession chiefly of good qualities in an eminent or unusual degree; surpassing merit, skill, virtue, worth, etc.; dignity, eminence.”  Here we see that to be an expert in trumpets or baseball is different than claiming to be excellent in baseball or trumpet playing. For instance, the former may be good for evaluating the worth of a trumpet or explaining what kinds of sounds different trumpets may produce, but the latter means one knows how to fulfill the telos or end of the trumpet and what trumpet is best for that (and it may not be the most expensive one).

Of course, the concept of excellence is much older than the English word. It goes back to the Greek word for excellence, used as early as Homer’s eighth-century B.C. epic poems, aretē. The apostle Peter also used this word to describe God’s character in I Peter 2:9 and 2 Peter 1:3-6. Here are the latter verses:

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence [aretḗ],⁴ by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.⁵ For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue [aretḗ], and virtue with knowledge… 2 Peter 1:3-6 [RSV]

What is important to notice is that we are not simply to praise God’s excellence (something mentioned in I Peter 2:9), we are to participate in the divine nature by acquiring it ourselves. Excellence is also mentioned by Paul as what we should set our minds on in Philippians 4:8.

The Difference in Our Students’ Lives

Christians, including Christian academics, should embrace the pursuit of excellence over expertise for themselves and their students because they embrace the God who is excellent. The difference is easy to understand when I put it this way. My wife rarely wants my expertise as a Christian ethicist. She instead wants me to be an excellent Christian, husband, father, friend, son/son-in-law, steward of finances, steward of my body (it’s why married men live longer), neighbor, etc. I do think my expertise as a Christian ethicist helps these latter ends, but the two are different.

How does this reality play out in the university? Professors sometimes mistakenly think their job is to create novice experts (the contradiction is intentional) instead of fostering the desire for excellence and excellence itself—a key part of what it means to bear God’s image. Thus, especially in the humanities and social sciences, they train students to offer opinions, which is what experts usually do. Much of what takes place in the contemporary classroom is students offering novice opinions on books, ideas, etc., and then professors encouraging and/or correcting those opinions.

As a result, professors often do not focus on helping students become excellent professionals, intellectuals, or excellent human beings—excellent image bearers of God—in ways that extend to our sub-identities. Students learn to offer opinions about marriage, friendship, citizenship, stewardship of the body, money, nature, and culture, but they are not necessarily encouraged or equipped to be excellent in these sub-identities. 

I find this absence in my interviews with Christian students about the good life. I rarely have a student share that one element of the good life is being excellent in their job/professional vocation. For them, the good life means a job provides something for them (enjoyment, fulfills a passion, provides a moral cause, stability, provides freedom from financial worry, provides work-life balance, etc.). For instance, Lucien (a self-chosen pseudonym) shared with me, “career itself is not the good life, but relatively speaking, I would love if the Lord would provide and have a relatively stable job and income so I can provide hopefully for a family in the future. And not rely on paycheck to paycheck.” Lucien has not internalized that the good life involves learning excellence, which involves acquiring the virtues of God that then lead to excellence in our sub-identities—including our professional identity.

Anne shared that she would achieve the good life if she “found something worth living for in my job”—not that she became excellent in a morally-focused job. Similarly, Brynn shared with me regarding her view of the good life, “I love the idea of working for what I am passionate about—helping people.” Certainly, fulfilling a passion to help people is great, but I know plenty of so-called passionate helpers who are not excellent at it (and thus produce dependency and dysfunction). Based on my research, I have concluded that we have failed to help Christian students connect being excellent (aretḗ) in all our identities, in the way God is excellent in all of his, to the good life. 

The Difference for Experts and Universities

Another problem with elevating expertise is that experts can become prideful and siloed. Baylor University handled the COVID pandemic well. The reason why is that the BU group dealing with COVID did not simply include experts in the disease or the risk it posed. You cannot let epidemiologists, the Department of Safety, and the legal office run a campus. No intellectual or student life creativity would take place because they would pursue the wrong ends and ask the wrong questions. The experts on the COVID committee often asked, “How do you not spread COVID? And how do we reduce institutional risk?” With the help of student life leaders on the committee, however, they fortunately asked the better question, “How can we help students, staff, and faculty flourish as human beings while loving God and our neighbor during this epidemic?” As a result, our policies were much more humane when compared to many other campuses.

Populists understandably have reacted against experts who approach meta-problems through the lens of specialization instead of an overall vision for human flourishing. Unfortunately, they then turn to charlatans who tickle their ears and reinforce the worst of their inclinations and prejudices. Most of social and mainstream media, as well as the political world, is filled with these kinds of charlatans.

Christians should counter by focusing on excellence. Indeed, that’s what we all usually want in life. That’s why, when interacting with a doctor, the popular press advises you to ask a question that goes from their expertise to excellence in the stewardship of the doctor’s own body: “What would you do if it were you?” The question then pertains to one’s personal wisdom regarding stewardship of their own body and not their knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the five different options for treatment.

Now, experts can help us know the top five approaches for stewarding one’s body or finances from a Christian perspective. They help create a classroom for discussions about the similarities and differences between these five approaches. But we and our students should want more than expertise. We should want professors who also offer wisdom and discernment while pursuing the path of excellence themselves. Or if they do not have it, they could bring in other models of excellence or have them read about them. Perhaps they can also tell students what not to do from their inability to obtain excellence (perhaps they failed in relationships, mismanaged their money, or struggled with health problems related to poor stewardship). Of course, offering wisdom is really better offered by someone excellent in that domain and not someone who can summarize and critically analyze all the experts.