My Status

I apologize in advance. This blog was and is meant to be something very different than a personal online diary. It is intended to be a place where I can offer musings about a variety of topics to whoever might be interested enough to read them. But because I know that some folks who occasionally stop by these parts know me personally, I thought it would make sense to offer this one post on my current situation so that folks might know what's going on with me. Again, I don't intend to make this a habit, so pti.

After much thought and prayer, my wife and I have decided that I will not be pursuing a PhD as originally intended. I have been working towards getting accepted into a good PhD program for over a year, and I just took the GRE very recently, with respectable results. So I was very invested personally in trying to see this through. A number of folks whom I greatly respect had encouraged me to pursue this, and I was humbled and appreciative of their support and continue to be. But in the end, it was not to be.

As I have indicated to some folks already in separate correspondences, I may well have been intellectually and even emotionally ready for the rigors of a PhD program and subsequent teaching career. But I am not spiritually ready. I know that my walk with Christ is decidedly less than exemplary, and while this will always be true, one would hope to find some clear indications of progress when thinking about pursuing a career of teaching and mentoring the next generation of church leaders. I do not sense such progress near as much as I would like. This has made me unsure that a PhD track is the right course of action at this time, or ever. It scares me to think of the kind of damage I could do in the classroom, given the kinds of sins I know I would bring into the classroom. I take the purity of Christ's bride very seriously, and I have what I believe is an appropriate level of fear about tarnishing the church. In my mind, we would do well if many more Christians felt the same way. The church would be much better off.

In addition, my wife would have had to pay a very heavy price that was likely disproportionate to the benefits. We are currently in the process of grieving the reality that we cannot have children of our own, and we are now fixin' to start the process of foreign adoption. My wife longs to be a loving, attentive mother. But in order for me to be able to pursue a doctoral degree, she would likely have to remain in a vocation that would make it very difficult for her to be the kind of mother she wants to be, and the kind of mother our adopted child will need. These are very severe consequences to pushing the PhD track that we cannot take lightly. And in the end, such consequences are too high a price to pay.

So I have made a decision to scuttle the PhD based on a preponderance of concerns. It is a very difficult decision for me. As I said, I have invested a great deal of time, effort, and emotion into pursuing this. It's very tough to give it up, particularly when the alternative is to work a secular job that I'm not terribly enthusiastic about. If I was unquestionably convinced that God was calling me to pursue a PhD, the price that would have to be paid wouldn't matter - I would do it. But I'm just not convinced enough of this calling to pay the enormous price we'd have to pay in order to pursue it.

I have found that when one gets a taste of the possibilities, it can be very difficult to find contentment in the realities. Seminary gave me a taste of the possibilities; a taste of the Kingdom and my place in it. I thought my role in the Kingdom would be through formal teaching of material that was relevant to the expansion of the Kingdom. To me, this was very exciting stuff and I felt privileged that so many people I respect thought it was my calling. I did too, and in some ways, I still think it is. But as with so many things, the way in which my desires might be fulfilled are at variance with my vision of how they will be fulfilled. I suspect that God is not finished with me on this topic yet. That means that I have to get used to the likelihood that my desire to teach will be fulfilled in very different ways from what I had hoped. It's not an easy pill to swallow, particularly after all the effort and tears that have gone into this pursuit. As I said, it's difficult to be okay with realities that seem to water down the possibilities. I think I am learning and experiencing something of what Richard Pratt struggled with for years while teaching at RTS. I hope that God will give me the ability to be content in all things, and to trust him with all things. It sounds trite and overused, but believe me, there are very few answers in life that are tougher to live with than this. This is why so few people live in the tensions such a resolution creates, and opt to short-circuit things instead, usually for ill. I hope not to do that.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...