Who is like our God who speaks with perfect clarity? Who speaks with such wisdom and truth and faithfulness. Who can thunder with a voice like His in total authority? Only our God has words like this. And every single word of God is true. 

As I was listening to the radio the other day about current events, I found myself asking, “I wonder how much of this is true?” It’s an unfortunate fact that you can’t believe everything someone tells you. Not only are there obvious biases in every conversation and purposeful misdirections, but also sometimes people just have their facts wrong. Even the most careful and well spoken individuals sometimes fall into innocent miscommunications and unintentional misrepresentations. What blew me away as I was thinking about this report on the radio was that I never have to ask that question when I read God’s word. Really let this sink in: Every word of God is true.
When God speaks, it is absolutely perfect. Perfect in its delivery, perfect in its content, perfect in its timing. He always speaks with proper soberness and weightiness. He’s never too harsh or too soft. His words are not only true, they are truth (Psalm 119:116). Which means that when I hear from God on any subject, I can take it to the bank. There is not one chance that He has said the wrong thing. Sure, I can misunderstand, but it’s not because the content is faulty. “Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him” (Prov 30:5). Every. Single. Word. Amazing.
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Written by James M. Patterson |
Thursday, February 15, 2024
Prestige relates to money in that prestigious schools attract more grants and donations, because of their excellent students and also the eagerness of wealthy donors to have their children admitted. As a result, these institutions can spend money on fine arts programs, more faculty, better student services, and better facilities. Low-prestige universities often have to focus on budgets, which may mean opting for low-prestige signals like merging departments or relying on contingent faculty.

No doubt many conservatives, especially those in higher education, have been clinking glasses at the news that Claudine Gay has resigned after a short and undistinguished presidency at Harvard University. Gay was responsible for the mistreatment of conservative scholars at Harvard and rose through the ranks of higher education by trading on her identity while putting out plagiarized scholarship. There has been plenty of analysis of the specific instances of plagiarism and their relative severity. What is interesting, however, is that none of this seems to have anything to do with being a good president of a university.
What does a university president do? First, the president raises money. Second, the president is the face of the university. Whenever there is a problem, she is the one who appears on television, meets with faculty, and takes calls from donors and important alumni. Presidents are not the final authority on most things, and they almost never handle student or faculty controversies the way some conservative commentators seem to think they do. A university president is doing her job when she is raking in the cash and representing the university well. In the end, Gay was doing neither. While Harvard was never going to close, she had upset enough donors that she was, on balance, a problem rather than an asset for fundraising. She had put on a bad face for the university, starting with her December 5 appearance before the Committee on Education & the Workforce alongside Liz Magill, former president of the University of Pennsylvania.
Magill stepped down a mere six days after the appearance. Only a few months before, Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned from Stanford University after the discovery that he had misrepresented his research. All these resignations have two factors in common: money and prestige.
The Prestige Economy
Money and prestige are the two currencies of higher education. They are related but distinct. For a university, money is not just tuition revenue, but also grants, donations, and endowments. A university that relies entirely on tuition is poor and, in this climate, likely to close. Grants are discrete allocations of money for particular research or teaching roles, such as those given by the National Science Foundation or the Ford Foundation. Donations are usually from wealthy individuals with specific intentions attached to them, such as to pay for a new dormitory or fund a new music school. Endowments are collections of funds that the university invests that can be used for a rainy day or a major expansion.
Prestige is difficult to define, but it requires a good reputation combined with highly selective admissions. Universities can acquire good reputations by graduating excellent students, but they can also acquire them by attracting the sons and daughters of elites. The latter often wins one the title of a “finishing school,” but finishing schools still deal with elites in ways that less prestigious institutions simply do not. Contemporary elite universities do both—mixing incredibly talented students with scions of the upper crust.
Prestige relates to money in that prestigious schools attract more grants and donations, because of their excellent students and also the eagerness of wealthy donors to have their children admitted. As a result, these institutions can spend money on fine arts programs, more faculty, better student services, and better facilities. Low-prestige universities often have to focus on budgets, which may mean opting for low-prestige signals like merging departments or relying on contingent faculty.
Over the past few years, I have become increasingly baffled at how little of this conservative commentators understand. Conservatives often joke about the irrelevance of higher education by quoting Sayre’s law, “The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Universities house scholars, whose work is both in research and the formation of students. If conservatives have no place in higher education, there will be no conservative scholarship and very few conservative students. Indeed, the falsehood of Sayre’s Law is evident in the intensity and coverage of the Magill and Gay fiascos. Conservatives understand that there is something at stake here, but they do not understand what it is. Let me explain.
Car Dealers vs. New Dealers
The source of this ignorance is what I call the “Car Dealer vs. New Dealer problem.” Most American conservatives are middle class or aspire to the middle class, and, as a result, share a “car dealer” view of the world. The car dealer is a successful business owner. He is usually one of the wealthier people in town, and he makes other people rich too—by advertising on local media, hiring employees, and investing in local enterprises. To ensure success, the car dealer must constantly manage finances by finding new investment opportunities and cutting losses. That means gathering market data, firing underperforming staff, and seeking out innovation for increasing sales. The car dealer provides for the common good of those around him because of self-interest, and he assumes that others do the same. This worldview could not be worse for succeeding in higher education. Why is that?
Car dealers cannot commit to anything in the long term. Short-term losses are signals to the car dealer that it is time to pull up stakes and minimize losses, and the costs imposed on those affected are simply part of how the world works. This mentality is what often prevails among American Christian higher education institutions. If we view higher education through the car dealer paradigm, education becomes a service for sale, while students are the consumers, administrators the management, and faculty the labor. Under this model, the primary source of income is tuition, so tuition dictates low-prestige education that diverts the college away from its mission. Meanwhile, faculty in prestige-generating majors are sidelined, encouraged to retire, or downsized.
Most conservative colleges are Christian liberal arts colleges, many of which are struggling to stay afloat. At these struggling American Christian colleges, the majors in greatest demand are primarily in education, business, and nursing—the fields that appear to have the readiest application to real-world employment. Hence, car dealer administrators will divert ever-dissipating resources toward these high-cost programs, often at the expense of the core liberal arts disciplines that are central to the stated mission of the college. Because leaders at Christian colleges do not coordinate decisions, they all make these same decisions at the same time, meaning that they are now fighting over the same students, which in turn means no one gains the enrollment bump they expected. Moreover, students in these majors often graduate into fields with solid employment possibilities and lower salaries. (A notable exception is nursing—although nursing is in greater demand outside of the areas where most Christian liberal arts colleges are.) I am regularly surprised by how little incoming students and their parents know about the demand for conservative graduates to work in prestigious, high-earning positions that would enable them to live religious lives.
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The Son of God most High now hangs cursed for the sins of his people on a tree, suspended between the same heaven and earth he created. And in response, the heavens who before wept for the sins of man with a flood, now drape themselves in black garments of mourning for the murder of their Maker, and the earth quakes under the weight of his accursed cross. The sun turns its eye from beholding the Lamb of God, brutally mutilated by his enemies, by transforming the day into night. For the one who spreads out the heavens as a curtain (Ps. 104:2), the heavens, in turn, spread out a curtain of darkness between his holy manhood and the wicked eyes of men. 

And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst, (Luke 23:44-45).
The enemies of Christ, those scribes and pharisees that wanted him silenced, were ever taunting him to give them a “sign from heaven” – some miraculous indication that he was truly the Son of God (Matt. 12:38, Luke 11:29). Of course, as Luke describes them, this was an “evil generation,” for if they had truly wanted to see and believe, Jesus gave them more signs and miracles in his brief earthly ministry than could be recorded by man (John 21:25).
But even aside from his many miracles, what better “sign from heaven” could they ask for than his creation, the heavens themselves? (Ps. 19:1). God himself said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs…” And the apostle John in the first chapter of his gospel makes it plain that the Word that became flesh before their eyes was the same who was “in the beginning with God,” and that “all things were made by him,” (John 1:1-3). Further, his creation as witness to divine power and majesty was common in the Old Testament, as Moses often called upon “heaven and earth to witness against Israel,” (Deut. 30:19), and the psalmist refers to the moon as “a faithful witness in heaven,” (Ps. 89:37).
The Son of God most High now hangs cursed for the sins of his people on a tree, suspended between the same heaven and earth he created. And in response, the heavens who before wept for the sins of man with a flood, now drape themselves in black garments of mourning for the murder of their Maker, and the earth quakes under the weight of his accursed cross.
The sun turns its eye from beholding the Lamb of God, brutally mutilated by his enemies, by transforming the day into night. For the one who spreads out the heavens as a curtain (Ps. 104:2), the heavens, in turn, spread out a curtain of darkness between his holy manhood and the wicked eyes of men.
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