Journal Week 8: Psychology and Christianity

For years, I've led a double-life.

In one life, at ACU where I teach, I was Chair of the Psychology Department, teacher of PSYC 120 Introduction to Psychology, PSYC 451 Statistics in Psychological Research and PSYC 657 Multivariate Statistics.

In my other life, I was called a theologian, an author of Christian books, guest on Christian podcasts, adjunct faculty at seminaries, and speaker at churches and Christian conferences.

Surprisingly, these worlds didn't connect or collide all that often. Mainly because it's hard to squeeze theological discussions into lectures about correlation and regression analyses.

This situation bothered me. I was writing, speaking about, and traveling around sharing psychological and theological insights about Christianity, but I never had a venue to share these thoughts with my own students. ACU students knew virtually nothing of my other life. I needed to bring my two worlds together.

This year I was finally able to do this. I got my teaching load reconfigured, making room for me to add the class PSYC 340 Psychology and Christianity. I taught it last fall, and am teaching it again this spring, with the plan to teach it every semester going forward.

My goodness, how I love this class. I'm finally able to have deep and sustained conversations with my ACU students about everything I'm so passionate about.

Recently, I was asked about what I love so much about the class. My response was this:

"Every class I get to go big. Every single lecture, something vital, deep, and important always hangs in the balance."

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