I would like to talk about a few heart qualities.
The difference in you today and yesterday is that you have now as college graduates assumed the responsibility to be your own teacher. Plato said if the teachers have done their job correctly then they have awakened in you the teacher so that you live your life being both teacher and student. My friend, Jack Modesett said that his life changed as a sophomore in Princeton when he found the joy of learning. He graduated magna cum laude but he also lives magna cum laude because he is both his teacher and his student.
Therefore let me give you two qualities of an educated heart.
1. A taste for the full life
Professor William James referred to it as "thickness," meaning that life has a full dimension. It is more than surface or shallow. There is a "thickness." Christ carries the same thought when he said "abundant life."
The Menninger clinic in studying mature individuals said that one of the traits is that their life is a confluence of stimulation from varied sources. They are more than a uni-dimensional person.
I see individuals whose function has taken over their person. We get our strokes from our function but we get our joy from our being. It's possible that a preacher can become a function, a missionary can become a function, just as easily as for an executive to become such a function that he no longer is really a full-orbed person.
2. The love of truth
We live in such a fantasy world: the media, advertising, political propaganda, religious propaganda. These all are not dealing with truth. Even so many of our facts are not really the truth. Father Hesburgh, when he became president of Notre Dame, was given by his predecessor father Cavanaugh , three rules which have guided his life: "be right -be human - be humble." When Mr. David Rockefeller asked Father Hesburgh to join the board of Chase Manhattan bank, the Father laughed for, he said, "I am a priest. I have never even had a personal bank account and now you ask me to be a director of this prestigious financial institution." David Rockefeller replied, "Father Hesburgh, if we
don't know how to run a bank we shouldn't be here. What we need is somebody skilled in knowing what is morally right. You have your education in philosophy and theology, and we want you to help us to know what is right." Father Hesburgh said that sometimes during the board meetings when they got into a discussion of what was morally right, Mr. Rockefeller would turn to him and say, "Father, tell us what is right." Then without thinking about what was profitably right or politically right or popularly right, I tried to tell them what was morally right."
The love of truth goes beyond dogma and doctrine. It eventually goes to that philosophical statement "truth is ultimately a person." A Jewish philosopher was trying to explain this to me, which I found difficult. He smiled and said, "You should understand for you are a Christian. Christ said, "I am the truth." Truth lets us feel comfortable in the hard stands we take. Without truth, how can we know where to stand? The more we love truth the easier it is to recognize it. This is similar to knowing a person. After a first meeting we can hardly recognize them the second time, but if we ever fall in love with the person we can recognize them from just the slightest glimpse of them.
The movement of their body, the sound of their footsteps, or their cough identifies them because we recognize easily those we love. Just so it is as we develop our love of truth, we recognize it more easily.
Our love of truth removes the dangers of our prejudices. The danger of the inerrant issue is that it can possibly cost us our love and relation with each other. I have been in some rather vitriolic discussions of inerrancy when I felt the total absence of love. My only defense is to ask whether or not the other person is going to heaven, when 1 am told that they are, then 1 say that I have no alternative but to associate with them since we are both members of the body of Christ. H. G. Wells said, "Jesus was too big for my small heart." Love of truth enlarges our heart.
