Another year, another Veritas Weekend!
What an incredible blessing to go to my last VW with the biggest team Emory has ever brought and with two Forums members this year!
As I return to a much warmer Georgia (it seems we missed the Boston snow & heinous cold by a weekend), I, of course, have new & different reflections.
This year’s conference theme was “Loving God with Your Mind” and as a senior, I’ve been especially reflecting on how I’ve done that as an Emory student and could continue to do it after graduation.
Here are the things that I loved and took away from the fun plenary & breakout sessions:
If anything might get you to stop ‘scrolling, browsing, and searching’ it would be attending Dr. Kavin Rowe’s breakout session and hear him say, more or less verbatim, “Reading is inscribing on the soul. Social media is trash. Why would you want to inscribe trash on your soul?”
YIKES.
I don’t want trash to be inscribed on my soul. And I tend to drop Instagram & YouTube for Lent every year, so that very night, I logged off both. So far, it has been great as I haven’t doom scrolled before bed or gone down the rabbit hole of YouTube shorts. It’s given me more time to read Remaking the World by Andrew Milton which Veritas gifted to us at the conference. 😉 I don’t mean to villainize social media use but it’s so healthy to unplug and give our time & attention to other things beside our screens that we use so often.
Author Daniel Nayeri provided a new definition of “elegance” during a plenary; Elegance is maximum depth & minimum complexity. Jesus said he was like a fount or well of living water (John 4 and 7), never a “series of Roman aqueducts!” Theology can be complicated but Jesus isn’t.
Finally, if we consume the Bible and works from the likes of C.S. Lewis, Seneca, St. Augustine, etc., but can’t witness and testify these ideas with our peers, what’s the use? What’s the point of this privilege I have called education if I don’t honor the one who gave it to me? Honoring God with my mind means taking what I’ve gained from this education and degree and loving on this world that God so loved first.
I can only look forward to hearing about what nuggets of wisdom will be shared at next year’s conference for the next gen of In Via! Blessings!
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