Review Essay, Keeping the Balance
A survivor’s guide: Things I wish I’d been told before studying theology, Laura Jervis (12pgs)
Outline provided by the author:
| [Opening words/Introduction] | 38 |
| The pros … | 39 |
| And cons … | 39 |
| How is your heart? | 42 |
| Be bold! | 43 |
| Six top tips on how to stay spiritually healthy | 44 |
| 1. Don’t take yourself too seriously | 44 |
| 2. Don’t let your personal time with God be squeezed out | 45 |
| 3. Seek out good teaching and Christian support | 46 |
| 4. Find out about resources | 46 |
| 5. Always read the primary text for essays and pray for wisdom | 47 |
| 6. Be humble | 47 |
In this second essay, Laura Jervis, a graduate of St. John’s College in Oxford, offers some very human reflections on her own experiences at university and lays out a plan for staying “spiritually healthy” whilst studying theology. The style of the essay is decidedly more light-hearted and “studenty” than the other writings in Keeping the Balance, but Jervis is speaking student-to-student, and remembering not to take ourselves too seriously is one of her main pieces of advice.
She begins by reflecting, tongue-in-cheek, on some of the reasons we may have decided to choose theology as our subject. Whatever those reasons may have been (whether it was simply a desire to avoid anything with numbers or early-morning lectures!), Jervis believes “it is an amazing privilege to study theology”. However, academic theology “can pose problems for the spiritual health of the Christian”.
Jervis’ exploration of the difficulties Christians face can be roughly divided into two sections: problems of the head, and problems of the heart. She believes that if we are aware of those problems from the outset, and come armed with “some practical tips on how to survive”, then “our time of studying theology will be one when we reach increasing Christian maturity”.
Category: In Depth, Spring 2006
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