Integration Isn't Just For Faith

In a recent article that I read entitled "Defining the Integration of Faith and Learning" by Robert Harris, it speaks about what integration actually is and how it relates to faith and learning.

"Every time we learn something, we engage in the process of integrating knowledge, for integration is the process of connecting knowledge with knowledge-connecting facts, ideas, and other information together in a way that unifies them." - Robert Harris

Everybody integrates knowledge at some point everyday. We may not even mean to do it. It just comes naturally. It would only seem natural that faith is integrated with learning as well.

Harris lists five assumptions to integrating faith and learning. One of these assumptions is that truth is the most important goal of learning. No matter what you learn, when you do learn, you want to learn the truth. A kindergarten teacher does not teach her students that 2+2=5. That is wrong. Untrue. 2+2=4 That is the truth. If a student doesn't learn that then they will have difficulty in all other types of math simply because they didn't know the truth and were not taught. The same goes for the integration of faith and learning. If people are not taught the importance of their faith and how to apply it to what they learn, then they will have nothing to base their knowledge on because God is truth and truth is God.

I think its very important that God's truth is the basis for every other kind of knowledge. Otherwise, the other knowledge will make sense but there will always be a piece missing from the puzzle. That piece is the knowledge of God's truth and knowing for a fact that it is the ultimate truth.

I will leave with a quote from J.P. Moreland who says this "In conceptual integration,one's theological beliefs are blended and unified with propositions judged to be justifiably believed as true from other sources into a coherent, intellectually satisfying world view."

www.virtualsalt.com/int/intdef.pdf