Focusing as much as I have recently on relaunching the scholarly, publishing dimension of my work after a 15 year fallow period, I forget that some people don’t get why this even matters. Who cares about writing an article in a journal that only a few hundred people, at best, will read?

I remember in seminary in the early 1980’s, as I labored to learn Arabic, flipping through my vocabulary cards on a steel ring, chatting with a buddy who excelled as an evangelist, specifically, as an illusionist, a good one. He had cultivated, through hours and hours of drill and practice, an amazing capacity to manipulate cards and coins as part of his excellent evangelistic magic program. In the midst of the conversation he challenged me, asking, “Stone, how many people are going to go to hell while you sit here and learn Arabic, a language nobody even cares about?” For a moment I was floored…

Why do scholarship anyhow? It sure isn’t for the money! Very few scholars make much money with their writing. The ones that do could make more moonlighting as refrigerator repairmen! And it’s not for the power either. That a few professors think you are cool because of some obscure article you wrote doesn’t get you free coffee, even in your own school! And believe it or not, people who go into scholarship thinking they can change it for the kingdom, make it a more friendly and positive place for faith, are often self-deceived. Scholarship is tribal, and those who think they can change the cynics, skeptics, relativists, and atheists with their brilliant arguments end up either giving up, or having their audience confined to those who already agree with them, whom they encourage and support. Often these guys, when they write for peer-reviewed, technical journals, don’t even make a case that could support faith. They write on neutral issues that anybody, believer or not, could write on. That they are Christians matters nothing in that context. A couple give up on influencing scholars and turn to popular culture, where again, mainly they function to shore up folks who are already believers, persuading few to no unbelievers to cross the line.

So…why have I invested so much in restarting something for which there are not a lot of romantic, exciting reasons? It’s actually very important, and very simple.

Accountability.

In the classroom, we professors spout off our opinions and theories with a lot of authority. We typically persuade our students, who think we have a great “take” on this or that issue.  But the simple fact is, very few students are equipped or inclined to offer serious resistance. They don’t know the biblical languages as well, they don’t know the cognate languages and literatures, they don’t know the history of research, in short, they just don’t know enough to be sure that what I or my colleagues is giving them is really worthwhile.

And popular publishing won’t help on that point. If I write an evangelical Christian book, published by an evangelical Christian publisher, sold in evangelical Christian bookstores…am I really putting my views before a critical, competent, potentially hostile audience for review?

So that’s where scholarly journals come in. I have only done two technical articles in peer-reviewed mainstream scholarly journals. Both, though, I think, made a contribution to the faith. Both were read and evaluated by people who didn’t know me, didn’t know I was the author of the article (blind peer review), and might not have been kindly disposed toward my point of view. So getting into that kind of journal, for me, is about one thing: accountability.

I want my students to know that while I am not famous, and I don’t have any books on the rack at the local Christian bookstore, I am at least seeking to be accountable for the quality of my thought. I want the main points of my teaching to have been subjected to the critical, possibly hostile, review of peers. That way, my students can know that on some level, what they are hearing has survived a vetting process beyond their capability.

And as for changing the world, I suspect that teaching students well, whether they become pastors, evangelists, church planters, or scholars, will be the way that happens. So being accountable for the quality of what I teach them turns out to matter after all.

Oh…and my magician friend’s question? I had an answer after all. I suspect that the number of people who “went to hell” while I flipped Arabic vocab cards was about the same as the number who “went to hell” while he flipped playing cards for hours…

…so I guess we all, in pursuing our calling, end up investing our lives in things that others consider a total waste of time!