Imagine standing right next to a skyscraper. That close up, it’s not impressive. The most interesting part may be the used chewing gum that some unscrupulous pedestrian stuck to its side.

Now imagine taking a few steps back and looking up. The building looms over you with an almost threatening majesty, reorienting your sense of reality. You stagger at the literally towering significance of a superstructure whose only interest to you mere moments ago was the way in which someone abused it.

As a denomination, it’s time for us to take a few steps back, to look heavenward and to survey a staggering fact: The Lord God has given us a college. A college! Even the tepid description “institution of higher learning” ought to stir the collective soul of our denomination, which values education so highly and has historically worked so tirelessly to educate all kinds and classes of people. These emphases derive necessarily from our worship of the Savior of the world, in ...