Being a nerd; being a Christian.

So, I'm applying again to grad schools. I didn't get into a Ph.D. program last year, and so I'm not giving up. But, I've been struggling with the paradox of spending lots of time and energy in something that doesn't really seem to have an explicit connection to my faith.

So, my friend Jesse mentioned C. S. Lewis's "Learning in War-Time." It's a perfect little article that deals with this complicated issue.

There are lots of ways of looking at it.

Why do anything that doesn't contribute to eternal things?

Some might say that you shouldn't.

But I say, it would take a lot of effort to make your life that efficient, that meaningful, that holy. And I don't believe that God wants us to only eat rice and drink water, if you catch my connection there.

Here's line from "Learning in War-Time":

"[The Christian] must ask himself how it is right,or even psychologically possible,for creatures who are everymoment advancing either to heaven or to hell, to spend any fraction of the little time allowed them in this world on such comparative trivialities as literature or art, mathematics or biology."

Read it.