Life Questions Every Student Asks – Faithful Responses to Common Issues

Every student asks questions about life beyond the classroom: What does it mean to be in community?How can I discern my vocation?How should I understand marriage and sex?How should I relate to money and power?What happens if I doubt my faith?How should I approach interfaith dialogue?To help students navigate these questions about some of life's most pressing and difficult issues, Gary M. Burge and David Lauber, coeditors of Theology Questions Everyone Asks, have gathered insights from Christian faculty who draw on their own experiences in conversation with students during office hours and over coffee.Sometimes, the deepest learning takes place outside the classroom.

Despite stereotypes, I have found many young adults long for guidance from trustworthy older saints who don't offer bumper sticker clichés but instead provide hard-earned wisdom. In this wonderfully practical yet richly theological work, we have honest and relevant reflections offered to the next generation of believers. Whether struggling with questions about doubt or vocation, sex or suffering, this book does not shy away from real challenges. I encourage young and old to read these pages; we can all learn from the balanced vision it provides.--Kelly M. Kapic, professor of theological studies at Covenant College, Every church that sends its kids off to college and every parent who wants their child to navigate the higher education experience as a disciple of Jesus should give them a compass and this book. Both will help the matriculating student stay on course--in the case of this book, not with canned advice, as is so often the case, but with deep wisdom, honest reflections, and practical advice about the most significant questions that often haunt Christian students, whether they attend secular or religious institutions. In any case, every Christian college should make this book required reading during its students' first semester.--Dennis Okholm, Azusa Pacific University, author of Learning Theology through the Church's Worship, Every conversation in this book I had as a student at Columbia University, except I didn't have this book to ground and launch those discussions. If you are a college student or work with them, then this is the book to get together to discuss and wrestle with what it looks like to follow Jesus in the face of a dominant culture that calls you to look elsewhere for identity, significance, and satisfaction.--Jonathan P. Walton is an area director with InterVarsity/USA and author of Twelve Lies That Hold America Captive: And the Truth That Sets Us Free, This book addresses some of the most important questions my students ask me both in class and in our individual conversations, speaking to the ways that Christian education at its best impacts students' daily lives and not just their academic knowledge. I look forward to offering this book as a resource to my students.--Mary Veeneman, professor of biblical and theological Studies at North Park University, To have within a single volume twelve different experts, whose own lives and callings have been indelibly shaped by their Christian faith, winsomely and honestly translate their expertise into practical wisdom for following Jesus in the contours, struggles, and questions of everyday life--the result is a pearl of great price, one book worth innumerable other books. I can think of so many Christians navigating the very present questions and challenges that arise over the course of life, from confronting suffering to figuring out if church really matters to engaging in activism, who I would want to benefit from the wisdom of this book. The importance of the topics that are engaged, the ways those topics are shaped by the real-life experiences of those writing, and the clear compassion that permeates the engagement combine together to make this a must-read book for college students, twenty- and thirtysomethings, and those well beyond.--Kristen Deede Johnson, dean and professor of theology and Christian formation at Western Theological Seminary

Gary M. Burge (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is dean of the faculty and professor of New Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary. He previously taught for twenty-five years at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Among his many published books are The New Testament in Seven Sentences, Theology Questions Everyone Asks (with coeditor David Lauber), A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion, Mapping Your Academic Career, The New Testament in Antiquity (coauthored with Gene Green), and the award-winning Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians Are Not Being Told About Israel and the Palestinians. David Lauber (PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary) is dean of the School of Biblical and Theological Studies and associate professor of theology at Wheaton College. He is the author of Barth on the Descent into Hell and the coeditor of several volumes, including Theology Questions Everyone Asks (with coeditor Gary Burge), Trinitarian Theology for the Church, The People's Book, and The Bloomsbury Companion to the Doctrine of Sin.