By: Nathan McKee
There’s a beautiful new building that recently opened at Southern Adventist University
named after my great-grandmother, Ruth McKee. As one enters Southern’s campus, the sight of
it is certainly impressive, with level upon pillared level leading up to the round apex of the
edifice, and beyond that, to the vaulted sky.
This fall semester, business faculty and students moved into this new building, the Ruth
McKee School of Business. I’m confident that the fine programs inhabiting this building will
delight, inspire and equip business students as they prepare for meaningful careers.
Nonetheless, as they leave behind decades of memories at Brock Hall, I hope their
departure isn’t permanent. I hope they make it back to Brock.
Yes, Brock Hall, which — though it lacks the iconic columns — is home to faculty who
could tell you from whence those columns came. The columns represent a legacy passed down to
us from centuries and millennia past. In them, we see Egyptian Karnak set in seas of sand, the
Athenian Parthenon and Rome’s Augustan Forum. One sees them grounding Hereford
Cathedral’s Norman vaults and lining Oxford’s cloisters. They bring to mind the noble halls of
English Peers and our own Capitol Hill. These worlds and more are opened up at Brock
whenever its professors teach the humanities or students open up old books to read.
It might not be an obvious choice for many, going back to Brock. Isn’t the point of
education to prepare for our career? So, why waste time on history, writing, languages and
literature and stack upon dusty stack of books, unless there’s some specific need or outcome?
The answer to these questions depends entirely on the time horizon of our goals. If all we
have in mind is the first few years after college, on getting a decent job and making a decent
living, then the natural conclusion is probably not to bother with the humanities.
If, however, one is thinking about the next fifty or more years, the answer changes.
Occupational education, by necessity, focuses on the occupational part of life. If the goal of
education is occupational, once one’s career is well established, then what? When this part of life
is secured, what will we do with the other parts that, together, make up the whole thing?
Indeed, it’s rare that the other parts of life leave our occupations alone. In business, for
instance, holistic thinking should challenge and inform major decisions. The business decision to
reduce one’s workforce is confronted by the human impact on people’s livelihoods. The business
decision to build a warehouse is confronted by the human impact of seeing yet another mass of
concrete and sheet metal and one less jolly woodland. The business decision to change jobs is
confronted by the human impact of moving away from friends and a community.
These sorts of decisions, when correctly considered, require expanding our vision beyond
the business impact and one’s occupational life. They make us look at the whole of life and
compel us to consider how, in view of that whole, we should act.
An earnest study of the humanities can help us get used to considering this wholeness in
all its complexity. When studying medieval Europe, for instance, one cannot afford to focus on
just one aspect of society but must consider the development of the whole over a long period of
time. The politics of kings, queens and noble families, emerging towns, family and village life,
agriculture, guilds, trade, literature and the medieval church must be studied together to
understand the period’s history.
As another example from literature, in the “Iliad,” Homer’s most moving passages reveal
more than just the feats and sufferings of warriors, but the impact of war on the whole society:
Andromache, begging Hector not to return to battle, thus abandoning her and her child to the
dreaded day of captivity, or later Priam bartering with the enemy for his son’s corpse.
In addition to the whole of society, the humanities are concerned with the whole
individual, as felt, for example, when reading Wordsworth’s “Daffodils,” which shows how
natural beauty can fascinate the entire human soul. These are only a few examples of how the
humanities have a way of dealing with the whole of life, and a close study of the literature they
encompass has a lasting effect on the whole person.
Studying the humanities also has a profound effect on our leisure time, driving us to
spend more time cultivating our minds by reading good books and less time streaming or
scrolling.
In addition, when we travel to culturally significant places like Florence and walk, for
example, through the Uffizi Gallery or dell’Academia in the midst of that ancient city, how will
we comprehend the scenes from history and classical myth depicted in paintings and sculptures if
we haven’t studied the humanities? Moreover, during such travel and throughout life, will we be
able to immerse ourselves in another culture by speaking a language that, while foreign to us, is
another person’s mother tongue? Only by learning another language, an important part of the
humanities, can we ever experience this.
All these examples point to a deeper truth about the purpose of education. Of course, part
of our education should prepare us for an occupation. That’s why we have the Ruth McKee
School of Business and many other excellent career-oriented programs across campus. Nonetheless, the higher goal of education is to cultivate and improve the human soul, and
engaging with the humanities at Southern is a great way to kickstart this lifelong process.
Indeed, if we were only concerned with this life, we’d stop at the humanities. But at
Southern, we’re about Transforming Lives for Eternity, which means encouraging students not
only to read good books, but also to make the Bible the supreme good book in their lives, the one
to which they return again and again as they walk in living faith with Jesus.
So, hear me, business students, in whose shoes I walked more than a dozen years ago.
Enjoy your new building and study well your trade. But also look across the parking lot and field
every now and then, the place from whence you came, and spend some time there studying
history, writing, languages and literature: the humanities. In sum, I hope you make it back to
Brock.
