May 8, 2024 • 39 mins
In this episode, Tudor explores the current state of college campuses and the breakdown of civil society. Dr. Gerson Moreno-Riano, president of Cornerstone University, discusses the lack of moral leadership and the decline of the Christian worldview in universities. He emphasizes the importance of integrating a Christian worldview in education and preparing students to be influencers for Jesus Christ. The Tudor Dixon Podcast is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network. For more visit TudorDixonPodcast.com
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. While you all have
been seeing what's happening on college campuses across the country,
and now we see the same kids that had their
high school graduations canceled are having their college graduations canceled.
And I've seen a lot of people, a lot of
these political pundits and people like myself to be quite honest,
who have come out and been like, you know what,
(00:22):
let this happen to these students. They deserve it. And
I have to tell you I disagree. I think that
these are few and far between, these kids on these
college campuses. I don't think it's as many of the
students as you think it is. I think there are
a lot of very serious students that are at these
universities that are devastated by what's happening on these campuses.
(00:42):
And I would also question how many of these students
are actual or how many of these protesters are actually students,
And do these presidents of these universities have a handle
of who is coming on their campuses. Well, we have
a friend who is a president of a university right
here in Michigan, the president of Cornerstone University. It's a
(01:04):
Christian University based right here in Michigan just recently named
the number thirty ninth most conservative university in the nation.
So we're very excited about that right here in Michigan,
and we have the president who is doctor. I don't
want to say it wrong, so tell me again the
for your how to say your person Girsan Yes, doctor
(01:27):
Gerson moreno Riano with us today. First, I just want
to go through with you again how we can help
the folks over in Israel, because I know we are
We've been talking about these protests, but we've also been
talking about the attacks. Remember, since October seventh, the attacks
on Israel have increased, with Iran and its proxies launching
(01:49):
an attack of hundreds of drones and missiles on Israel.
Israelis are currently living with that harsh reality of terror
every day. Again, you guys, we don't know what this
is like. But the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews,
they are on the ground now addressing all of these
urgent needs. And that's why I'm partnering with IFCJ today.
(02:09):
While praying for the best, IFCJ is preparing for the
worst by packing emergency bomb shelter kits that can be
delivered immediately to those in desperate need. Your life saving
donation will help assemble and place these kids with enough
food and life saving emergency supplies for twenty people huddled
in a bomb shelter. The cost to put and distribute
(02:31):
those kids together is two hundred and ninety dollars each.
So your gift now will help save many lives. And
thanks to a matching challenge gift from a generous IFCJ supporter,
your gift will double in its impact to help provide
twice the support. The number to call to make sure
you get your gift in is eight eight eight four
(02:52):
eight eight IFCJ. That's eight eight eight four eight eight
IFCJ or four three two, or you can go online again.
Always go online to support IFCJ dot org. To give.
That's one word, it's support IFCJ dot org. Make sure
you get your donation in and now to bring this
(03:13):
back to the United States, we want to go back
to what's happening here. Thank you so much for coming
to join us today from all the way from Cornerstone
and Grand Rapids, Michigan. I want to get your take
on what exactly is going on on university campuses right now.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Well too, it's great to be here. Thank you for
the opportunity. You know, I echo what you mentioned in
the very beginning. We just had our commencement ceremony to
hear this past Saturday, and in my opening comments and
welcoming I shared with the students and the audience of
several thousand that this is the first this is the
graduation for these students from COVID. They didn't have a
high school graduation, and this is sort of the first class.
(03:53):
So when I mentioned that, a significant number of students
cheer because I know they lost something. They know they've
lost something and were able to do this. So I
equally your comments that I think there are many many
students on these campuses who are very serious, very committed,
have worked very very hard, and now are at a
loss one more time, and quite frankly, a situation that
(04:16):
could have been avoided but wasn't avoided, and now they're
at a loss one more time. So I in my
sense around the country, and these sports are spread throughout
the country. Now it's really that our country is is
unable to have serious, good, difficult conversations at any level
of society. There's a significant breakdown in civil society, which
(04:39):
is really the barrier between government and the individual citizens.
And civil societies should allow for conversations, vigorous conversations. But
what we have become is a country where everything is
zero sum. Right, my position is the only one that
matters to yours does not, And as a matter of fact,
you don't matter either. Right, that's sort of the way
(05:01):
we interpret this. So we have the right to not
just defame your position, but defame you, assassinate your character,
shut you down, go to your home and protest, smear you,
do whatever we can to make you completely notice, irrelevant,
but persona non grata. And that's what we have done.
And I see all sides of the questions doing this,
(05:24):
It's not just one. Everyone now has become very antagonistic,
and that's really what's happening now. And you see it
in college campuses, which in theory, should be a place
within civil society where you should be having conversations.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
It seems like there's an effort though to not have
that conversation, a bigger effort on this particular subject, because
if you look at these universities, this happened very quickly,
that Suddenly, I would say, students that probably likely didn't
even know about the conflict with Gosen in Israel and
what was going on, we're suddenly very pro Gaza and saying,
(06:03):
you know, how can I mean, some of these students
have come out and say, hey, we support hamas death
to America. They've said things that we've never seen American
university students say before. I mean, last night, I was
talking to my mom and she's like, I take exception
to people comparing this to the sixties, because people were
not saying death to America in the sixties. And it
does seem like some other force has come in. We
(06:26):
see these students praying five times a day. Suddenly there's
this other force. Students who had been atheists, who hadn't
been connected to religion at all, are now suddenly strong
supporters of Islam, a religion that is not in line
with the other things that they're talking about when they
are on college campuses. And I say that because we've
clearly seen people who are supporting the LGBTQ community and
(06:51):
all of these things that do not align with Islam. However,
this has come on to our college campus is very strong.
And I also would like to question who is funding it,
how did it happen underneath the administrator's noses. But Palestine,
the Gozen people are not the only oppressed or attacked
(07:12):
people in the world, and they are not certainly they
are in this conflict where they have chosen their leadership.
They've chosen their leadership that has decided to attack Israel.
There are communities in the world who are truly being attacked,
and there is true genocide that we don't ever talk about.
So how did this happen?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Well, look, I think it's the outworking of probably decades
and decades and decades of miseducation at the family level,
in society, at the university level. Right, So what you
see now, you're right, it's much more antagonistic virulin against
the United States. So what you've seen is decades and
decades of university education and essence sowing seeds in the
(07:56):
minds of students that America failed empire, that America has
gone as a terrorist nation, That America can't be trusted,
but its leaders can't be trusted, That America is hypocritical,
that the West writ large is colonial and destructive. So
this is what for years and years and years. Oftentimes
(08:17):
students are receiving in their education and many universities, especially
in their general education, core curriculum and in other courses.
So this has been going on for a long, long
long time. The sixties, the argument was also made as
well that because of slavery in our country, you had
an unjust society. Now this has been taken and exploded
(08:39):
and expanded to say America is unjust in everything that
it does. That's the argument, and not just internally, but
it's supporting causes in other parts of the world that
are just as unjust in wicked too. And frankly, when
a students and generations, year per year, decade after decade
are taught that and hear that not just in their universities,
(09:02):
but also in the media, also in popular culture right,
also in influencers, and that's what they're hearing, that begins
then to resonate for many people. Some then take it
even a step further now and say we're going to
take up arms that we can and destroy right and
attack and tear down and burn and do whatever we
need to in essence destroy the institutions of this society
(09:24):
and rebuild a new Others are going to become completely
just despondent or cynical about everything America, right, But a
lot of it has been because of years of those
kinds of things. Number one and two a lack of
real moral leadership well, not just at universities, but also
throughout our society, in the federal government and state government.
(09:46):
I'm a big believer that young people today are looking
for strong moral leadership, right They're crying out for it,
they're seeking it, and when it's not provided, there's a
vacuum there. They're going to find its somewhere. They're going
to look for it to something that's interesting. And when
you don't have when universities, since we're speaking about universities,
(10:09):
don't have a sense of purpose, a sense of direction,
then what happens is that students will find it elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Well, and you haven't had this happen on Cornerstone's campus,
which I think I wanted to kind of take what
you just said, and the last time I had you
on you talked very clearly about the fact that there
is a sense of purpose, there is a message at
Cornerstone that you make sure that these students understand. And
you actually when you first came to Cornerstone. We're kind
of criticized for really being like, no, you know, this
(10:40):
is who we are. We are at Christian University. We're
going to live by that and we want our students
to understand that. But look, Cornerstone hasn't had this happen,
has it.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I'm grateful to say it has not. I'm very grateful
that it has not. We have a great student body,
great faculty, great staff. But frankly, it's something that you
have to shepherd all the time, right, I mean part
of being a leader, a more leader in any part
of society and working with people, you have to be
shepherd in your people and it's a continual process. If
you don't do that, then what happens is that individual
(11:13):
societies quickly drift, right, they will quickly drift, and then
it becomes a serious problem. So, for example, universities today,
I mean, as you know, in American history, the universities
were first founded to educate the preachers and the pastors
and the ministers of society. That was the original founding
of Harvard and Yale and print in all these schools
(11:36):
were and that's a preacher. Collegists in some ways religious institutions.
That changed. Then universities began to think about how do
we educate people who are not ministers and what do
they need? Then that changed later on as the university
began to look toward Europe for a model of education,
and German institutions became the model for American universities. We
(11:59):
became very focused on research as a public good. Right,
that change, and those continual changes till now where universities
focus solely on jobs, for example, or careers. Not nothing
wrong with that, it's a huge focus. Now what's happened
is that the moral purpose of a university is now
a drift. What is it? Should universes be involved in
(12:23):
moral formation? Should they be involved in shaping citizens? Not
the citizens, but moral people? Right? And no university right
now really wants to answer that conclusively. So they come
up with very sort of broad statements about what they do.
But they are hands off. And you're seeing and now
(12:43):
part of the argue situations that universities are hands off
about these kinds of things. They believe in what it's
called institutional neutrality. We're not going to say which side
is right, which side is wrong.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Let's take a quick commercial break we'll continue next on
a Tutor Dixon podcast. So we may see the leadership,
but oftentimes we see professors that are pushing students in
a certain direction that may be a moral or maybe
against what the values of this country have always been.
(13:16):
And I mean an example, we recently visited family and
one of the family members said, yeah, we sent our
child to the university. They turned against what our family
values had always been. And we haven't spoken in six months.
And this story, to me, is all too common. Is
(13:36):
that the traditional American values that we've all had that
are not wacky, they're not out of step with other Americans,
Suddenly they go to university and those values don't hold up.
They don't they're not in lockstep with these radical universities.
And so I would say that maybe you have a
Columbia where the president's like, hey, you know, we don't
(13:59):
know how this happened. But then if you start to
pick apart some of these universities and look at their professors,
they've been teaching hate. It's not so much that they
are teaching a message or an ideology. It is like
exactly what you said, America is bad. Down with this country.
They're getting this from in many cases these universities. And
(14:21):
I would say for private university, you know, I guess
they can teach whatever they want and they can start
to indoctrinate kids. And if you choose to pay a
private university all of this money to do this to
your children, then I don't know what you're thinking. But
these public universities where we are taking our tax dollars
and putting them into these public universities, where some of
(14:42):
these professors are making outrageous amounts of money. I mean,
I've seen anywhere from two hundred and fifty thousand to
seven hundred and fifty thousand professors walking out of school
every day with this giant cash bag. And how can
they get away with teaching these things that have nothing
These things don't have anything to do with a job.
This is just an ideology.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
It's been happening for a very long time, so I shared.
I mean, you can look at at the curriculum and
at some significant universities for decades where they shifted away
from teaching certain things about American history or American history
or Western culture and began to shift to other embassies
downgrading this country. Don Green in the West and Look,
(15:24):
I want to be very clear, no country, no civilization,
is perfect. Every civilization, every country has its share of injustices.
So one of the problems that's happened here is that
universities have failed to acknowledge the great things to good
things about this society, American America and the West, and
denigrated the entire thing. And they began then to insert
(15:48):
other things and a cynicism and a suspicion that has
really really reatapicked through over generation after generation after generation
of students. And now we have that your point about faculty,
I mean, faculty have a very important role in the
education of future moral leaders of our country. They do right.
And if faculty are brought into institutions and are provided
(16:13):
with the means and the impetus to actually done great
and downgrade not just the university of the country, the society.
What is it what is left for that student? And
oftentimes students will look at faculty and raise them on
a pedestal. They know so much, and there's a certain
energy when you're young, as you know, as we all know,
(16:34):
when we're young, we're really critical of everything. We think,
we know everything. You add that component to what I
call the sophisticated skepticism of the academy. And it's a
lethal combination because oftentimes universities are they prize skepticism, it's
called critical thinking, but they don't prize wisdom or truth.
(16:56):
So they've read, they've released it. They rejected the pursuit
of truth, the acquisition of truth, the affirmation of truth.
Critical thinking is the skill of every university that they prize,
So you can't have that alone. Human beings are moral.
We are moral creatures. We've been created and design to
be moral people. And consequently we just don't have critical
(17:19):
thinking or surprise it alone. Wisdom and truth matter. So
what you see today with these young people and the protests,
they are affirming what they believe to be true. They're
affirming what they believe to be just and good, right,
and it shows you we're all designed for that. The
dilemma is that what they are affirming to be true,
just and good is quite frankly broken, It's not right.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
It's interesting because as we watch these students, we're like,
how can you be filled with so much hate? But
you make such good points, I mean, really making me
wrap my mind around this in a different way. Because
if I take myself back all those years to being
at college in a universe. My professors, I did lift
them up. They were the experts. They were in this
(18:06):
position of authority over me, and I was so respectful
of that. So I think that if we peel back
the layers, we say, okay, wait, these are students who
are looking at authority figures and saying I need to
respect what they say. And what they're coming at me
with is they're coming at me with a source of love,
(18:29):
whereas we are seeing this as a source of hate.
But they're like, oh, you know, these people are so oppressed,
and I've learned that there is this great oppression from
my university professors, and so I must come to the
rescue of these people. So ultimately, I think human nature
is that we are good, that we are taking care
(18:49):
of others. It's how that human nature can be manipulated.
And to your point, right, we have people that are
on two different sides of this argument, and there is
no easy way of looking at this. It's not black
and white. It's what happens in the middle is going
to determine what happens in this region of the world.
But this region of the world is very important to
(19:11):
the rest of the globe, and so it does impact everything.
I just have never really thought about it from the
standpoint of how I mean, even if I look at
my girls now in fifth and seventh in freshman year
of high school, when I look at the way they
think of their teachers, their teachers are right. They come
(19:32):
home and they love to share what their teachers have
told them, you know, like I learned this today, and
so why would that change just because you go from
eighteen to nineteen. You know, so you make a great
point that we're not really considering. But then to go
to that point, if you are in a position of
(19:52):
being the president of a university the size of a
University of Michigan or the size of a Columbia University,
how do you know what's happening in these lecture halls
with these professors, and how do you make sure that
you're not radicalizing the next class of students to graduate?
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yeah, I mean it's a great question. It's hard work.
I mean, I don't envy these presidents being a college president.
It's hard work. Do you have to implement a number
of things. I mean, you have to, number one, have
a real mission and vision for what it means to
educate more people, moral leaders, right to educate the whole
human person. That's really really important. And if you emphasize alone,
(20:32):
I mean, if I were to go through a significant
number of what I'll call curriculum many universities, one of
the things they all have in common is critical thinking.
That's almost the emphasis that all you always hear is
critical thinking. Years ago I did a search thinking trying
to find out if any university prize the word wisdom.
I couldn't find it. I'm sure there are some out there,
(20:54):
but rare critical thinking is the key. But critical thinking
is one skill, but it's not the end. If all
you and I do are are critical and think critically,
but we don't know how to affirm truth, we don't
know how to discern what is true and false, we
don't know how to grasp it and pursue it, then
all were left with is a skepticism, in a moral
(21:16):
ambiguity about everything. And so what I see now in
these protests oftentimes is a lot of ambiguity, no moral reasoning,
no discerning of truth from you know, falsehood, and just
this passion cry out for justice, but no wisdom as
to what that means, how is it defined, how do
(21:38):
we talk about it, how do we discern? None of
that's there. It's just a skepticism, critical thinking, ambiguity and
ideology that can't really explain itself and is not willing
to consider, you know, a moral framework. That's part of
the challenge. I think universities then have to take the
moral education or of their students very seriously and developed
(22:02):
the appropriate curriculum and guidelines for that in the general
education core and majors. So I will tell you, tutor,
that's really hard for many universities to do. I remember
years I was speaking to the director of assessment of
one of the top public universities in the country. Okay,
I'm not going to name which one it was, but
it's on the top five public university in the country.
(22:24):
I called him and I asked them, how do you
all do general education at this university? What are the guidelines,
what are the outcomes, what are the parameters? And he
said this to me. I'll never forget it. He said, Jossan,
we really don't do that here where you're asking us to,
because it would be quote a bloodbath among the faculty wow,
(22:45):
which was his way of telling me, Dave. They began
to speak about parameters and outcomes for what is a
core education. There will be a little civil war within
the faculty because no one wants to agree to what
that is, so they leave it open.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
It's so bizarre because if you come to work at
a company and you have a mission, you all work
towards that mission. But to think that you can't have
control over the people who are essentially a part of
this family, a part of this community. This is a
community of educators coming together. It should be a common goal,
and whether you are in the medical school or in
(23:22):
the arts and sciences, you should still have a common
goal of having the student prepared for life. And I
think that's something that struck me when I sat down
with you and talked about Cornerstone University, is that it's
like we are educating the soul, we are educating the mind,
we are preparing them to go out into life. And
(23:43):
I think that these students that I've seen talking recently
that are in this radical state of you know, this
is what I believe in. This has to be it.
They don't seem confident in that discussion. They don't seem calm,
they don't seem rational, and they don't seem ready to
go out and have that conversation. And you made a
(24:04):
good point earlier. You talked about the ability to have
that debate, to have that conversation. And interestingly, I think
that both sides. I will even say that on our
side recently, as school came out and they said to students,
you have to debate on the side of Hamas and
you have to debate on the side of Israel. And
(24:25):
the mother, one of the mothers, said I want my
child to be on the side of Israel, and they said,
you know, sorry about your luck. This is how it is,
and this is how we discuss things, and this is
how we teach children to think critically. Critical thinking has
to I mean, it's not just thinking. You have to
actually be able to dig in and like you said,
(24:46):
search for truth. And so it has to be more
than surface level. And I think a lot of these
discussions that we've had lately our surface level. We're not
putting ourselves in their shoes. We're not fully understanding on
both sides, and so I think even on the right,
there has been a shutdown of critical thinking. If we
don't like it. We want it out of our site,
(25:07):
we want to move it away, and that is not
helping our young people to actually explore these conversations and
open their mind to Okay, why does this side feel
this way? And can I argue for that? And what
does it make me feel inside? Is there a true
Do I feel like I'm not telling a truth by
arguing for that side? But we have become a society
(25:30):
that wants to shut down rather than dig deep.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
And I think you have to And look, as I've
said to you, I'm concerned about critical thinking alone without truth. Right. So,
there are just certain things that are fundamentally wrong that
no amount of debate should change our mind about how
evil they are. Murdering innocent people is wrong, right, Sexually
abusing individuals and war is wrong, right, Killing the innocent
(25:58):
people they sleep and babies is wrong. It is what
it is. It's wrong, and no one of debate should
somehow sway my mind. Well, it was justifying this one situation.
It never is wrong, is wrong. So I think we
have to be able to have these conversations but also
be able to affirm and defend. There are certain wrongs
(26:19):
are always wrong and there are certain rights are always right.
The dilemma is that in today's world with students, they
aren't able to accept that right, my position is always right,
it can't ever be wrong. Well, that's just not accurate.
And in our ability to help students understand that and
work through that and perhaps change for more reasoning, change
(26:43):
through worldview, adjust so it's more true, not less true. Right,
we just don't do that. We don't spend time with that.
Students don't want that. They want here are the four things.
Here's my sort of my fast my drive through solution
to the problem. There it is, it's much more complicated.
And I think there's another issue describing this tutor. I
(27:05):
think that there are, as you mentioned are they're injustices
all over the world. The challenge is that we want
and we're crying out for solutions for all of them,
but human history tells us that those solutions are never
going to be perfect to these fundamental sins and evils
and justice of the world. And as a Christian institution
(27:27):
chorns that we're committed to the belief that only when
in God's Kingdom of eternity and the Gospel can real
peace be brought. Real healing come and real solutions arrive.
Until that happens, we are left with trying to find
the best solutions that advance righteousness and goodness and perfectly
(27:49):
so I think a lot of generations in young people
today don't understand that and don't grapple with that reality.
We want our solution because we think it will be
perfect to really seldom is it complicated.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. I think it's a hard thing
for society right now because we have a generation who
has stepped away from faith, and we have I believe
a lot of parents who are fighting to get back.
There are a lot of people who have kind of
(28:24):
seen that that is the moral company, that is the way,
that is the path, you know, that is how you
can get through hardships and how you are led to
keep moving forward and how you are led toward light.
And I think that there is a movement. I mean,
we've seen some of these movies that have taken off
that have been faith based, and I think there is
(28:45):
a movement. And I would say almost mistakingly, some people
have really pushed for government to come in and say
I'll pay for whatever school you want. And I know
this is a controversial statement, but I believe that as
parents we need to look at our child's education and say,
where are they getting the same values that they are
(29:07):
getting at home? Because right now, at five years old,
I'm sending my child, and if you're in Michigan, it's
going to be even younger that they're going to try
to get your child eight hours a day. I'm going
to send my child away to someone else eight hours
a day. And is that person going to be speaking
into them the same things that we are speaking into
(29:28):
them at home. And I've been a proponent for many
years now. If you have values in your family that
you think are key to life, the key to success,
and however you see success and success may just be
having great faith and having love and caring for others.
(29:49):
If you have those values, investing your child's education, look
at where they're going to elementary school, middle school, high school.
But most of all, do not think my child is eighteen.
They are an adult and now it's time for me
to let them go and not have an influence over
(30:11):
what happens to them in the next four years of
their education. Really sit down and have these discussions like
we're having today with the faculty, and if the president
of your university will sit down with you, sit and talk,
go to the meetings and ask these questions. How do
you talk to my child about morality? How do you
talk to my child about critical thinking? What is happening
(30:35):
to the kids that graduate your university? Because I think
it's so it's something we hadn't thought about. We kind
of took for granted that the best university, it has
a great name, it has people are getting great jobs
out of this university, But what are they like? What
is their soul like once they leave these universities. I've
been saying this for a long time. I still believe
(30:57):
that as a parent, you need to say sit back
and look at what's happening in your schools, in your universities,
where your kids are, and say, my greatest investment is them.
They are the future. They are what takes the next
generation into faith, and I need to make sure they
have that built up, that foundation builds up.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
I think one of the challenges has been in our country,
as wonderful and beautiful as it is, is that we
speak in price freedom, but we don't price, a moral
framework that goes with it, It should go with it,
and that's the challenge. So you have eighteen year olds
going and they're free to think what they want to think,
learn what they want to learn, and we're free at
university to teach them anything we want to teach them.
(31:39):
But no moral framework, no real guidance about what is
true and good and right and beautiful and wise. That's
a significant problem. But the problem also starts farther behind,
all the way when their children are younger. Last year
we did that. We have this wonderful form here Courson
called Wisdom Conversations, And you looked at in the fall
(32:00):
the decline, the apparent decline of Christianity within the United States,
and there's a lot of data coming out of Pew
Forum that by twenty fifty or so Christians may be
significant minority in the United States because of the rise
of the nuns in the a agnostics and atheists and
so on and so forth. As significant decline. I think
(32:21):
it was back in the early eighties it was ninety
one percent Christian. There's projections in the twenty fifty maybe
thirty percent or less. Right, a Christian designation here in
the US, and one of the top reasons Pew discovered
for this was that families are unwilling or just don't
pass on their faith to their kids parents. So what
(32:44):
you're seeing now, it really begins in the home. It's
easy for us to critique institutions, and we should. I
mean we have, as you mentioned, a lot of public
funding is going to your total universities. We need to
hold them accountable. But the problem stuck much much much earlier.
You also have the rise now especially and is growing
(33:04):
and growing and growing, especially with the LGBTQ transgender issues
that we're struggling or rustling with as a country. The
debate about should parents be involved in the sexual identity
information of their kids, with parents saying no, we shouldn't
be let the child decide. There is a question in
(33:26):
Europe now it's a question here. So I think that
whereas university education is so important, and I will tell
your listeners, please invest in good institutions, to good universities.
We need your support. It's not time to leave. It's
time to invest and get into the trenches with us,
and let's build and maintain great universities like Cornerstone and others.
(33:50):
We need that. But we also have to look at
our homes. I will tell you, because it is in
our homes where a lot of this begins. When parents
are willing to say, let the kids acide. I've spoken
with parents who say, poor Christian and he will say,
we're not going to share our faith with our kids.
Let them make their own decision.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Right. Yes, I've heard this same thing, And yet why
is your child's salvation not your highest concern?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
So that presents a significant problem because a child without
a moral framework but a lot of freedom will oftentimes
go in the wrong direction simply because we as human
beings are all significantly compromised morally.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I mean, there's so many times when I've seen this
in my generation. It's well, I can't talk about their
health with them because I don't want to give them
a complex. I can't push my religion on them. I
don't want to push my politics on them. I don't
want to push this on them. But these are your children.
Don't you want it to give them the right path?
Don't you want to lead them towards Christ? I mean,
wouldn't that? How can you ever say I don't want
(35:00):
to lead them toward Christ? Because that's what you're saying.
If you're saying I don't want to push my religion
on them, you're saying I don't want to be the
one that leads them to Christ. And that's fully against
the Gospel. That's exactly what you're supposed to be doing.
I mean, these are the people that you have the
most ability to lead to Christ and then they can
lead others. It's like these are your seeds. Hit them
(35:21):
and watch them grow.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Absolutely So. I mean, we have something here called Golden
Eagle Days, a corstone, and we bring prospective families and
prospective students to campus, and I mean we've had some
great attendance and this past year ninety one hundred students
and their families will come and we have the operator
to share course on with them and I go through
something that we call the CEU Promise, Cornstal University Promise
(35:43):
to you, and I speak to about the basic core
principles that God are university. And one of the things
I share with them is that we're not nominally Christian,
that Jesus Christ and the Gospel and the world are
central to who we are. We will give you the
best academic So want to ensure that when you graduate Cornerstone,
your steps ahead of your competitors are the peers who
(36:05):
are graduating from other universities in terms of the body
of knowledge you're learning and your professional competencies and all
these really important things that you need to do have
to be able to thrive in the market. But we
say this to them, we are going to integrate a
sophisticated Christian worldview and everything we do, and your courses
(36:28):
and your student experience and athletics in every space of
this campus because the Christian world view is true and
it's good and beautiful in our country desperately needs it.
And I think that message was so resonated with me
last year. And I've been doing this for many years
in other institutions. But Tim Keller passed away last year
(36:50):
and the last piece that Tim Keller wrote appeared in
The Atlantic magazine. This is not a conservative magazine, right,
but they published his last article and he passed away
a few days after it was published. Beautiful piece, and
that piece he speaks about the importance of the Christian
world view for America. It was a really incredible thing
that they published that essay. In the middle of the
(37:12):
essay he says this. The Christian world view is so
important for the United States, not just because it works,
because it does work, because it's true. And this is
why we do what we do here at Coronstone. It's
not about the President, it's not about anybody here in
this campus. It's about proclaiming the beauty of God's truth
(37:33):
in a sophisticated way that prepare students to be influencers
in the world, for Jesus Christ to be great professionals
but also great human beings wherever they go. And that's
what feels this place. And I think the more universes
can do that, the more a transformation will have happen
in our country.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
No better person to be an influencer for than Jesus Christ. Amazing.
That's an amazing way to think about it is to
go out there and be an influencer for the im
I mean amazing. I just want to say before I
let you go, we had we recently at our school
had an auction and there was a Cornerstone basket where
(38:15):
it had a Cornerstone water bottle and a Cornerstone sweatshirt.
And I was sent to the auction from the house
with the girls saying this is your goal. You get this.
And so I fought for the basket and I won,
and then one of the other moms came up to me.
She's like, you were the one that I was bidding
against for this basket. She said, I have a kid there.
(38:38):
Why did you want this? And I said, because I
have four kids and they want to go there. And
so I came home successful and they were, Yes, they
were very excited.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
And there an auction on campus to get you to
bid on it because I think we'll raise a lot
that way.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yes, yeah, well you should, yeah, I mean, and the
auction night was great, it was so phenomenal. But I
want you to know that my oldest said that, my
own oldest and my middle daughter then fought over the
sweatshirt like, no, it's mine, it's mine, and my oldest
one because she had school Spirit Week the next week
and they had to wear a university sweatshirt, so of
course that was she was representing. So you were well
(39:14):
represented at the Christian school here in Michigan. In West Michigan, we.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Really appreciate tutor. Thank you so much for your support.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Absolutely, thank you so much. Everybody check out Cornerstone University
it's such a pleasure to have you here. Doctor jisone
moreno Rihano, thank you so much for being on the
podcast today.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Tutor, thank you for the opportunity to thank you for
all you do, and thanks.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
So much, Yes, and thank you all for joining us
on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. For this episode and others,
head over to Tutor dixonpodcast dot com. You can subscribe
right there, or go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts and join us next time.
Have a blessed d
Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. While you all have
been seeing what's happening on college campuses across the country,
and now we see the same kids that had their
high school graduations canceled are having their college graduations canceled.
And I've seen a lot of people, a lot of
these political pundits and people like myself to be quite honest,
who have come out and been like, you know what,
(00:22):
let this happen to these students. They deserve it. And
I have to tell you I disagree. I think that
these are few and far between, these kids on these
college campuses. I don't think it's as many of the
students as you think it is. I think there are
a lot of very serious students that are at these
universities that are devastated by what's happening on these campuses.
(00:42):
And I would also question how many of these students
are actual or how many of these protesters are actually students,
And do these presidents of these universities have a handle
of who is coming on their campuses. Well, we have
a friend who is a president of a university right
here in Michigan, the president of Cornerstone University. It's a
(01:04):
Christian University based right here in Michigan just recently named
the number thirty ninth most conservative university in the nation.
So we're very excited about that right here in Michigan,
and we have the president who is doctor. I don't
want to say it wrong, so tell me again the
for your how to say your person Girsan Yes, doctor
(01:27):
Gerson moreno Riano with us today. First, I just want
to go through with you again how we can help
the folks over in Israel, because I know we are
We've been talking about these protests, but we've also been
talking about the attacks. Remember, since October seventh, the attacks
on Israel have increased, with Iran and its proxies launching
(01:49):
an attack of hundreds of drones and missiles on Israel.
Israelis are currently living with that harsh reality of terror
every day. Again, you guys, we don't know what this
is like. But the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews,
they are on the ground now addressing all of these
urgent needs. And that's why I'm partnering with IFCJ today.
(02:09):
While praying for the best, IFCJ is preparing for the
worst by packing emergency bomb shelter kits that can be
delivered immediately to those in desperate need. Your life saving
donation will help assemble and place these kids with enough
food and life saving emergency supplies for twenty people huddled
in a bomb shelter. The cost to put and distribute
(02:31):
those kids together is two hundred and ninety dollars each.
So your gift now will help save many lives. And
thanks to a matching challenge gift from a generous IFCJ supporter,
your gift will double in its impact to help provide
twice the support. The number to call to make sure
you get your gift in is eight eight eight four
(02:52):
eight eight IFCJ. That's eight eight eight four eight eight
IFCJ or four three two, or you can go online again.
Always go online to support IFCJ dot org. To give.
That's one word, it's support IFCJ dot org. Make sure
you get your donation in and now to bring this
(03:13):
back to the United States, we want to go back
to what's happening here. Thank you so much for coming
to join us today from all the way from Cornerstone
and Grand Rapids, Michigan. I want to get your take
on what exactly is going on on university campuses right now.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Well too, it's great to be here. Thank you for
the opportunity. You know, I echo what you mentioned in
the very beginning. We just had our commencement ceremony to
hear this past Saturday, and in my opening comments and
welcoming I shared with the students and the audience of
several thousand that this is the first this is the
graduation for these students from COVID. They didn't have a
high school graduation, and this is sort of the first class.
(03:53):
So when I mentioned that, a significant number of students
cheer because I know they lost something. They know they've
lost something and were able to do this. So I
equally your comments that I think there are many many
students on these campuses who are very serious, very committed,
have worked very very hard, and now are at a
loss one more time, and quite frankly, a situation that
(04:16):
could have been avoided but wasn't avoided, and now they're
at a loss one more time. So I in my
sense around the country, and these sports are spread throughout
the country. Now it's really that our country is is
unable to have serious, good, difficult conversations at any level
of society. There's a significant breakdown in civil society, which
(04:39):
is really the barrier between government and the individual citizens.
And civil societies should allow for conversations, vigorous conversations. But
what we have become is a country where everything is
zero sum. Right, my position is the only one that
matters to yours does not, And as a matter of fact,
you don't matter either. Right, that's sort of the way
(05:01):
we interpret this. So we have the right to not
just defame your position, but defame you, assassinate your character,
shut you down, go to your home and protest, smear you,
do whatever we can to make you completely notice, irrelevant,
but persona non grata. And that's what we have done.
And I see all sides of the questions doing this,
(05:24):
It's not just one. Everyone now has become very antagonistic,
and that's really what's happening now. And you see it
in college campuses, which in theory, should be a place
within civil society where you should be having conversations.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
It seems like there's an effort though to not have
that conversation, a bigger effort on this particular subject, because
if you look at these universities, this happened very quickly,
that Suddenly, I would say, students that probably likely didn't
even know about the conflict with Gosen in Israel and
what was going on, we're suddenly very pro Gaza and saying,
(06:03):
you know, how can I mean, some of these students
have come out and say, hey, we support hamas death
to America. They've said things that we've never seen American
university students say before. I mean, last night, I was
talking to my mom and she's like, I take exception
to people comparing this to the sixties, because people were
not saying death to America in the sixties. And it
does seem like some other force has come in. We
(06:26):
see these students praying five times a day. Suddenly there's
this other force. Students who had been atheists, who hadn't
been connected to religion at all, are now suddenly strong
supporters of Islam, a religion that is not in line
with the other things that they're talking about when they
are on college campuses. And I say that because we've
clearly seen people who are supporting the LGBTQ community and
(06:51):
all of these things that do not align with Islam. However,
this has come on to our college campus is very strong.
And I also would like to question who is funding it,
how did it happen underneath the administrator's noses. But Palestine,
the Gozen people are not the only oppressed or attacked
(07:12):
people in the world, and they are not certainly they
are in this conflict where they have chosen their leadership.
They've chosen their leadership that has decided to attack Israel.
There are communities in the world who are truly being attacked,
and there is true genocide that we don't ever talk about.
So how did this happen?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Well, look, I think it's the outworking of probably decades
and decades and decades of miseducation at the family level,
in society, at the university level. Right, So what you
see now, you're right, it's much more antagonistic virulin against
the United States. So what you've seen is decades and
decades of university education and essence sowing seeds in the
(07:56):
minds of students that America failed empire, that America has
gone as a terrorist nation, That America can't be trusted,
but its leaders can't be trusted, That America is hypocritical,
that the West writ large is colonial and destructive. So
this is what for years and years and years. Oftentimes
(08:17):
students are receiving in their education and many universities, especially
in their general education, core curriculum and in other courses.
So this has been going on for a long, long
long time. The sixties, the argument was also made as
well that because of slavery in our country, you had
an unjust society. Now this has been taken and exploded
(08:39):
and expanded to say America is unjust in everything that
it does. That's the argument, and not just internally, but
it's supporting causes in other parts of the world that
are just as unjust in wicked too. And frankly, when
a students and generations, year per year, decade after decade
are taught that and hear that not just in their universities,
(09:02):
but also in the media, also in popular culture right,
also in influencers, and that's what they're hearing, that begins
then to resonate for many people. Some then take it
even a step further now and say we're going to
take up arms that we can and destroy right and
attack and tear down and burn and do whatever we
need to in essence destroy the institutions of this society
(09:24):
and rebuild a new Others are going to become completely
just despondent or cynical about everything America, right, But a
lot of it has been because of years of those
kinds of things. Number one and two a lack of
real moral leadership well, not just at universities, but also
throughout our society, in the federal government and state government.
(09:46):
I'm a big believer that young people today are looking
for strong moral leadership, right They're crying out for it,
they're seeking it, and when it's not provided, there's a
vacuum there. They're going to find its somewhere. They're going
to look for it to something that's interesting. And when
you don't have when universities, since we're speaking about universities,
(10:09):
don't have a sense of purpose, a sense of direction,
then what happens is that students will find it elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Well, and you haven't had this happen on Cornerstone's campus,
which I think I wanted to kind of take what
you just said, and the last time I had you
on you talked very clearly about the fact that there
is a sense of purpose, there is a message at
Cornerstone that you make sure that these students understand. And
you actually when you first came to Cornerstone. We're kind
of criticized for really being like, no, you know, this
(10:40):
is who we are. We are at Christian University. We're
going to live by that and we want our students
to understand that. But look, Cornerstone hasn't had this happen,
has it.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
I'm grateful to say it has not. I'm very grateful
that it has not. We have a great student body,
great faculty, great staff. But frankly, it's something that you
have to shepherd all the time, right, I mean part
of being a leader, a more leader in any part
of society and working with people, you have to be
shepherd in your people and it's a continual process. If
you don't do that, then what happens is that individual
(11:13):
societies quickly drift, right, they will quickly drift, and then
it becomes a serious problem. So, for example, universities today,
I mean, as you know, in American history, the universities
were first founded to educate the preachers and the pastors
and the ministers of society. That was the original founding
of Harvard and Yale and print in all these schools
(11:36):
were and that's a preacher. Collegists in some ways religious institutions.
That changed. Then universities began to think about how do
we educate people who are not ministers and what do
they need? Then that changed later on as the university
began to look toward Europe for a model of education,
and German institutions became the model for American universities. We
(11:59):
became very focused on research as a public good. Right,
that change, and those continual changes till now where universities
focus solely on jobs, for example, or careers. Not nothing
wrong with that, it's a huge focus. Now what's happened
is that the moral purpose of a university is now
a drift. What is it? Should universes be involved in
(12:23):
moral formation? Should they be involved in shaping citizens? Not
the citizens, but moral people? Right? And no university right
now really wants to answer that conclusively. So they come
up with very sort of broad statements about what they do.
But they are hands off. And you're seeing and now
(12:43):
part of the argue situations that universities are hands off
about these kinds of things. They believe in what it's
called institutional neutrality. We're not going to say which side
is right, which side is wrong.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Let's take a quick commercial break we'll continue next on
a Tutor Dixon podcast. So we may see the leadership,
but oftentimes we see professors that are pushing students in
a certain direction that may be a moral or maybe
against what the values of this country have always been.
(13:16):
And I mean an example, we recently visited family and
one of the family members said, yeah, we sent our
child to the university. They turned against what our family
values had always been. And we haven't spoken in six months.
And this story, to me, is all too common. Is
(13:36):
that the traditional American values that we've all had that
are not wacky, they're not out of step with other Americans,
Suddenly they go to university and those values don't hold up.
They don't they're not in lockstep with these radical universities.
And so I would say that maybe you have a
Columbia where the president's like, hey, you know, we don't
(13:59):
know how this happened. But then if you start to
pick apart some of these universities and look at their professors,
they've been teaching hate. It's not so much that they
are teaching a message or an ideology. It is like
exactly what you said, America is bad. Down with this country.
They're getting this from in many cases these universities. And
(14:21):
I would say for private university, you know, I guess
they can teach whatever they want and they can start
to indoctrinate kids. And if you choose to pay a
private university all of this money to do this to
your children, then I don't know what you're thinking. But
these public universities where we are taking our tax dollars
and putting them into these public universities, where some of
(14:42):
these professors are making outrageous amounts of money. I mean,
I've seen anywhere from two hundred and fifty thousand to
seven hundred and fifty thousand professors walking out of school
every day with this giant cash bag. And how can
they get away with teaching these things that have nothing
These things don't have anything to do with a job.
This is just an ideology.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
It's been happening for a very long time, so I shared.
I mean, you can look at at the curriculum and
at some significant universities for decades where they shifted away
from teaching certain things about American history or American history
or Western culture and began to shift to other embassies
downgrading this country. Don Green in the West and Look,
(15:24):
I want to be very clear, no country, no civilization,
is perfect. Every civilization, every country has its share of injustices.
So one of the problems that's happened here is that
universities have failed to acknowledge the great things to good
things about this society, American America and the West, and
denigrated the entire thing. And they began then to insert
(15:48):
other things and a cynicism and a suspicion that has
really really reatapicked through over generation after generation after generation
of students. And now we have that your point about faculty,
I mean, faculty have a very important role in the
education of future moral leaders of our country. They do right.
And if faculty are brought into institutions and are provided
(16:13):
with the means and the impetus to actually done great
and downgrade not just the university of the country, the society.
What is it what is left for that student? And
oftentimes students will look at faculty and raise them on
a pedestal. They know so much, and there's a certain
energy when you're young, as you know, as we all know,
(16:34):
when we're young, we're really critical of everything. We think,
we know everything. You add that component to what I
call the sophisticated skepticism of the academy. And it's a
lethal combination because oftentimes universities are they prize skepticism, it's
called critical thinking, but they don't prize wisdom or truth.
(16:56):
So they've read, they've released it. They rejected the pursuit
of truth, the acquisition of truth, the affirmation of truth.
Critical thinking is the skill of every university that they prize,
So you can't have that alone. Human beings are moral.
We are moral creatures. We've been created and design to
be moral people. And consequently we just don't have critical
(17:19):
thinking or surprise it alone. Wisdom and truth matter. So
what you see today with these young people and the protests,
they are affirming what they believe to be true. They're
affirming what they believe to be just and good, right,
and it shows you we're all designed for that. The
dilemma is that what they are affirming to be true,
just and good is quite frankly broken, It's not right.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
It's interesting because as we watch these students, we're like,
how can you be filled with so much hate? But
you make such good points, I mean, really making me
wrap my mind around this in a different way. Because
if I take myself back all those years to being
at college in a universe. My professors, I did lift
them up. They were the experts. They were in this
(18:06):
position of authority over me, and I was so respectful
of that. So I think that if we peel back
the layers, we say, okay, wait, these are students who
are looking at authority figures and saying I need to
respect what they say. And what they're coming at me
with is they're coming at me with a source of love,
(18:29):
whereas we are seeing this as a source of hate.
But they're like, oh, you know, these people are so oppressed,
and I've learned that there is this great oppression from
my university professors, and so I must come to the
rescue of these people. So ultimately, I think human nature
is that we are good, that we are taking care
(18:49):
of others. It's how that human nature can be manipulated.
And to your point, right, we have people that are
on two different sides of this argument, and there is
no easy way of looking at this. It's not black
and white. It's what happens in the middle is going
to determine what happens in this region of the world.
But this region of the world is very important to
(19:11):
the rest of the globe, and so it does impact everything.
I just have never really thought about it from the
standpoint of how I mean, even if I look at
my girls now in fifth and seventh in freshman year
of high school, when I look at the way they
think of their teachers, their teachers are right. They come
(19:32):
home and they love to share what their teachers have
told them, you know, like I learned this today, and
so why would that change just because you go from
eighteen to nineteen. You know, so you make a great
point that we're not really considering. But then to go
to that point, if you are in a position of
(19:52):
being the president of a university the size of a
University of Michigan or the size of a Columbia University,
how do you know what's happening in these lecture halls
with these professors, and how do you make sure that
you're not radicalizing the next class of students to graduate?
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yeah, I mean it's a great question. It's hard work.
I mean, I don't envy these presidents being a college president.
It's hard work. Do you have to implement a number
of things. I mean, you have to, number one, have
a real mission and vision for what it means to
educate more people, moral leaders, right to educate the whole
human person. That's really really important. And if you emphasize alone,
(20:32):
I mean, if I were to go through a significant
number of what I'll call curriculum many universities, one of
the things they all have in common is critical thinking.
That's almost the emphasis that all you always hear is
critical thinking. Years ago I did a search thinking trying
to find out if any university prize the word wisdom.
I couldn't find it. I'm sure there are some out there,
(20:54):
but rare critical thinking is the key. But critical thinking
is one skill, but it's not the end. If all
you and I do are are critical and think critically,
but we don't know how to affirm truth, we don't
know how to discern what is true and false, we
don't know how to grasp it and pursue it, then
all were left with is a skepticism, in a moral
(21:16):
ambiguity about everything. And so what I see now in
these protests oftentimes is a lot of ambiguity, no moral reasoning,
no discerning of truth from you know, falsehood, and just
this passion cry out for justice, but no wisdom as
to what that means, how is it defined, how do
(21:38):
we talk about it, how do we discern? None of
that's there. It's just a skepticism, critical thinking, ambiguity and
ideology that can't really explain itself and is not willing
to consider, you know, a moral framework. That's part of
the challenge. I think universities then have to take the
moral education or of their students very seriously and developed
(22:02):
the appropriate curriculum and guidelines for that in the general
education core and majors. So I will tell you, tutor,
that's really hard for many universities to do. I remember
years I was speaking to the director of assessment of
one of the top public universities in the country. Okay,
I'm not going to name which one it was, but
it's on the top five public university in the country.
(22:24):
I called him and I asked them, how do you
all do general education at this university? What are the guidelines,
what are the outcomes, what are the parameters? And he
said this to me. I'll never forget it. He said, Jossan,
we really don't do that here where you're asking us to,
because it would be quote a bloodbath among the faculty wow,
(22:45):
which was his way of telling me, Dave. They began
to speak about parameters and outcomes for what is a
core education. There will be a little civil war within
the faculty because no one wants to agree to what
that is, so they leave it open.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
It's so bizarre because if you come to work at
a company and you have a mission, you all work
towards that mission. But to think that you can't have
control over the people who are essentially a part of
this family, a part of this community. This is a
community of educators coming together. It should be a common goal,
and whether you are in the medical school or in
(23:22):
the arts and sciences, you should still have a common
goal of having the student prepared for life. And I
think that's something that struck me when I sat down
with you and talked about Cornerstone University, is that it's
like we are educating the soul, we are educating the mind,
we are preparing them to go out into life. And
(23:43):
I think that these students that I've seen talking recently
that are in this radical state of you know, this
is what I believe in. This has to be it.
They don't seem confident in that discussion. They don't seem calm,
they don't seem rational, and they don't seem ready to
go out and have that conversation. And you made a
(24:04):
good point earlier. You talked about the ability to have
that debate, to have that conversation. And interestingly, I think
that both sides. I will even say that on our
side recently, as school came out and they said to students,
you have to debate on the side of Hamas and
you have to debate on the side of Israel. And
(24:25):
the mother, one of the mothers, said I want my
child to be on the side of Israel, and they said,
you know, sorry about your luck. This is how it is,
and this is how we discuss things, and this is
how we teach children to think critically. Critical thinking has
to I mean, it's not just thinking. You have to
actually be able to dig in and like you said,
(24:46):
search for truth. And so it has to be more
than surface level. And I think a lot of these
discussions that we've had lately our surface level. We're not
putting ourselves in their shoes. We're not fully understanding on
both sides, and so I think even on the right,
there has been a shutdown of critical thinking. If we
don't like it. We want it out of our site,
(25:07):
we want to move it away, and that is not
helping our young people to actually explore these conversations and
open their mind to Okay, why does this side feel
this way? And can I argue for that? And what
does it make me feel inside? Is there a true
Do I feel like I'm not telling a truth by
arguing for that side? But we have become a society
(25:30):
that wants to shut down rather than dig deep.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
And I think you have to And look, as I've
said to you, I'm concerned about critical thinking alone without truth. Right. So,
there are just certain things that are fundamentally wrong that
no amount of debate should change our mind about how
evil they are. Murdering innocent people is wrong, right, Sexually
abusing individuals and war is wrong, right, Killing the innocent
(25:58):
people they sleep and babies is wrong. It is what
it is. It's wrong, and no one of debate should
somehow sway my mind. Well, it was justifying this one situation.
It never is wrong, is wrong. So I think we
have to be able to have these conversations but also
be able to affirm and defend. There are certain wrongs
(26:19):
are always wrong and there are certain rights are always right.
The dilemma is that in today's world with students, they
aren't able to accept that right, my position is always right,
it can't ever be wrong. Well, that's just not accurate.
And in our ability to help students understand that and
work through that and perhaps change for more reasoning, change
(26:43):
through worldview, adjust so it's more true, not less true. Right,
we just don't do that. We don't spend time with that.
Students don't want that. They want here are the four things.
Here's my sort of my fast my drive through solution
to the problem. There it is, it's much more complicated.
And I think there's another issue describing this tutor. I
(27:05):
think that there are, as you mentioned are they're injustices
all over the world. The challenge is that we want
and we're crying out for solutions for all of them,
but human history tells us that those solutions are never
going to be perfect to these fundamental sins and evils
and justice of the world. And as a Christian institution
(27:27):
chorns that we're committed to the belief that only when
in God's Kingdom of eternity and the Gospel can real
peace be brought. Real healing come and real solutions arrive.
Until that happens, we are left with trying to find
the best solutions that advance righteousness and goodness and perfectly
(27:49):
so I think a lot of generations in young people
today don't understand that and don't grapple with that reality.
We want our solution because we think it will be
perfect to really seldom is it complicated.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on
the Tutor Dixon Podcast. I think it's a hard thing
for society right now because we have a generation who
has stepped away from faith, and we have I believe
a lot of parents who are fighting to get back.
There are a lot of people who have kind of
(28:24):
seen that that is the moral company, that is the way,
that is the path, you know, that is how you
can get through hardships and how you are led to
keep moving forward and how you are led toward light.
And I think that there is a movement. I mean,
we've seen some of these movies that have taken off
that have been faith based, and I think there is
(28:45):
a movement. And I would say almost mistakingly, some people
have really pushed for government to come in and say
I'll pay for whatever school you want. And I know
this is a controversial statement, but I believe that as
parents we need to look at our child's education and say,
where are they getting the same values that they are
(29:07):
getting at home? Because right now, at five years old,
I'm sending my child, and if you're in Michigan, it's
going to be even younger that they're going to try
to get your child eight hours a day. I'm going
to send my child away to someone else eight hours
a day. And is that person going to be speaking
into them the same things that we are speaking into
(29:28):
them at home. And I've been a proponent for many
years now. If you have values in your family that
you think are key to life, the key to success,
and however you see success and success may just be
having great faith and having love and caring for others.
(29:49):
If you have those values, investing your child's education, look
at where they're going to elementary school, middle school, high school.
But most of all, do not think my child is eighteen.
They are an adult and now it's time for me
to let them go and not have an influence over
(30:11):
what happens to them in the next four years of
their education. Really sit down and have these discussions like
we're having today with the faculty, and if the president
of your university will sit down with you, sit and talk,
go to the meetings and ask these questions. How do
you talk to my child about morality? How do you
talk to my child about critical thinking? What is happening
(30:35):
to the kids that graduate your university? Because I think
it's so it's something we hadn't thought about. We kind
of took for granted that the best university, it has
a great name, it has people are getting great jobs
out of this university, But what are they like? What
is their soul like once they leave these universities. I've
been saying this for a long time. I still believe
(30:57):
that as a parent, you need to say sit back
and look at what's happening in your schools, in your universities,
where your kids are, and say, my greatest investment is them.
They are the future. They are what takes the next
generation into faith, and I need to make sure they
have that built up, that foundation builds up.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
I think one of the challenges has been in our country,
as wonderful and beautiful as it is, is that we
speak in price freedom, but we don't price, a moral
framework that goes with it, It should go with it,
and that's the challenge. So you have eighteen year olds
going and they're free to think what they want to think,
learn what they want to learn, and we're free at
university to teach them anything we want to teach them.
(31:39):
But no moral framework, no real guidance about what is
true and good and right and beautiful and wise. That's
a significant problem. But the problem also starts farther behind,
all the way when their children are younger. Last year
we did that. We have this wonderful form here Courson
called Wisdom Conversations, And you looked at in the fall
(32:00):
the decline, the apparent decline of Christianity within the United States,
and there's a lot of data coming out of Pew
Forum that by twenty fifty or so Christians may be
significant minority in the United States because of the rise
of the nuns in the a agnostics and atheists and
so on and so forth. As significant decline. I think
(32:21):
it was back in the early eighties it was ninety
one percent Christian. There's projections in the twenty fifty maybe
thirty percent or less. Right, a Christian designation here in
the US, and one of the top reasons Pew discovered
for this was that families are unwilling or just don't
pass on their faith to their kids parents. So what
(32:44):
you're seeing now, it really begins in the home. It's
easy for us to critique institutions, and we should. I
mean we have, as you mentioned, a lot of public
funding is going to your total universities. We need to
hold them accountable. But the problem stuck much much much earlier.
You also have the rise now especially and is growing
(33:04):
and growing and growing, especially with the LGBTQ transgender issues
that we're struggling or rustling with as a country. The
debate about should parents be involved in the sexual identity
information of their kids, with parents saying no, we shouldn't
be let the child decide. There is a question in
(33:26):
Europe now it's a question here. So I think that
whereas university education is so important, and I will tell
your listeners, please invest in good institutions, to good universities.
We need your support. It's not time to leave. It's
time to invest and get into the trenches with us,
and let's build and maintain great universities like Cornerstone and others.
(33:50):
We need that. But we also have to look at
our homes. I will tell you, because it is in
our homes where a lot of this begins. When parents
are willing to say, let the kids acide. I've spoken
with parents who say, poor Christian and he will say,
we're not going to share our faith with our kids.
Let them make their own decision.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
Right. Yes, I've heard this same thing, And yet why
is your child's salvation not your highest concern?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
So that presents a significant problem because a child without
a moral framework but a lot of freedom will oftentimes
go in the wrong direction simply because we as human
beings are all significantly compromised morally.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
I mean, there's so many times when I've seen this
in my generation. It's well, I can't talk about their
health with them because I don't want to give them
a complex. I can't push my religion on them. I
don't want to push my politics on them. I don't
want to push this on them. But these are your children.
Don't you want it to give them the right path?
Don't you want to lead them towards Christ? I mean,
wouldn't that? How can you ever say I don't want
(35:00):
to lead them toward Christ? Because that's what you're saying.
If you're saying I don't want to push my religion
on them, you're saying I don't want to be the
one that leads them to Christ. And that's fully against
the Gospel. That's exactly what you're supposed to be doing.
I mean, these are the people that you have the
most ability to lead to Christ and then they can
lead others. It's like these are your seeds. Hit them
(35:21):
and watch them grow.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Absolutely So. I mean, we have something here called Golden
Eagle Days, a corstone, and we bring prospective families and
prospective students to campus, and I mean we've had some
great attendance and this past year ninety one hundred students
and their families will come and we have the operator
to share course on with them and I go through
something that we call the CEU Promise, Cornstal University Promise
(35:43):
to you, and I speak to about the basic core
principles that God are university. And one of the things
I share with them is that we're not nominally Christian,
that Jesus Christ and the Gospel and the world are
central to who we are. We will give you the
best academic So want to ensure that when you graduate Cornerstone,
your steps ahead of your competitors are the peers who
(36:05):
are graduating from other universities in terms of the body
of knowledge you're learning and your professional competencies and all
these really important things that you need to do have
to be able to thrive in the market. But we
say this to them, we are going to integrate a
sophisticated Christian worldview and everything we do, and your courses
(36:28):
and your student experience and athletics in every space of
this campus because the Christian world view is true and
it's good and beautiful in our country desperately needs it.
And I think that message was so resonated with me
last year. And I've been doing this for many years
in other institutions. But Tim Keller passed away last year
(36:50):
and the last piece that Tim Keller wrote appeared in
The Atlantic magazine. This is not a conservative magazine, right,
but they published his last article and he passed away
a few days after it was published. Beautiful piece, and
that piece he speaks about the importance of the Christian
world view for America. It was a really incredible thing
that they published that essay. In the middle of the
(37:12):
essay he says this. The Christian world view is so
important for the United States, not just because it works,
because it does work, because it's true. And this is
why we do what we do here at Coronstone. It's
not about the President, it's not about anybody here in
this campus. It's about proclaiming the beauty of God's truth
(37:33):
in a sophisticated way that prepare students to be influencers
in the world, for Jesus Christ to be great professionals
but also great human beings wherever they go. And that's
what feels this place. And I think the more universes
can do that, the more a transformation will have happen
in our country.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
No better person to be an influencer for than Jesus Christ. Amazing.
That's an amazing way to think about it is to
go out there and be an influencer for the im
I mean amazing. I just want to say before I
let you go, we had we recently at our school
had an auction and there was a Cornerstone basket where
(38:15):
it had a Cornerstone water bottle and a Cornerstone sweatshirt.
And I was sent to the auction from the house
with the girls saying this is your goal. You get this.
And so I fought for the basket and I won,
and then one of the other moms came up to me.
She's like, you were the one that I was bidding
against for this basket. She said, I have a kid there.
(38:38):
Why did you want this? And I said, because I
have four kids and they want to go there. And
so I came home successful and they were, Yes, they
were very excited.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
And there an auction on campus to get you to
bid on it because I think we'll raise a lot
that way.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Yes, yeah, well you should, yeah, I mean, and the
auction night was great, it was so phenomenal. But I
want you to know that my oldest said that, my
own oldest and my middle daughter then fought over the
sweatshirt like, no, it's mine, it's mine, and my oldest
one because she had school Spirit Week the next week
and they had to wear a university sweatshirt, so of
course that was she was representing. So you were well
(39:14):
represented at the Christian school here in Michigan. In West Michigan, we.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Really appreciate tutor. Thank you so much for your support.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Absolutely, thank you so much. Everybody check out Cornerstone University
it's such a pleasure to have you here. Doctor jisone
moreno Rihano, thank you so much for being on the
podcast today.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Tutor, thank you for the opportunity to thank you for
all you do, and thanks.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
So much, Yes, and thank you all for joining us
on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. For this episode and others,
head over to Tutor dixonpodcast dot com. You can subscribe
right there, or go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts and join us next time.
Have a blessed d
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