Meet The Prof, with Shane & Spence

MTP: 09 Isaac Loh, on How to Approach Friends Without Judging and Breaking Barriers Between Students and Professors

• shane hartley • Episode 9

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Isaac Loh, lohi@uncw.edu, is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He shares about taking steps of faith as a professor, approaching friends who are not following Christ in a way that is not judgmental, how to encourage students struggling with faith, and how professors can break barriers with students through lunch conversations.

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Hi, my name is Isabel Elmore. I am currently a sophomore at UNCW and I am a Communication Studies major with a minor in Business. And the question I have for you is, being a Christ -centered student on a college campus, what's the best way to approach friends who are not following Christ or that say that they are, but their lives don't reflect that? What's the best way to be a vessel for the Lord without getting judgment back, whether they think that you're judging them or they're judging you?

Shane (00:29)
Well, hey everybody and welcome to Meet the Prof. I'm Shane Hartley and my friend Spence Hackney and I collect questions like you just heard from college students and then we interview Christian professors. And our goal is to help encourage Christ -centered conversations on the college campus. So thank you for joining us. We're so glad you're here. And in this interview, you're going to get to hear from Dr. Isaac Loh.

And Isaac is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. And amongst many things that I appreciate about Isaac, one of the greatest ones is how he breaks barriers with college students by having lunch with them in the university cafeteria. I think you'll really enjoy getting to know him more

And hey, if you like what you hear, please click subscribe or follow and that'll help get the word out to others. And so without further ado, here is our interview with Isaac Loh.

Shane (01:28)
Well, Isaac, welcome to Meet the Prof. It is so good to have you here. It's great to see you. And, you know, before we got into more heavy things, I would love to hear how things have been going these last few months as you're newlywed. You and Morgan just got married a few months ago. Tell us, how's that going?

Isaac Loh (01:52)
Marriage has been really great, a good teaching demonstration of love, like learning what true love is, that it involves a lot of giving. But at the end of the day, it's something that I certainly would never want to be without again.

It is Morgan and all the time we get to spend together. So yeah, it's only been four months, but I feel like we've already created a lot of good memories. And, you know, I'm always looking forward to going back home at the end of the day. That's something that's definitely changed since I got married.

Shane (02:28)
That seems like a good sign  things are going well.

I think you and I both married up. Morgan and Dorenda are so incredible.

Isaac Loh (02:33)
Yeah, it's wonderful. Yeah, that's what everyone told me.

Yeah, absolutely.

Shane (02:43)
Well, the first question I love asking all the professors is, what is an embarrassing moment that you had when you were in college?

Isaac Loh (02:52)
Well, I have actually two metal plates in my body. So both of them are due to stupid events. I'll talk about the first one. So the first one was I had a friend, Oladeji Odewade

college and we decided to race. So I was on my bike and he was on the track team. So we wanted to sprint and we were going to sprint side by side on the sidewalk.

no helmet or anything. I was being an idiot. So for the viewers, if there are any, just make sure you don't do that. But yeah, you know, he like ended up pulling ahead and he veered in front of me and I was gaining speed and I had to slam on the brakes and I ended up going head over heels over the brakes and over the bike. And I think my head hit the pavement first. I'm amazed I didn't get injured, but yeah, I just felt completely fine afterwards. I was just on the grass and I felt around and you know.

Shane (03:24)
You

Isaac Loh (03:46)
collarbone is all in pieces. So that was, that was, I think it was the adrenaline of that. So I learned that when you break a bone, sometimes you don't even feel it at first. But yeah, so yeah, broke the collarbone in a couple pieces, but you know, glory to God, it was, it could have been much worse.

Shane (03:48)
What do you mean though you felt perfectly fine?

I've heard that.

Isaac Loh (04:06)
we were really dumb in college. I'm amazed I survived.

Shane (04:07)
You

Glad you're okay.

Isaac Loh (04:12)
Thanks Shane.

Shane (04:13)
us some about your life, Isaac. We'd love to hear about your childhood and especially how you would say you became a Christian and how your family may have been involved with it. So can you tell us about that?

Isaac Loh (04:29)
Yeah, certainly. My family was definitely very involved in growing up as a Christian. I went to Sunday school. I had mostly Christian friends growing up. I think that was very formative for me. It allowed me to get some exposure to Christianity. But of course, definitely as Protestants, we believe that Christianity is a sort of, it revolves around a personal commitment that you make to God, a personal covenant that you establish with God. So as we all know,

you know, your parents can't really decide your faith for you. So I think I grew up, you know, nominally Christian. And I would say that during college, as I expect a lot of people do, I ended up falling away from the faith due to the exposure to different influences around me. So more secular influences in the world around me. So actually what brought me back to this sort of bedrock that I had way deep, deep, deep down

was a period of difficulty for me during COVID when I was going through kind of like a difficult situation for me at least. So I was going through a breakup with someone that I actually was engaged to. And then I also at the same time was trying to find a job in this really difficult job market. And I realized that sort of the foundations that I built my life upon were kind of eroding and that, you know, I had to search deeper

something that would sustain me through that difficult time. And so I realized, you know, just as Jesus said, you can go to the left or the right, or you can choose the straight and narrow path. And so I decided, let's try this. And God is very, very, very faithful and abundantly graceful to me ever since that.

Shane (06:13)
Wow, and tell us more about that process with your job of what God was doing in your life and what that looked like practically as you were applying for jobs, looking for jobs.

Isaac Loh (06:25)
Yeah, so I was at the last year of my PhD, sort of when COVID started, and I expected to get a more research -focused job, I would say, at another institution. But not many places were hiring, and maybe I wasn't strong enough a candidate as well during that year. And so it was difficult to find a job. I hadn't really counted on that. But now I was looking at the prospect of, OK, maybe I need to revise these sort of ambitious goals that I had for myself.

But then all of a sudden, UNCW, it turned out, was hiring. And I decided it would be a great opportunity to come back down to North Carolina. I'm actually from Cary, North Carolina. And it was really important for me to get out of Chicago, which is where I went to grad school, somewhere warmer, and be closer to my parents. So I was able to actually apply. And by God's grace, I got a job here.

Shane (07:16)
It just reminds me how our lives are a journey, they're a process. And so even as students have a desire to know what their career is going to be, that there may be smaller steps of faith all before, you know, they end up having some answers. So that's encouraging.

Well, it sounds like you are dispelling one of the common myths with your students that we don't talk about Jesus at the college campus. You're doing that. What kind of response have you had from students in your classes when they hear you say that you're a Christian, just maybe as you're introducing yourself in class?

Isaac Loh (07:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, I've had a couple of students that talked about their faith with me. So it was mostly Christians that would come up to me and feel maybe encouraged. So for instance, I had a student two years ago that was wanting to be a missionary and he would actually come by my office sometimes and we would talk about faith. And he was with RUF, Reform University Fellowship. So I would talk about, you know, Sam Kennedy is a good friend and...

that we talked about that. And you know, I would also banter with him in class. We would talk about John Piper and Christian theology in class in front of the students. So that was encouraging for me, it was encouraging for him. I think I hope it was encouraging for the other Christians in our class that might have been more reserved.

Shane (08:48)
Yeah,

Well, so we've been asking some students to tell us what would they want to ask Christian professors. And we have a student who has asked a question for you. So take a listen to the student's question.

Shane Hartley (09:09)
Hi, my name is Isabel Elmore. I am currently a sophomore at UNCW and I am a Communication Studies major with a minor in Business. And the question I have for you is, being a Christ -centered student on a college campus, what's the best way to approach friends who are not following Christ or that say that they are, but their lives don't reflect that? What's the best way to be a vessel for the Lord without getting judgment back, whether they think that you're judging them or they're judging you?

Isaac Loh (09:38)
Yeah, that's a really thoughtful question from you said, Isabel. Yeah, really thoughtful since being judgmental is almost the death knell for a relationship, especially a relationship with the Christian nowadays, because, yeah, that would be the one major accusation that outside world can level against the church, at least the popular image of the church. So we do need to, I think, be really careful to avoid that sort of stigma. So.

Shane (09:42)
Mm -hmm.

Isaac Loh (10:08)
I would look to first of all of course Jesus Christ, but then also to one of my beloved pastors, Tim Keller in this. So Tim Keller I think does a very good job at standing firm in the gospel message, but never veering to one side or the other. So not becoming over judgmental, you know, pronouncing like hellfire on everyone who's disobeying the word, but also,

not becoming lax in his interpretation of the gospel, so maintaining strict doctrine. So I think the way that Tim Keller does it is he always looks back at the cross, understanding the cross. So what that means is when we approach a non-Christian, we're not approaching sort of the moral issues first. We're not approaching, for instance,

you know, let's say, let's pick a controversial one, abortion first. We don't want that to be the first perception of the non -believer to the Christian, because that wasn't Jesus' major point. Actually, Jesus' major point wasn't not to get abortions, it wasn't even, you know, not to have sex outside of marriage, it wasn't even, you know, not to lie, not to murder, not to be angry. His main point was actually that everyone is sinned, everyone is so fallen

from the perfection and the holiness of God that we're all in need for a Savior. And so we're all on this even plane. And when Jesus did sort of speak, did rebuke the people of his time, we find that actually like eight times out of 10, nine times out of 10, it was rebuking the Pharisees, the people that were very self -righteous in his day. Most of his words were directed against those people.

What that tells me is that what Jesus really cared about, what he really valued, what he really wanted to see in his followers was a sense of meekness, like humility, and also like righteousness, but not boastful righteousness, not boastful of anything but the cross. So I think that's sort of the countenance we should bear to non -believers is that we should be, first of all, viewed as like...

Shane (12:18)
Hmm.

Isaac Loh (12:26)
righteous people, but also a meek people. So Jesus said, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Secondly, you know, like, of course we can't lean too far outside, so we can't just be meek people. We have to stand up for the cross. And what that means is that at some point we have to direct our fellow's attention to the fact that, yeah, we are all sinners, but that the love of God has defeated sin and it has atoned for our sins. So we have to be very clear that that's...

That's the only mechanism for a Christian, that's the only mechanism for anyone to come to salvation is through the blood of the cross. So we have to lean towards the cross and not again to the left or to the right, I think. And we need to be sort of covered and flavored about with compassion, with righteousness, with good fruit that the world will see. So yeah, 1 Peter chapter two talks a lot about this, that even though the Gentiles speak against you, they will...

behold your good fruits and they'll glorify God in the day of visitation.

Shane (13:27)
That's very helpful. Yeah, especially that the first thing that I would mention to a friend would probably not be this issue of morality. The focus on the Bible is that we all are sinful and we all need Jesus. And so we focus on the person of Jesus. That's good. Thank you, Isaac.

Students very often when they are in college will struggle with their faith. How do you encourage students who may be struggling to believe in God and Jesus or trust the Bible?

Isaac Loh (14:05)
Maybe a sort of multi -pronged approach. So we talked about getting in the Word. I think a good place to do so is just by reading one of the Gospels. So like in personal devotional time, probably the Gospel of Mark is one of the simplest. The Gospel of John, a lot of people like to start with.

and as a statistician,

what I would say to anyone non -believer, atheist, agnostic is read the scripture because the Bible is the most significant book that has ever been written in the history of the world. So at the very least, you can read the Bible because of that. Read the Bible because it contains a lot of wisdom that's been recognized by thousands of years of people. And it's essential. It's the bedrock of most of Western literature and Western culture.

So those should be good enough reasons to read the Bible. But what I would also suggest is that people should have a little bit of humility, like enough humility when reading the Bible to respect what I call, what's called Cromwell's rule, which means that you should at least sort of concede the possibility that what you're reading is true. So you should allow for the possibility that what you're reading is true. And then.

Shane (15:16)
Hmm.

I've never heard that before. What's the rule? How do you say it?

Isaac Loh (15:25)
It's Cromwell's rule. So Oliver Cromwell, he was a rebel. He rebelled against the King in England, King Charles, the original King Charles. And he was the leader of this new republic that occurred in England. And he said to the Parliament, I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, consider that you are wrong. So that's the plea. Consider that you're wrong, and the Bible's right.

Just allow for the possibility. And what they're gonna find is that if the Bible's right, then it leads to a vision of the world that's more beautiful and more glorious than they could ever imagine. And so at the very least, you should want the Bible to be true. I would definitely argue that everyone should want the Bible to be true. Okay, so that's step number one. Step number two is get involved in a community. So you can't, I don't think anyone is called to do it alone and Jesus establishes the church.

Shane (16:11)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Okay.

Isaac Loh (16:24)
as this vital instrument for sanctification on earth. So get plugged into the church. And for instance, Cru I know has a lot of good resources, so I'm gonna plug you guys, and also RUF on campus. Or talk to me or any of the other Christian faculty, and we can point you to good resources and good community to help you grow.

Shane (16:45)
Isaac, does the Cromwell's rule apply to Christians as well, that we should always consider that we may be wrong on something foundational?

Isaac Loh (16:56)
Oh yeah, of course. I certainly think so. So, yeah, for instance, if we view the church as this progression, so it started with the Catholic Church, and then we had a Protestant Reformation, and then we had sort of this movement way to the other side of independent Baptists, which have separated completely from any formal church structure. If we look from this side to this side, there's such a wide range of beliefs.

inside the church. So in order for there to be ecumenicalism so like a community between the different Christians, brothers and sisters in the world, I think there has to be like community. We have to recognize that certain beliefs that we have, even as Protestants, some of our very closely held beliefs, like I'm a Calvinist, but you know, I have to have the humility to recognize that I can't look at an Arminian and say, I can't tell them that they're wrong, that they don't have the secret

to eternal life like Jesus Christ. Like that secret is not exclusively reserved for Calvinists and an independent PCA church, which is me. But you know, that the word of God was generally preached to all of humanity. Yeah, I think we should definitely have that grace and that humility.

Shane (18:15)
And students who may not be familiar with Calvinism or Arminianism, they might find as they begin researching a little that there has been some very strong disagreement historically. And man, what great advice just that we need to stay humble.

Isaac, is there a question as a professor that you wish students would ask you and maybe they never have or you just rarely hear it? Like what's something you would like students to ask you?

Isaac Loh (18:47)
one of the questions I...

I don't like enjoy getting this question, but I think I have a decent answer to is,

have to find something you have to find your worth

in something that is deeper than this class. So a grade can't provide you a sense of worth. So I've told students this before that for me, I find my personal worth in like the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for me on the cross.

think as economists, like I'm answering this question, you know, out of selfishness, but as economists, we believe that the value of a good is determined by what the marginal buyer is willing to pay for that good. So if we look at ourselves, you know,

Shane (19:19)
Hmm

Isaac Loh (19:32)
Jesus' blood, one drop of Jesus' blood was worth more than the whole universe, I would say. But he shed gallons of it for me, for you, for every Christian, which means that our value is limitless in the sight of God. It's more than the whole universe. So we can find that as our bedrock. Then we don't have to be shaken up by things like bad grades, for instance.

Shane (19:37)
Hmm.

I've never heard an economist speak to the topic of self -worth in a way that is, it makes so much sense. In fact, most of the talk that I hear online or in podcasts about self -worth, there's just this encouragement to find your own self -worth and there's no source of it,

or the source is just myself. And what you're saying is that worth is really determined by the buyer, how much someone's willing to spend on something. And so if we look and see that God did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, that shows worth that we have in God's eyes who...

if I just even begin to try to think who God is, there's no one's opinion who's more important than God's opinion. So I've never heard that before put that way.

Isaac Loh (20:58)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shane (21:04)
Well, so let's head into the lightning round of questions. So these are questions that you don't have to put a lot of thought into, but maybe some of the first things that come to mind.

Isaac Loh (21:03)
Thanks, Shane.

Okay.

Shane (21:18)
So, first question is, what advice would you give your 18 -year -old self?

Isaac Loh (21:24)
Bye, Tesla.

Shane (21:26)
Via Tesla? Oh, it's a stock. And I don't know.

Isaac Loh (21:27)
No, buy Tesla stock. I don't know if Tesla's around then actually. Apple.

Also just like stop being a doofus and listen to your parents and take notes when you go to church and you're not going to find satisfaction, happiness anywhere else.

Shane (21:34)
That's funny.

Hmm.

So the next question is, some students who are Christian may believe that the best way of really glorifying God in a career is that you become either a pastor or a missionary or some kind of Christian work like that. Do you agree with that? And if not, why is it not the case? Like, why can someone bring glory to God just as much in other careers?

Isaac Loh (22:10)
Oh, I certainly don't agree with that. But again, with humility. If we look at the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve had work, but their work was not, of course, to go preach. Their work was actually to name animals. So their work was essentially biology. I think a lot of scripture tells us that, for instance, like the whole earth is filled with the glory of the Lord. Psalm 19 says the heavens look like...

clearly the glory of God in the firmament that shows His handiwork. So I think that God has, for instance, created His creation for our benefit and for the sanctification of our work. And so what I mean by this is I think that in heaven there's probably going to be like mathematicians, there's probably going to be physicists, you know, like scientists that are there just to admire and to learn more about like God's creative power, His creative genius in the world.

So I think that,

to get back, this is like a very long point, but there are careers that will exist even to eternity that are gonna be there just to look at God's beauty and to understand more of his creative power, his beauty. And that doesn't involve like pastors, just pastors. It involves like musicians, artists, scientists, engineers, why not? You know, like all sorts of careers.

Shane (23:32)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yep, we just interviewed an engineer today to be part of the podcast. And yeah, I realized that this question is not a lightning round question. This is one that takes a little longer to answer. So yeah, I appreciate that. We'll take this out of our lightning round questions and put it more in the interview part. Well, and...

Isaac Loh (23:48)
Good question.

Shane (23:56)
So lastly, what advice would you give other Christian professors who really want to make an impact in students' lives?

Isaac Loh (24:05)
So the first helpful bit of advice I've heard is that even though we work for a public university, there's absolutely no issue with just letting your students know that you are in fact a Christian. So that's a step that I definitely take in all my classes is to talk about, you know, you could casually mention that I go to church and I'm lucky enough to have students that go to the same church as me, so they know and I'm sure they tell other people. So yeah, I always mention that to my students.

I also think that life itself will present opportunities to be more specific about our gospel hope.

So God brings about these events and we can use them to minister to our students lives. Or it's like bad grades. We can help our students get through bad grades by just pointing them to this personal hope that we have, I think.

Shane (24:58)
encourages me because I tend to feel like I have to make things

And that's just a good encouragement for me to just be looking for God's opportunities to say a timely word.

And maybe there's sometimes I might need to wait, maybe sometimes take steps of faith, but that's helpful.

what one thing do you think would make the biggest difference to starting to encourage students and professors to have more Christ -centered conversations?

Isaac Loh (25:34)
so there is a barrier there. As faculty, there are certain expectations that we shouldn't be fraternizing too much with

but I don't think that rules out, for instance, like having conversations over lunch. So we have this great system of dining halls here and I always go out to lunch with Romeo and we've been lucky to have lunch with like some of our undergraduate friends. So that creates good opportunities to talk about the gospel in sort of this neutral setting because everyone's pretty much equal in the dining hall. You're just there to have food and then get out.

Shane (26:04)
Hmm.

Our barriers really do go down with with food around, don't they? When we're eating, it's a lot more relational time. And yeah, what a great practical step just to be able to have lunch with students, more professors with students. So that's great advice.

Isaac Loh (26:12)
Exactly.

Yeah.

Shane (26:26)
Isaac, thank you for this time and thank you for loving the students so much. I'm very glad you're on campus.

Isaac Loh (26:33)
Thanks, Shane. You too. Yeah, I appreciate all you do, including putting together this podcast.

Shane (26:38)
Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview and you can learn more as well as read about other Christian professors on our website, meettheprof .com. And you can search for professors by name or by state or even by college campus. And you can also find many helpful resources about questions that were in the interview and other ways of answering tough questions at Cru.org and that's Cru.org. And college students,

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