MTP 17: Stephanie Thomason on adoption, servant leadership as Christian professor, student trauma

In this episode of Meet the Prof, Stephanie Thomason, Associate Professor of Management at the University of Tampa, invites students to connect with her YouTube channel called Truth Matters at: https://www.youtube.com/@Dash_023
and by email: sthomason@ut.edu

She shares a personal story about trusting God with the choice of abortion. Stephanie encourages college students to choose life and reminds them that there are loving families waiting to adopt. 

Stephanie Thomason discusses her experiences as a Christian professor and the opportunities she faces in sharing her faith with students. She emphasizes the importance of creating a safe space for students to talk about their faith and the need for more Christian events on campus. 

Stephanie sees God in her subject of business management, particularly in the concept of servant leadership. She highlights the importance of teaching students that every person has intrinsic value and the significance of living by example as a leader. 

She recommends resources such as: 
C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity 
books by William Lane Craig, Frank Turek, and J. Warner Wallace 

Takeaways:
Exploring different faiths can lead to a deeper confidence in Christianity.
The reliability of the Bible is supported by historical evidence.
Choosing life and adoption are positive options for unplanned pregnancies. 
Students who have experienced trauma need love and support.

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Transcript

I'm Micah and I'm a Junior in the Software Engineering program at UNCW. And I'm here to ask the question, How do you see God in the subject you study? Specifically, how do you see him interacting, working, or any of it? Thank

Shane (00:17)

Welcome. This is Meet the Prof, a podcast to encourage Christ -centered conversations between college students and professors. And I'm so glad you're here to join us. My friend, Spence Hackney and I, receive questions from college students like you just heard, and then we ask them to Christian professors. And in this episode, I interviewed Stephanie Thomason. She's the Associate Professor of Management at University of Tampa, and she covers some

pretty heavy and helpful topics such as communism, atheism, abortion with her own personal testimony. She shares some helpful things to help students struggling and she covers a lot of what's near and dear to her heart, the trustworthiness of the Old Testament and the New Testament. And so I think you'll really enjoy this. And if you're listening and you hear something

would help,

any college student that you know, would you please forward this right to them? Just send a link to them. And please don't forget to like or subscribe to the podcast on whatever app you're using. So without any further ado, here's my interview with Stephanie Thomason.

Shane (01:30)

Stephanie, welcome to Meet the Prof. It is so good to be with you now. How are you doing today?

Stephanie Thomason (01:36)

Thank you, I'm doing well.

Shane (01:38)

Well, I was interested on your Meet the Prof site. You said one of your hobbies is snow skiing, but you live in Tampa. So how does that work? How often do you get to go snow skiing?

Stephanie Thomason (01:48)

That's a great question. I don't get to snow ski in Tampa. You might be surprised we don't have mountains and we don't have snow. So when I do get to snow ski, I try to go to places like Colorado or Wyoming, and they've got some beautiful mountains and blue skies. And so it's a good time.

Shane (02:03)

When's the last time you got to go skiing?

Stephanie Thomason (02:06)

2021. In 2021, we went to Breckenridge, actually.

Shane (02:08)

Hmm.

Oh, I've heard of that. Are you a black diamond skier?

Stephanie Thomason (02:16)

No, I actually was when I was younger, but now I'm blue. Maybe even kind of teal, you know, a little sometimes the green in there a little bit.

Shane (02:17)

I'm not either.

It's great. Yep. Green is what I'm most comfortable with. I haven't been in a while, but yeah, that sounds like you're being safer then.

Stephanie Thomason (02:30)

Exactly,

Shane (02:31)

so what's one of the most embarrassing moments you ever had as a college student? Before we get into more serious questions.

Stephanie Thomason (02:39)

Well, I was driving to Florida State. I was driving to campus and I remember I was in a rush to get to class and it was about eight o 'clock in the morning and I had to make it to an eight o 'clock class. And so I finally found a parking spot. I rushed into the campus, into the College of Business and I was going through the door and just about to get into the door I should say. And a bird dropped on me. I mean a bird dropped.

Shane (02:50)

So I finally found a parking spot. I run into it. And this is how it is. And then I'm like, oh, my god.

No.

Stephanie Thomason (03:04)

it's stuff on me. And so it's all over my hair. And so I thought I could try to go and wash that off in the bathroom. People were seeing me. The bird stuff was all over. That was a little embarrassing. So then I actually just got back in my car and drove home. I'm not meant to be in campus today.

Shane (03:19)

Oh yeah, you didn't mess with going in.

Well, I think students are encouraged to hear that professors are humans too, and you've had things happen that they've probably experienced as well. So.

Well, on your testimony, then to get more serious, you shared some amazing things about an encounter you had with a pastor on an airplane before you really came to faith in Christ, that you had explored some Eastern mysticism. So tell us, how did you come to Christ?

Stephanie Thomason (03:52)

I was born and raised in the church. I went to a Catholic grade school, Catholic high school for my freshman year, and I kind of fell away from it all in the 90s. The 1990s, I kind of drifted away from the church and sort of moved around, looked at all kinds of different faiths. And I was thinking that Christianity was sort of a default, and it was the one that I didn't think was terribly interesting. I thought the Eastern religions were much more interesting and more exotic. And so I started studying those and thinking that that's the truth.

But I did want to know the truth. Like I always wanted to know the truth and to make sure that I'm worshiping the right God because I did feel like there is, I think you can't look out the window without seeing in creation the presence of creator. I think that I know that some people who are non -believers might think that's a little crazy, but when I look out the window and I look up into the sky, I think that God is very obvious. And so I wanted to know who he was or who it was, whatever it was and.

So I just started looking and praying and asking God to open my eyes. And then what happened? A bunch of things started happening. And one of them was I was I found myself getting onto a plane and I was assigned a seat. But before I got onto the plane, I spotted this man who was a pastor, apparently, but I didn't know at the time. And I just thought he looked really ethereal. It was like he glowed. And I felt like there's something very special about him. And then as I got on the plane, he sat next to me and his wife sat next to him.

And he struck up a conversation and he said, he just asked me, what have you been doing or what are you interested in? What kinds of things do you like to work on? I said, you know, I always wanted to write a children's book like C .S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles, because I absolutely love C .S. Lewis and his Narnia Chronicles. And he said, well, have you read his adult material? And I said, no. So he told me about the Great Divorce and Mere Christianity and Screw Tape Letters. And so...

So that was pretty exciting. I got off the plane and I started reading those and I'll get to that in just a second. But he also said something that I was shocked about. He said, who am I describing? He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. And it was because of our sins that he basically paid the price. And I said, oh, that's Jesus Christ. What do you mean who is? And he said, do you know that that was written about 700 years before he even walks the earth? And I...

I said, no, where is that written? That's in the Old Testament? And he said, oh yes, is it in the Jewish scriptures? He said, oh, it is, it is, it's Isaiah 53. And so since then I looked into Isaiah, I also found Psalm 22, which also references hands and feet being pierced. And I looked at Zechariah 12:10 and again, the idea of the piercing, how he was gonna be pierced.

And it just baffled me because I couldn't believe that this was even in the Jewish scriptures. And it was, to me, such an obvious prophecy of Jesus Christ. And so that really excited me. But then the other thing that excited me and really turned the light was when I got to C .S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. And I got to the part about the trilemma. It basically says a man who was merely a man would not say the sort of things that Jesus said. Either he was a liar, a lunatic, or you must call him the Lord. And so I thought,

Shane (06:55)

Explain that.

Stephanie Thomason (07:03)

You know, I always thought he was this great moral teacher and I hadn't even looked into the resurrection and I realized, no, he is Lord. He's not a liar. He's not a lunatic. He's Lord. And that was like the scales fell off my eyes. I started to see the light and then everything since then has just been, I mean, it's just like the world is more colorful now and just so much more beautiful. And I understand so much more why we go through the troubles that we go through sometimes and how they're made to build us into stronger people.

and to shape our spirits. And sometimes some of the worst troubles can make us some of the strongest people spiritually. And so you might have to go through hell, I guess you could say, to get to heaven, but it's worth it.

Shane (07:44)

more how you came to the conclusion that he's not a liar, he wasn't a lunatic, so he must be Lord.

Stephanie Thomason (07:53)

Yeah, well, he's you can tell all through the Gospels just how truthful he is, and he never once lied. And it's not even in him as part of his nature to lie. So I just thinking of him as a liar just is completely wrong. And then, of course, he's not a lunatic, because look what he did if I go back and I and I knew the Gospels pretty well at the time. I mean, I knew them. I knew who he was as far as the person of Jesus. And I knew that he was God.

And so this idea that to say that he's a liar or a lunatic, or since then I've had people who've challenged me who've said, well, maybe he was just a legend. Maybe C .S. Lewis forgot the legend one. And so I thought, well, if he is a legend, then we should see that in history. If he's just a mere myth, a fictional myth or a legend, we should see that in history. And so I started doing a lot of research on the history behind the Bible. And I looked into the early church fathers. I...

read the secular people, I found out that within 150 years of Jesus' crucifixion, there were 42 different sources that gave us some evidence and information concerning the gospels and supporting the New Testament claims. And those sources included nine secular sources. So it was even sort of hostile people like Josephus, who wrote about Jesus. You have Tacitus, he talked about Jesus paying the ultimate price.

They were around at the same time as Jesus' followers. Josephus was born around 37. I think Tacitus did a lot of his writing around the year 100. So they were in a position, and also in the ancient Near East, they were in a position to know what they could find out. And so they were writing stuff, early church fathers, Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus. There are all these people writing information and supporting the authorship of the Bible, the reliability of the Bible.

and all of that good information. And so once you look into that and you look into history and you have an honest approach, I'm not afraid to go and read atheist books, for example, to see what their arguments are against Jesus. Because I used to be afraid when I very first started getting back into Christianity about 12, 13 years ago. But then I started reading their arguments and I thought, they really don't have anything.

And even there, they try to say that the gospels are anonymous or not reliable. They come up with a lot of different arguments for that. And then I just go back to the early church fathers and I find people like Irenaeus citing Matthew, Mark, Luke and John by name. So you see this kind of stuff and you just develop more confidence. And so no matter what their arguments are, we can always win because we have the truth. And when you have the truth, you're armed with glory and you've got God by your side. And there really isn't anything better than that.

Shane (10:42)

for you, the evidence sounds like it was overwhelming then as you began looking into it. Tell me, how did your life change after you surrendered to Christ this way? The scales came off and you believed in Christ.

Stephanie Thomason (10:49)

Yeah.

Well, I've become a lot more purposeful, a lot more intentional. And I realize that I think that there is at some point at the very end of our lives, I think that we're going to be given, what do they call it? I think we're going to be given insight on what our lives look like through Jesus's eyes. And so I think our eyes are going to be opened to be able to see the sins that we commit through Jesus's eyes. And I think when you think that way,

Shane (11:05)

And I realized that I was a hero at some point in my career and I didn't know why.

Stephanie Thomason (11:28)

And you realize that every single interaction that you have with another human is of value. There's not a thing that you do that's not going to be

Shane (11:38)

That's very freeing. It's encouraging.

Stephanie Thomason (11:41)

Yeah, yeah, we were very fortunate that I think we're very fortunate and that Jesus has given himself for all of us. I don't know. It's sad because a lot of people, I think they put Jesus in a box and they think he's all about judgment and he's all about harshness and he wants us to feel like he's this authoritarian with a hammer and it's not who he is. If you look at who he is, he's the most merciful.

I mean, it's so funny because we try to put human mercy and what that looks like and human justice and we can't even imagine the level of mercy and justice that he has and how it's all going to work out in the end.

Shane (12:17)

after you came to faith in Christ, when the scales came off, your life was changing, when's the time that you had to take a step of faith? When was a challenging time you went through, you needed to trust God, when maybe all the evidence wasn't visible yet that he was there?

Stephanie Thomason (12:35)

Yeah, well, I can, let me just go back to what my biggest, one of my biggest challenges was when I was still looking for the truth. And so I was still in that whole search mode because this is when I experienced the biggest challenge that my husband and I, I think we experienced in our lives is when I was 37, I was pregnant with my second son and being an older mom, I was very worried, of course, about Down syndrome thinking.

Okay, my son might have the markers for Down syndrome and that kind of thing. Then I went to have an ultrasound and the nurse said, oh, he has two soft markers for Down syndrome, but don't worry, you can terminate the pregnancy. And I thought, terminate the, this is my son. I can see his little hands and his little feet and I can see his cute little body. And he was probably at the time, I think maybe 16 or 17 weeks. So he was pretty far along. And for her to just say that in such a,

sort of refer to him as a pregnancy instead of my son. And we had even named him at that point. And so I decided to go back and get on the computer and learn what's it going to be like to be a down mom, to be a mother of a child with Down syndrome. And so my husband agreed. We absolutely were definitely not going to make that choice. But prior to that, I was pro -choice thinking I was that was the decision. Now I've become fully. They wanted to terminate me. Oh, no. Oh,

Shane (13:55)

Hey, this is great evidence. Wait, come in, come

Stephanie Thomason (14:00)

didn't expect that. I guess he was listening. No, and I...

Shane (14:00)

That's great. That's great. They want to determinate me.

Stephanie Thomason (14:06)

Yeah, and I became, it was, well, you can see that he wasn't born with Down syndrome. I had the amniocentesis and it came back that he wasn't going to have Down syndrome, but it was, it was one of those things that really influenced my life on the whole abortion debate and what God wants out of the abortion debate. And it, through the years after that, I've just, I don't know, it's just, it's, you just, your eyes are open. And I think that that was a test. I honestly think that was a test that God gave for me and my husband. And.

Shane (14:35)

Really?

Stephanie Thomason (14:36)

to go through that and to understand how that could all be and the thoughts of a mother who makes other decisions in that particular case and how again, God is very forgiving. So if anyone's on here and they have made those decisions, just repent, pray, ask God for your forgiveness because that's a tough one.

Shane (14:56)

Thanks for sharing that story.

Stephanie Thomason (14:58)

you can see he's doing fine right now. He's a senior in high school. He and my other son, Jack, they're both at the university. Actually, Sean's going to be at the University of Tampa and Jack's at the University of Tampa now. So I'm very excited about that. They're both going to be on campus next year.

one of the things that I want to do because I had that experience and because I had the other experience with Sean is to be a light for other people. And I hope if any college students, especially if any females are going through this, even males, you know, accidentally get a girl pregnant or something happens like that.

It's a good choice to have that baby. It's a good choice to carry the baby to term. There's nothing wrong with that. I see so few college students pregnant on my campus and I know that there's more going on. You know what I mean? Why do I see so few? Once in a blue moon, I'll see a pregnant college student. That's usually an older person who's married and that sort of thing. It's usually not the college age kids. I know these kids are

having sex and I know that obviously sometimes there's mistakes and what's happening and so I feel like there should be more voices out there saying it's not it's not a bad thing carry the baby to term you know for every I think it's for every one baby put up for private adoption there are 36 couples waiting to adopt in the United States and so if they can't keep the baby themselves there's loving family for them.

Shane (16:23)

There's a real need there.

Stephanie Thomason (16:28)

So if you go into US adoptions, you'll see that. And you can even go in there and you can see all the parents. You see pictures of them. You see their backgrounds. You can decide. So there's choices for women. If they can't say they can't raise a baby themselves, or they don't have parents or someone else who can help them out. There are other people who really would love to just love those kids.

Shane (16:28)

Mm -hmm.

Hmm.

a great encouragement you gave. Thank you for

how much are you able to talk about your faith with your students?

Stephanie Thomason (16:56)

I wish I could talk more about my faith with my students. And I wish I could be, actually, I hope we have more events on campus, more Christian events, more Cru events, things like that, where students feel free to talk about their faith. Because in this culture, I think people are sort of, I don't know, the way we are, nobody wants to talk about Jesus. And Jesus is the most important person ever to walk this earth, person slash divine person ever to walk the earth. And a lot of times our culture keeps us from saying his name, except people say his name in vain.

So I always wear a cross. I always want to send those signs that I'm a Christian and you can come to me in my office and talk to me about your faith if you want. I think God has put people of different faiths into my life for a reason. Like my best friends at work, I've got a Muslim friend, a couple of Jewish really good friends.

Lots of Christian friends too. And then I also in my faculty I should say the faculty members and the staff and then my next -door neighbor is Hindu and so so I'm always open to talking about my faith and I have talked with each of those people about Christianity and that kind of thing and I love the idea of the student ever wanted to come and hear about Christianity I'd love to share why why I believe and because I think I think people need the hope I think these days with the way the culture is and the way life seems

kind of treacherous at times. I think that sharing the hope you have and the light you have is really important.

Shane (18:20)

think students need hope, we all do, but more than ever, students feel that need for hope, I think.

you're aware, I've been collecting questions from college students, and they're ones that they know they're gonna ask these to Christian professors. So take a listen to this

Hello, I'm Micah and I'm a junior in the software engineering program at UNCW and I'm here to ask the question, how do you see God in the subject you study? Specifically, how do you see him interacting, working or any of it? Thank you.

Stephanie Thomason (18:57)

That's a great question. That's a really good question. And so I will tell you from a perspective of a business management professor. So I teach students who want to one day go on and manage employees. And so what I want them to do when they manage employees is to realize these employees aren't just commodities. These are people. You're managing human capital. And so I wrote my own textbook for my HR class. I've got a human resource management class based on SHRM, based on the Society for Human Resource Management.

But I wrote the textbook because I didn't have another, I didn't have a textbook that was out there that could have a chapter on servant leadership and ethics. And so I wrote my own and made a chapter on servant leadership and ethics. And because I think servant leadership is the epitome of Jesus Christ. And it's the idea of empowering employees and treating people as they're a value, not that they're just a commodity and a name and a number. You want to make sure that if you're managing people, if you're put into that special role of managing other people,

that you're leading them by setting a good example, by living by example, by doing what you say and saying what you do, walking the walk as they say. And I think that to teach students that yes, humans have value, that we all have intrinsic human value. In fact, Genesis 1 :27, for God made man and woman in his image. We're God's image bearers. And so when you realize that every single other person with whom you interact is God's image bearer of human value, of intrinsic value,

that isn't conferred by us on them, God has already conferred that intrinsic value on each of us. When you realize that all of your employees are looking to you to be an example, and for me, my students looking to me to be an example, I just want to be Christ through that. And I want to show the examples of the good kind of leaders are the servant leaders. The bad leaders are those sort of authoritarian leaders who just...

put the hammer down. And of course, I do bring in a little bit of politics sometimes when I talk about what to do, because I see in our world places that are communist, for example, and talk about that and how communist leaders a lot of times are terribly authoritarian. They make decisions where they don't value any humans and they take away all your property rights. They do all these things. And a lot of people these days don't look around the world and realize some of the major traumas that have been

reaped upon people by communism over the years. So anyway, so I see it in the world. I see it at that level, looking at the political systems of the world. And then I also see it, of course, just at the local level, looking at people leading in organizations.

Shane (21:37)

Your students will be future managers then.

What a great vision to give them to be a servant leader, a servant manager.

Stephanie Thomason (21:45)

Yeah, and another thing that I want them to know is the idea of this objective morality. You know, it's really interesting because people don't talk about this so much, but if you're an atheist, for example, a lot of atheists think that everything's relative and that we don't have any sort of objective source of morality or one global standard. We do, though. We have the standard of truth and love, which is Jesus.

And so everything can be judged against that, whether or not you've achieved that standard of goodness. But I can say with the ethics, what hasn't been taught is if you look at the Globe studies, so there's some authors like Robert House who came out with this Globe study, looked at I think 62 societies around the world, and they asked every society for some important human values that they thought were really important. And they asked them for what is in your society and what could be in your society, how should it be? And...

One of the values that's in there is humane orientation, which is like a combination of kindness to others and then kindness to the planet and other living things. And they found in every single society that people knew they ought to be kind, but yet in every society they knew that they weren't living up to that. And there was another similar study by a person called Shalom Schwartz out of Hebrew University. And he looked at the 10, I think it's yeah, 10 most important values

that guide people's lives around the world. And he was quote, astonished when he found that the number one value in every single society, the moral ought or the moral prescription was benevolence, which is kindness to others. So no matter where you are, you know that there's this benevolent standard to which we need to aspire. And then the second one was universalism, which is kindness to, is defined by this, is kindness to the out group, kindness to others.

even the out -group members, and then kindness to animals, plants, the world, that kind of thing. So those two were up in the top, I just say top three. The third one was self -direction is very important too, just having accountability, personal accountability and responsibility. And so when you see that we have these objectives and for the students, I teach them, you can create codes of ethics no matter where you go in the world. And everyone knows that they should follow these certain codes because we're all in alignment with this idea that kindness matters. So.

Shane (24:03)

That makes sense. When is the time that you had a student who was willing to come to you with something more personal and you were able to really minister to them on a more personal level?

Stephanie Thomason (24:17)

I've had a couple of female students come to me who've been sexually raped, sexually assaulted, unfortunately. And so, and in one of the cases was particularly terrible.

Actually, they're both terrible. There's nothing good about those kinds of cases. But one of them was particularly horrible because she had been raped when she was in high school, between high school and college.

over in where she was living for a long time in another country. And I won't name the country because I don't want to somehow ... to identify her. But she was in a different country when this happened. And then she went back to her country between, I think it was between her either junior and senior year of college or between her senior year of college and her MBA degree. And what happened then was she was staying with a friend at a house and a stalker came in there and tried to, it was after the friend, I guess, but tried to strangle her. And...

put her through pure hell. And so when she came back to campus, she came into my office and she showed me pictures of herself. He had tried to strangle her. Her eyes were totally in the picture, like they were red, like they, you know, all the blood that went to her eyes, all this horrible stuff that happened to her. She fortunately survived. But after that, she gave me a bracelet and she was agnostic. She decided she was agnostic about God.

but she gave me a bracelet and it had Matthew in it and said, let your light, everybody needs the light you have, let your light so shine. And so she, it was engraved on the inside of the bracelet. So I wear that bracelet a lot and because it reminds me of her and I brought her to my church when I was, that was when I was following the Baptist faith. So I brought her to the Baptist church once and she seemed like she liked it, but who knows? But she asked me to go and I, cause she was agnostic, so I didn't know if I should offer it, but.

But I think I might have offered it or said something about it. She asked me to go and so that was hopefully one good foot forward for her.

Shane (26:11)

for her to want to go with you, I think shows that she felt really safe with you and that she could trust you. That says a lot.

Stephanie Thomason (26:18)

Yeah, yeah, it's those kind of things that students go through. A lot of times you can't see that on the outside,

I would say with the student I just mentioned, I spent a lot of time talking about Jesus. And it was interesting because her parents liked that a lot. And so when they came when she graduated, they bought me a book called Jerusalem,

So but it was they said that because of the mother apparently was a

priest herself in a church over in this other country

but so this girl had been raised in the

I'm sorry raised in the church and had kind of fallen away from it a little bit, but I think because of those stories and because of her love for her parents and her love for her mother. I think that she was very open to talking about Jesus, so she would talk about him and stuff even though she said she was agnostic. She was definitely.

open to talking about him and hearing about him. And I know she's thriving right now from what I

yeah, it was funny because she gave me as a reference and I talked to this potential employer when she was up against, I think it was four or five other candidates, spent about a half hour on the phone with him and he was grilling me because she was working under me as a graduate assistant for a long time. And so he really grilled me quite a bit. And I gave, and I just said, I gave some stories about her and about how I believe she was just an amazing woman.

Shane (27:21)

Hmm.

Stephanie Thomason (27:34)

who was gonna do really well if she's put into a position that she was possibly being offered. And of course she was offered that position, that's where she's been thriving ever since.

And so it's just been great.

Shane (27:47)

I love that. I love

That's a true success story. I know that many faculty cling on to the success stories when students do well. Well, Stephanie, now

Stephanie Thomason (27:56)

Yeah, we do.

Shane (27:58)

time for the lightning

is where I'll just ask you

questions and you can give the first answers that come to mind for

So what advice would you give your 18 year old

Stephanie Thomason (28:10)

I've heard people ask that question and sometimes they say, I wouldn't give my 18 year old self any advice. And that's wrong. I would. I would tell my 18 year old self, stay in church. Do not leave the church. Don't wobble. Don't leave. Don't run away. And keep going in. Keep worshiping. Keep appreciating Jesus. You can go and look at other religions as I did, but don't spend too much time into those religions. Spend your time. Invest your time in Christianity. Because I wish...

Shane (28:17)

Hehehe.

Stephanie Thomason (28:38)

Yeah, I wish I'd done that myself. And so that's what I did. And as I told you, I left in my 20s. I just sort of flailed around for a long time, too long of a time. And so all those years I missed. And so.

Shane (28:52)

Well, what advice would you give a graduating senior?

Stephanie Thomason (28:56)

I would give a senior the advice to find a job you love. Find a job you love and do something that capitalizes on the skills you have, the things you really enjoy doing. So I also, when I graduated, I was doing some sales. I did real estate sales and I did sales for a furniture store my parents owned. And so we were doing, I was doing that kind of business and I had this epiphany at 9 -11 and I thought,

I'm not doing what I really love. I don't really love sales. What I want to do is I want to teach. My grandfather was a college professor and I just put my resume over at Lynn University because I had just graduated with an MBA and I was able to put my resume over there. I got this job teaching an introduction to marketing class and I absolutely loved it. And I realized had I just, I mean, I liked the fact I had work experience and I spent many years out of college before going back and finally after that I earned a PhD.

But the teaching was something that I'm really using what I enjoy. And so I think if you can find something you really enjoy, you'll never feel like you're working. It's like your job becomes your passion. And if you can take it and wrap it into your Christian faith and your Christian beliefs and the idea that you're using those gifts that God gave you, you tell the parable of the talents and not to bury the gifts.

I can better use the gifts God gave me as a teacher and as a researcher and a writer in the role I'm in now than I ever could have done before. And so I'm capitalizing on what special gifts he's given to

Shane (30:25)

What advice would you give other Christian professors who want to have an influence in students' lives?

Stephanie Thomason (30:31)

So that's a good thing. And actually, it's funny because we're trying to get a group together to meet on Fridays. And so to start talking about Jesus and start talking about ways that we can have positive influences on campus. And so that's one thing that I would say. And the other one is my biggest piece of advice, and I gave the commencement speech at our university this past December. And the idea, my strongest piece of advice for everyone, students, faculty, family, anybody else, is tell the truth.

And even if it's always tell the truth, don't just tell a lie.

think you go back to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, you go

it was, yeah, Solzhenitsyn, he was living in the communist, in the communist time in Russia under the USSR, and everyone was rewarded for lying and rewarded for cheating and lying to your neighbors and doing all that kind of stuff. And he basically said, no matter what, I'm just going to tell the truth, even if I, I, I,

if you can live by that, you live by the truth, you grow stronger and closer to the actual truth, which is Jesus.

Shane (31:34)

Well and then what advice would you give to parents of college

Stephanie Thomason (31:39)

I would give parents the advice to make sure you raise your kids with hope and the truth. And so, and make sure when they go off to college, and I wrote a couple little books that I gave my sons, although they don't like to read the books. Now I'm doing YouTube channel because I figure maybe they'll listen to that. But I want them to know that when people start challenging them when they're in college, and especially there's going to be atheists, there'll be atheist professors, there'll be teaching, there'll be people who are teaching them

that truth is relative, it's all, you know, it's a social construct, that we don't really have any necessary truth out there. They're gonna be teaching them a lot of misinformation. And so if you as a parent can be the source of the truth and a lot of information, gather it up so you can armor your kids up. And so they have the tools they need to get through college, not thinking, gosh, I wonder, is Jesus really the truth?

No, he is the truth. And so if you do your due diligence and look into it,

you'll come to that truth. You don't really have a choice. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Like I don't understand when people say, oh, I was a Christian, I fell away. I'm like, I don't know. I mean, I feel like once you see the truth and you really do a deep, deep dive into the history of it all and all of the gospels and the ancient works around that and everything else, it guides everything that you

Shane (32:38)

Mm.

Hmm.

mentioned a lot of great

your number one book or resource that you would recommend to them?

Stephanie Thomason (33:07)

I have a few, if I can just name, there's three. The number one is C .S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. I think that once you get to the trilemma, many people can't get past the trilemma without opening up their eyes. I also would say just some books that are set up against, that talk about the arguments, Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig is a really good book. Frank Turek's book, Stealing from God, and also I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, those are really good books.

Shane (33:10)

Sure.

Stephanie Thomason (33:36)

J. Warner Wallace has a book called Cold Case Christianity, excellent book. These are laying out very strong arguments and lots of arguments for God and for the existence of Jesus. And so you'll need those because you're gonna go into the battlefield. And if you don't have that armor, you're not gonna do very well. And of course, the Bible, obviously I should be saying the Bible, but these other books are very good as far as giving you those tools that you'll need to fight in this crazy culture

in.

Shane (34:03)

That's great. Thank

And I'll try to put links to those in the show notes. This is a new procedure for me, but to try to help students find those

Well, Stephanie, so students can read more about you on meettheprof .com. How else can they meet you, connect with you, follow you?

Stephanie Thomason (34:21)

so I have a YouTube channel, it's called Truth Matters with SJ Thomason. And so I tried to post videos, I just had a conversation today with an atheist, I like to try to reach across the aisle and talk to people and try to reason with them and see if we can sort of be a light to people in all different places. And so, so that's one place that you can go, you can email me at sthomason@ut.edu.

And so I'm always looking for emails and love to talk to students. If anyone ever wants to meet with me, you can certainly come over to the campus, University of Tampa and meet with me and we'll chat anytime.

Shane (34:55)

so grateful that you're a professor. I wish I had had a professor like you. And so thankful you're in these students' lives and you're there at University of Tampa. And Stephanie, thank you for this

Stephanie Thomason (35:06)

Oh, thank you. I really enjoyed being on there today.

Shane (35:09)

I hope you enjoyed that interview half as much as I enjoyed the conversation. And Stephanie really covered some deep topics there. And I felt personally very encouraged about the academic study she's put into the reliability of the Bible.

if you're listening and you're a college student, would you please

like or subscribe but most importantly, would you consider asking a question

Christian professors

the most easy way you could do that for our podcast is if you find us on Instagram, Meet The Prof Official with Shane and Spence, and you can just DM us a video of yourself telling your name, your year, your campus, and any number of questions that you would have for a Christian professor.

and hopefully we can get you on the show. And so also please forward this to any college student you think it might help, maybe a Christian professor or a non -Christian professor that you know of as well. And thank you so much for joining us. We're really praying that God will use these to encourage more conversations on the campus that have Jesus at the center. So really appreciate you being a part of it and stay tuned till next time when we have another episode of Meet the Prof.