MTP 30 Karen Petersen Part 2, The Role of Joy and Doubt in Christian Life

Karen Petersen, the President of Hendrix College, shares the importance of joy, questioning, and community support in navigating college life. Petersen also offers valuable advice for students and parents, highlighting the significance of prayer and the need for open conversations about faith and doubt.

Takeaways
Students can impact others through genuine joy.
Education can enhance understanding of God and scripture.
Students should be open to exploring different career paths.
Professors can represent Christ through kindness and grace.
Growth in faith requires intentional effort and maturity.

Email Dr. Petersen: petersen@hendrix.edu

Watch Her Extended Personal Testimony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-UEXPl1YGQ

Read about her on MeetTheProf.com: https://meettheprof.com/view/professors/entry/karen-petersen/

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Transcript

Shane (00:00)
Hey there everyone and welcome to Meet the Prof. My name is Shane and my friend, Spence Hackney and I are very grateful you're here. Thanks for coming along and listening. And we take questions from students like you just heard from Blessing and then we ask them to Christian professors. And our goal is to help encourage Christ -centered conversations on the college campus. So thank you for joining us and we get to hear part two now of Karen Petersen's interview. Karen is the President at Hendrix College.

And before we get started, I have a few requests. Would you take a minute and just subscribe or like to the podcast wherever you are listening and share it with a friend, share it with a college student you think might be encouraged by it. And so, well, let's get started. Here is part two of our interview with Dr. Karen Petersen.

Karen Petersen (00:49)
What a great question, Blessing, and what a great name. So, you know, I've seen students do some remarkable things in my career. I took students to Israel for, I think, eight years as part of a study abroad program. was just the best experience of my career has been being able to travel with students. And there was this one particular year where I had just a group of young women who were committed Christ followers, just lovely, joy -filled people.

Shane & Spence (01:02)
Wow.

Karen Petersen (01:18)
infused joy into our trip in a way that I'd never seen before. And it wasn't because they were preaching. And it wasn't because we were going to church because this was an international conflict class. But the joy they brought was you could feel it, you could see it, you could hear it and taste it. And there were other students on that trip and at least one of them who was not a Christian. ultimately, within the next year or so, he ended up in my office and sat down across from me. said, I want what you guys have. I want what they have.

Shane & Spence (01:23)
Hmm.

Really?

Karen Petersen (01:48)
Right? And so those students weren't, they weren't preaching. Right? They weren't, they were just being joy -filled believers. And as a result, you know, he became a Christ follower. So the answer is, you know, show that joy. Be that person that Christ has created you to be and show other people what that does in your life. And be real too. Don't be fake.

Shane & Spence (01:51)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Karen Petersen (02:15)
If this wasn't that fake joy, like everything's fine, everything's good, I'm all right all the time. No, this was real joy that also includes moments of vulnerability and tension and challenge and tears. Just be real and let people see God through you. And I know that's how I say it, like it's easy because, know, it's not, I know it's not. So Blessing you know, I recognize it's not easy. Do it anyway.

Shane & Spence (02:26)
Mm -hmm.

Great. And you shared that you've been in process with all this yourself. So that's helpful for me. I love this emphasis you have on joy and even your college has. So that's one takeaway for me to want to live out of joy.

Karen Petersen (02:51)
Yes. Yeah, we need more of that in our world. mean, there and it's such a beautiful joy, such a beautiful thing to experience and to witness.

Shane & Spence (03:03)
So there are some students who would say that they're struggling to believe in God or really trust God, trust the Bible, and maybe even for some intellectual reasons. it sounds like your education was actually a help for you in coming to Christ. I was wondering like how you might counsel a student who

Karen Petersen (03:17)
Mm

Shane & Spence (03:32)
would come with questions about God, why they could trust God or the Bible.

Karen Petersen (03:38)
I do think education helps a lot, but as I say on the Meet the Prof website, there are centuries or millennia of illiteracy that demonstrates you don't have to be well educated, that the Spirit of God can move in you without that. But for me, that was a real path to understanding God, was the ability to not only read Scripture with the Holy Spirit guiding you, but also to understand some of the pieces around it.

Shane & Spence (03:48)
Mm -hmm.

Karen Petersen (04:07)
Like going to Israel, for example, excuse me, and experiencing the geography and the culture and then being able to infuse that back into your reading is a learning experience that will enrich the way you read the Bible. But also reading other things, you know, reading what some of the great people of faith have written about their own experiences. So C .S. Lewis is the prime example. This was people today don't know him or know how he struggled, but you can

Shane & Spence (04:08)
Hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Karen Petersen (04:37)
You can unpackage that in his works and you can read that and you can understand how that, you know, he had those questions. Like this is C .S. Lewis and he had the same questions you have. So those are perfectly normal questions and God can handle them. And I do wonder sometimes, like I don't know because again, my experience started so late, like how many people are hindered because they were told that they shouldn't question. And you should question, like.

Shane & Spence (04:45)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Hmm.

Karen Petersen (05:05)
You should definitely question and you should, but you should question with an authentic openness. The ability to admit that you're wrong and, really go, if you go at it that way intellectually, there's just no other outcome. So it takes a heck of a lot more lack of reason to not believe in God than it does to believe in God at the end of the day. That's a lot harder thing to justify from an intellectual standpoint.

Shane & Spence (05:28)
Yeah.

Karen Petersen (05:34)
And so that was helpful to me to just to read what other people had written. And I'm a voracious reader. And so I have devoured things alongside scripture all the time. And so if that's not your thing, there are other ways to do that. I'm sure like podcasts, for example, or yeah, there are other ways to get at that. But open yourself up to the fact that God can handle your questioning and you should question because it's healthy and it will help you grow and develop your faith and then be wise as a serpent, innocent as a dove.

Shane & Spence (05:43)
Hmm. Really? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Karen Petersen (06:02)
Some of the things you read or see or hear are some of the things people say. You need to be open to checking those things too because they're not always going to be healthy.

Shane & Spence (06:07)
Hmm. Hmm. It's helpful. You know, one of things I heard is the parent of a college student is not to be terrified when my college student asks questions. That's a good thing.  so. Yeah. So often as parents, we, since they want to protect from that and really that's probably how they're growing is to question the things they've been taught.

Karen Petersen (06:19)
Right. It is a good thing.

It is. If they don't question, going to, they'll, they'll later on, they'll lose that faith in a catastrophic way and may not get it back. I have them question when they're young and build that faith. The thing is too, and Spence, this is one of the hardest things to read. Like I have two children and they're not mine. And I have to tell myself this all the time. Like they are not yours. They are God's and so, and, so stop trying to control it. You stop trying to control it and.

Shane & Spence (06:34)
Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Hmm.

Yeah.

Karen Petersen (06:57)
Trust that God can do great things with these young people, but you're going to have to take your hands off the wheel a little bit. that's, boy, that's not easy.

Shane & Spence (07:03)
Yeah, yeah. We've got kids too. That's helpful advice. Yeah, it is tough. So yeah, how old are your kids by the way?

Karen Petersen (07:07)
Yeah.

I'm still working on it,

So, okay, I have to do some math in the head here. Our daughter will be 33 this year, and then our son just turned 21. He's a senior in college.

Shane & Spence (07:21)
Okay. Okay. So you've done it. You have accomplished the task. You're almost there. Congratulations.

Karen Petersen (07:28)
Yeah, Yeah, there were We're empty nesters. mean, we've we've embraced that phase in life. It's been it's been better than I thought it would be. I was a little worried about it.

Shane & Spence (07:34)
that's great. What are you enjoying the most about being an empty nester?

Karen Petersen (07:39)
you know, not having to tell someone to clean up after themselves, right? Like our son was home for the summer and, and I love him and then just, I do, I adore him, but it's like, okay, the house is clean. And if it's not, it's my fault and I don't have anyone else to blame.

Shane & Spence (07:41)
No, it came back.

That's the problem. There's nowhere else to blame. There's nobody you can turn it on. So you're, you're filled with this place, with students who are trying to figure out what's next in their life. You know, that's so much of university is trying to figure out what's next. and there's this thought in Christianity that you need to go be a pastor or a missionary or something, but you're proof that you can glorify God by being a university president or.

Karen Petersen (07:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Shane & Spence (08:22)
college professor, many we talked to, what advice do you give to students about how they can glorify God in their fields or how they might even think about how to choose a profession and choose what to do?

Karen Petersen (08:34)
Yeah, the young people who come to me. So one of the first things I will ask them is if they're coming into the college, what's your major? My favorite answer is I don't know. I don't want you to, I mean, it's okay. I like, if you really, really know you want to be an accountant, I can live with that. Like if that's just, you know, that's what you were made to do. I don't think most people that age should know. And even when they're coming out the other side four years later, it's good for them to have a path that I would encourage those students to be just open to trying.

Shane & Spence (08:43)
Really?

Yeah.

Wow

Karen Petersen (09:02)
the opportunities that come along. Because you don't, mean, to get to your original question, which is how do you reach people? Do you have to be in actual ministry to do that? And I think we all know the answer is no. I'm gonna tell you about a young woman I worked with well, well before I became a Christian. So, and this has nothing to do with college education, but I was waiting tables in Branson, Missouri. And I mean, it was just brutal. And that doesn't sound like a brutal job, but.

Shane & Spence (09:02)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Karen Petersen (09:29)
busloads of people would come in at the time and we were just working so hard. And this young woman was the table busser. And I know her name is Bethany. She's the only person's name I remember from this job and I worked there for a while. And she was one of the most kind and thoughtful and hardworking people I'd ever met. I think she was maybe 17 or something and I wasn't much older. Just incredible. And I admired her and I marveled at her countenance and her work ethic.

Shane & Spence (09:50)
Wow.

Karen Petersen (09:58)
And in hindsight, I know why she has that. But at the time, I didn't understand that she was working as though she was working unto the Lord, bussing tables. And at the time, it meant something to me, but not for the right reason. In hindsight, it means the world to me to have had a chance to work with this young woman. I have no idea what happened to her, but she is the only person I worked with in that town whose name I remember. So it doesn't matter. Bethany, I don't know where you are, Bethany. Yeah.

Shane & Spence (10:08)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Bethany. And you knew she was a Christian?

Karen Petersen (10:27)
I knew she was a Christian, but I didn't know that that was why she was how she was, because no one had ever, I mean, I knew nothing about it really. so, and she was, she really was incredible. And so it doesn't matter what you're doing. You can, you know, God can shine through you no matter what you're doing.

Shane & Spence (10:38)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. You sort of underscored the importance of being the aroma of Christ, wherever you are, you know, of projecting that. But you also underscored the need to be spiritually mature yourself to do that. You know, I think you mentioned I wasn't prepared to teach older kids. So I went back and did, you know, preschool. How do you what do you say to the student? says, well, I'm not I'm not I'm a baby Christian and I'm going to be an accountant.

Karen Petersen (11:10)
Mm

Shane & Spence (11:13)
How can I possibly glorify God? What do you say to that person?

Karen Petersen (11:15)
Well, be honest, right? Like you could be honest. That's a good start. You're an accountant and you're dealing with things that are really sensitive. And don't stay a baby Christian. And that was one thing, you know, our pastor in Murfreesboro would say, yeah, it's fine to be a baby Christian, but you can't stay there forever. You can't keep drinking milk. You've got to eat food someday. So you have to intentionally invest in that spiritual growth, knowing that it's going to take time and that you need to be, you know, you need to sort of be cognizant of the fact that

Shane & Spence (11:27)
Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

yeah.

Karen Petersen (11:44)
There are things in places you don't belong right now because you're not ready, but that doesn't mean you don't get ready. And so go in, work as though you're working unto the Lord. Treat people's resources the way you would want, yours treated in the way God would treat them, and then mature. And we overcomplicate things sometimes, I think, too. And they're not really that complicated.

Shane & Spence (11:55)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

I think what you just said was do the work. And sometimes we don't want to hear that. Do the work to mature, do the work well that you're in. There's no magic bullet there. That's great.

Karen Petersen (12:11)
No, no. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's growth, right? And growth is hard and it's uncomfortable sometimes, it's painful. But if it's easy, you're probably not actually growing.

Shane & Spence (12:23)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, this, I just feel like we've got such a valuable opportunity to pick your brain and get your advice on so many different things. We see our audience as mainly being college students who would listen to this, but also other college professors, faculty and staff, as well as parents or grandparents. And so we have a list of questions we'd love to ask your advice on for all of our groups. We call this our lightning round.

So the first one, Karen, is what advice would you give to your 18 year old self?

Karen Petersen (12:59)
Right.

Hang in there. There's a love that's coming that you don't understand that's greater than anything you can imagine. All you have to do is hang in there.

Shane & Spence (13:14)
Hang in there. I love it All right, so you've got a senior getting ready to leave the higher education bubble go out in real life What do you say to them? All right, what did you say?

Karen Petersen (13:23)
I have one actually, right? And he says, this is his senior year. No, I'm not gonna say that. Yeah, that's actually not what I said. You know, don't stress it too much. Like there's a lot of pressure at that point in your senior year of college, I think. Like, how am I gonna get it right? How am I gonna do this or that? What's going to happen next? How do I, how do I, how do I? Take a deep breath.

Shane & Spence (13:30)
Get a job!

Okay.

Karen Petersen (13:52)
right? And understand that whatever path you end up on after you graduate is not, you're not there for the rest of your life. You can go try something and if you don't like it, don't be afraid to, don't get into the sunk cost fallacy, right? Where you stay on a path that's bad. Don't stay in an area that you know you don't belong, but go try it first. And I know it's easy to say because I have a job and I've done all this already, but I had no plan.

Shane & Spence (13:53)
Mm -hmm.

Hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Mm

Karen Petersen (14:20)
Like I really had absolutely no plan and parents won't want to hear that. So maybe you should have a little bit of a plan, but don't try to figure it all out. Take a deep breath. It's going to be okay. You're very young. You have a lot of life ahead of you and a lot of opportunity to change direction if you don't like the post college direction immediately.

Shane & Spence (14:22)
Hmm.

Hmm Yeah

Yeah.

Yeah. That sunk calls fallacy. I'd like to go back to that. mean, that is the guy who did six years of accounting training, got his Mac, gets out there and realizes, I hate this. And so your advice is do it for a year, go find something else.

Karen Petersen (14:50)
huh.

Yep. Yeah. Well, and what I tell people too is, you know, find something else while you're still doing it. Like it's a lot easier to figure, right? Don't just quit your job and go live on the street, but start trying to figure out what it is that you actually do love while you're still in that place. Cause there may be little pieces of that profession that actually were great that you loved and that you can actually turn into something else. But don't stay there just because you've invested six years.

Shane & Spence (15:02)
That's better. There you go. Smart.

Yeah.

Yeah. Hey, I would like to apologize to our listeners for picking on accountants. I feel like we have unduly picked on accountants in this show. My best friend's an accountant.

Karen Petersen (15:27)
Same here. I do it. Same, same. Yeah, I do it all the time because I I use that as an example in the classroom. Like when I talk about what students want to do with their lives and like some people know they want to do that. I don't know why it's the most boring thing I can imagine. yeah, so apologies for me as well. I'm sure it's exciting for some of you.

Shane & Spence (15:35)
Yeah. yeah.

We interviewed an accountant, Joe Brazel at NC State, so I think he gave us permission sort of to pick on him. Well, you've already spoken some to Christian professors out there that saying, you know, some would want to let their students know the first day of class are Christian and for others, there would be other ways to let students know. So what advice would you give to Christian professors who are trying to figure out the best way to represent Christ?

Karen Petersen (15:49)
Yeah. good. Good.

I think the best thing you can do as a professor in that regard is find other professors. You know, have a community of people who understand what you do. I had that at MTSU and it was, like I said earlier, just one of the most valuable things about that experience was being able to be around those folks and just watch them and learn from them and then read some of the advice that Faculty Commons gives. mean, you know, it's helpful. There is no one right way to do this.

And ultimately, if you will be kind to your students and you will show them grace and love, you will be different because they're not getting that in every classroom. They're not getting that in the world right now. Just do that. If you can't think of anything else, just be kind and give people grace.

Shane & Spence (16:55)
Hmm.

Yeah, that's great. All right, so you've got three parents of college students in the room here. What advice would you give to the parent of a college student? Love it.

Karen Petersen (17:08)
Ha

pray for your child. I mean, mean that with in all seriousness, college is hard and they're going to be confronted with things when they're away from home, especially if you've sent your, like I sent my son off to Minnesota living on campus for four years. And, and there are just things that probably that he's seen or done or been a part of that I would not like. And I just pray, I pray that God protects him and that he surrounds him with people who will

Shane & Spence (17:19)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Karen Petersen (17:41)
show him again why Christ is the answer and that he will come out of that stronger and better and talk to them. I mean, if your kids will talk to you and mind you, have conversations and let them say the things that, I've watched my son sort of bounce the political spectrum over the last three years and it's been really fun, but it's been hard because, you know, there are times where I think we get in arguments all the time in the first year or two about how ridiculous communism is and

Shane & Spence (17:43)
Mm -hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Really?

Mm

Karen Petersen (18:10)
So just sort of watching him bounce around on that and being a part of that has been a real joy for me as an educator. But pray, pray and listen.

Shane & Spence (18:15)
Yeah. You know, it strikes me as anybody can pray for their kids. Like that is something everybody can do today. That's great. Karen, thank you so much. This is so fun. And I just feel like this is so valuable. Thank you for taking this time. Thanks for being there for the students and your faculty and staff and

Karen Petersen (18:21)
Mm

Yep.

Yeah.

Shane & Spence (18:39)
Yeah, we really appreciate just getting a little bit more of a window into your life and God's work in your life. So thank you for sharing all this.

Karen Petersen (18:47)
You're welcome. It's been a joy to have the conversation and I'll just, I'll make one plea to anyone who listens to this. Even if you don't have college students, if you don't have children in college, you know people or you have colleges in your community, pray for them. Pray for the college campuses in your community, pray for the students and the faculty and the leadership, because these institutions are really vital to the future of our country and our country will not

do well if our institutions are not strong and healthy.

Shane (19:18)
I hope you enjoyed that interview with Karen, even half as much as we enjoyed interviewing her. And she is so qualified to speak to us. mean, she has been a college student herself. She's been a college professor. She sent off a child to college and now she's a college president. So, man, I really appreciate her emphasis on prayer at the end and asking us all to pray for college campuses. And so, if you would like to email Karen, she's given us permission to put her email address

in the episode of the podcast. You can find it in this episode in the description. And please don't forget to like or subscribe or follow the podcast. And if you would like to give financially to this ministry, thank you very much. And you can give online at www.give.cru.org/0424344. So thank you again. And until next time, we hope this encourages you to have a Christ -centered conversation.