In an earlier entry, I defined faith-integration for librarianship as “one’s effort to practice and understand how Jesus Christ can be displayed as Lord of all domains through librarianship.” I also noted the critical roles epistemology and revelation play in implementing faith integration. Apart from the conviction that all truth is God’s truth and, subsequently, that differing academic disciplines can speak to each other (epistemology), and that God speaks through the ordinary (general revelation), faith integration crashes and burns (cf. Estes, 2019). Yet even the most rigorous theology must yield to love, for revelation’s goal is not mastery but communion. The Message recovers the poetic immediacy of Paul’s vision:

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end (1 Corinthians 13:3-7, The Message)

Acknowledging Jesus Christ’s lordship over all domains implies that love is central. In other words, I cannot be a faithful librarian apart from love: loving God, loving patrons, loving co-workers, loving my supervisor, loving my family, and loving strangers. Even if every reference interview I conduct gives a patron access to God’s truth, without love for the patron, my work is in vain. Teaching a one-shot information literacy session may help students discover more about God, but when I fail to express love toward the instructor who invited me, my efforts become futile. Similar to trying to find a book without a call number, striving to be a faithful librarian apart from love is pointless.

Why do I write this? Just as a conductor orchestrates beautiful music by elegantly using all instruments, so a librarian who integrates faith gracefully strives to fuse love for God and love for neighbor into their professional endeavors. Love bonds theology with librarianship. My blog entries tend to be technical, exploring critical premises. If I do this, however, without love, writing these entries (and the attempt to put what I write into practice) is merely “the creaking of a rusty gate” (1 Corinthians 13:1, The Message).

As we enter the Christmas season, may we embrace God’s act of love revealed in the birth of Jesus Christ. “When the time came, he (Jesus) set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process” (Philippians 2:6–7, The Message, emphasis in original). Faith-integration’s purpose is to encourage serious, faithful, humble thinking, leading to truly knowing God, loving God, and loving others. Such a process empowers an understanding of how Jesus Christ can be displayed as Lord of all domains through librarianship and enables the faithful librarian to manifest God’s love in all facets of the profession. Faith integration failing to manifest God’s truth in love reeks like a rotten vegetable and, similarly, should be trashed. I am hopeful that these entries reflect God’s loving nature and become like fresh, vital, and appealing garden-fresh vegetables, nourishing faithful librarians.

Because the works of Jesus Christ, both his birth (his setting aside the privileges of deity) and his death, burial, and resurrection, were acts of love, faith integration also begins and ends with love. It is love that interprets knowledge rightly, love that redeems our professional labor, and love that bears witness to the Lordship of Christ through the profession of librarianship. To love in this way is to practice the gospel within the stacks, behind the desk, and on the screen—to manifest the Word who became flesh through the joyful work of ordering, serving, and giving. May every cataloged record, every information literacy session, every patient reference interview whisper the reality that God so loved the world. For when our vocation is steeped in that love, our labor will not be in vain.

Reference

Estes, D. J. (2019). Psalm 19, Revelation, and the Integration of Faith, Learning, and Life. In A. J. Spencer (Ed.), The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis (pp. 48–57). Wipf & Stock.