With Mind Awake and Thankful Heart: Being alert to connections between our faith and our engineering work

Fred L. Haan Jr.

Keywords: faith integration, engineering, wisdom, judgment

TL;DR: This is a collection of faith and engineering connections from years of teaching

Abstract: The book of Proverbs tells us that we gain wisdom by walking a path. Wisdom is not a door. It is not a technique. It is a path we walk with patient, faithful steps. One of Jesus’ most common phrases was “Follow me.” A helpful illustration that connects with this walking is a butterfly net that we might walk with. Our curiosity and alertness to connections is the mesh in that net. A net with a sparse mesh will not catch anything. The more alert you are to connections, the more connections you will make and the more tightly woven your net will become. Becoming a wise, Christian engineer is similar. We walk a path and along the way, we must make connections between many technical and social concepts to engineer well. As Christian engineers, we must make connections between all these concepts and our faith. In this paper, I will describe my experience of walking the path and weaving my butterfly net and waiting for connections and wisdom. This will involve a net filled with engineering education, manufacturing, tornado damage investigations, the Heidelberg Catechism, Gemba walks, and sheep. These descriptions are not intended to show a technique that everyone can follow but rather illustrate how I believe faith integration actually works, that is, each of us walking a path attentive to connections as we faithfully do our work.

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Submission Number: 15