Upon reflecting again on the importance of studying humanities, I am reminded again of how much it will benefit me throughout my life even after graduating from college. Since I was ten years old I felt that God was calling me to the mission field, and since then I have been taking steps to get closer to that. When I first went to ORU I was a Missions major with a Spanish minor. The goal was to strengthen my Spanish to use in the missions field. However, my second semester freshman year I had the opportunity to study abroad in Spain. After returning, I realized the importance of knowing the language and culture to build relationships. So, I decided to change my major to Spanish and then later pursue a ministry degree for grad school.
I honestly was one of the students who used to dread taking humanities courses. I just wanted to study what I wanted and get done with school. But, after learning the reasons why it is important to study humanities I realized that it’s very useful especially in the field that I’m going into. In one of the articles that we read it says, “Humanities study strengthens your ability to communicate and work with others,” and, “you will gain knowledge of foreign languages and foreign cultures.”
Another on says “the humanities not only include literature of both ancient and modern languages, the performing arts, philosophy, comparative religion, and cultural studies, but also history, anthropology, and linguistics, although the latter three are often on the border between humanities and the social sciences.” Being in ministry, missions in particular, it is especially important to connect with people in different cultures. It is hard to build relationships with people of different cultures if you cannot communicate with them or understand what they believe and why they believe it. Studying Humanities is a useful tool for my field because it will only prepare me more for all of those things. Without learning all of this, it would be a lot harder to find open doors to spread the Gospel, and that is the ultimate goal.