{"id":5157,"date":"2010-11-06T22:37:28","date_gmt":"2010-11-06T22:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=5157"},"modified":"2010-11-08T22:54:20","modified_gmt":"2010-11-08T22:54:20","slug":"go-with-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/go-with-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Go With God"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nov. 2010 – Stanley Hauerwas –
\n<\/strong>An open letter to young Christians on their way to college<\/strong>
\n\u201cThe Christian religion,\u201d wrote Robert Louis Wilken, \u201cis inescapably ritualistic (one is received into the Church by a solemn washing with water), uncompromisingly moral (\u2018be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,\u2019 said Jesus), and unapologetically intellectual (be ready to give a \u2018reason for the hope that is in you,\u2019 in the words of 1 Peter). Like all the major religions of the world, Christianity is more than a set of devotional practices and a moral code: it is also a way of thinking about God, about human beings, about the world and history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritualistic, moral, and intellectual: May these words, ones that Wilken uses to begin his beautiful book, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, be written on your soul as you begin college and mark your life\u2014characterize and distinguish your life\u2014for the next four years. Be faithful in worship. In America, going to college is one of those heavily mythologized events that everybody tells you will \u201cchange your life,\u201d which is probably at least half true. So don\u2019t be foolish and imagine that you can take a vacation from church. <\/p>\n

Be Uncompromisingly Moral<\/strong>
\nBe uncompromisingly moral. Undergraduate life on college campuses tends in the direction of neopagan excess. Good kids from good families too often end up using their four years at college to get drunk and throw up on one another. Too often they do so on their way to the condom dispensers. What a waste! Not only because such behavior is self-destructive but also because living this way will prevent you from doing the intellectual work the Christian faith demands. Be deeply intellectual. We\u2014that is, the Church\u2014need you to do well in school. That may sound strange, because many who represent Christian values seem concerned primarily with how you conduct yourself while you are in college; they relegate the Christian part of being in college to what is done outside the classroom.<\/p>\n

Undergraduate life on college campuses tends in the direction of neopagan excess.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Christian fact is very straightforward: To be a student is a calling. Your parents are setting up accounts to pay the bills, or you are scraping together your own resources and taking out loans, or a scholarship is making college possible. Whatever the practical source, the end result is the same. You are privileged to enter a time\u2014four years!\u2014during which your main job is to listen to lectures, attend seminars, go to labs, and read books.<\/p>\n

It is an extraordinary gift. In a world of deep injustice and violence, a people exists that thinks some can be given time to study. We need you to take seriously the calling that is yours by virtue of going to college. You may well be thinking, \u201cWhat is he thinking? I\u2019m just beginning my freshman year. I\u2019m not being called to be a student. None of my peers thinks he or she is called to be a student. They\u2019re going to college because it prepares you for life. I\u2019m going to college so I can get a better job and have a better life than I\u2019d have if I didn\u2019t go to college. It\u2019s not a calling.\u201d<\/p>\n

But you are a Christian. This means you cannot go to college just to get a better job. These days, people talk about college as an investment because they think of education as a bank account: You deposit the knowledge and expertise you\u2019ve earned, and when it comes time to get a job, you make a withdrawal, putting all that stuff on a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 and making money off the investment of your four years. Christians need jobs just like anybody else, but the years you spend as an undergraduate are like everything else in your life. They\u2019re not yours to do with as you please. They\u2019re Christ\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Christ\u2019s call on you as a student is a calling to meet the needs of the Church, both for its own life and the life of the world. The Resurrection of Jesus, Wilken suggests, is not only the central fact of Christian worship but also the ground of all Christian thinking \u201cabout God, about human beings, about the world and history.\u201d Somebody needs to do that thinking\u2014and that means you.<\/p>\n

The Church Needs Your Mind<\/strong>
\nDon\u2019t underestimate how much the Church needs your mind. Remember your Bible-study class? Christians read Isaiah\u2019s prophecy of a suffering servant as pointing to Christ. That seems obvious, but it\u2019s not; or at least it wasn\u2019t obvious to the Ethiopian eunuch to whom the Lord sent Philip to explain things. Christ is written everywhere, not only in the prophecies of the Old Testament but also in the pages of history and in the book of nature. The Church has been explaining, interpreting, and illuminating ever since it began. It takes an educated mind to do the Church\u2019s work of thinking about and interpreting the world in light of Christ. Physics, sociology, French literary theory: All these and more\u2014in fact, everything you study in college\u2014is bathed in the light of Christ. It takes the eyes of faith to see that light, and it takes an educated mind to understand and articulate it.<\/p>\n

Christ is written everywhere, not only in the prophecies of the Old Testament but also in the pages of history and in the book of nature.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There\u2019s another dimension to the call of intellectual work. In the First Letter of Peter we read, \u201cAlways be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you\u201d (3:15). Not everybody believes. In fact, the contemporary American secular university is largely a place of unbelief. Thus, the Church has a job to do: to explain why belief in the risen Lord actually makes sense. There\u2019s no one formula, no one argument, so don\u2019t imagine you will find the magic defense against all objections. You can, however, offer the reasonable defense Peter asks for. You may at least make someone think twice before he rejects the risen Lord.<\/p>\n

the Church has a job to do: to explain why belief in the risen Lord actually makes sense.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Anyway, defense isn\u2019t the point. Lots of people feel lost because they imagine being a sophisticated, contemporary intellectual makes faith impossible. The Church wants to reach these people, but to do so requires an ambassador at home in the intellectual world. That\u2019s you\u2014or at least that\u2019s what you can become if you do your work with enthusiasm. Share in a love of learning. It\u2019s a worthy love in its own right, and it will allow you to be the leaven in the lump of academia.<\/p>\n

So, yes, to be a student is to be called to serve the Church and the world. But always remember who serves what. Colleges focus on learning; as they do so, they can create the illusion that being smart and well educated is the be-all and end-all of life. You do not need to be educated to be a Christian. That\u2019s obvious. After all, Christ is most visible to the world in the person who responds to his call of \u201cCome, follow me.\u201d I daresay St. Francis of Assisi was more important to the medieval Church than any intellectual. One of the most brilliant men in the history of the Church, St. Bonaventure, a Franciscan, said as much. But the Church needs some Christians to be educated, as St. Bonaventure also knew; this is why he taught at the University of Paris and ensured that, in their enthusiasm for the example of St. Francis, his brother Franciscans didn\u2019t give up on education.<\/p>\n

Whatever you end up doing with your life, now is the time when you develop the intellectual skills the Church needs for the sake of building up the Body of Christ.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The best way to think about the relation between your calling as a student and the many other callings of Christians can be found in 1 Corinthians 12. In this letter Paul is dealing with a community in turmoil as various factions claim priority. It\u2019s the same situation today. Pastors consider preaching and evangelizing the most important thing. Teachers consider education the most important thing. Social activists argue for the priority of making the world more just. Still others insist that internal spiritual renewal is the key to everything. St. Paul, however, reminds the Church at Corinth that it comprises a variety of gifts that serve to build up the Church\u2019s common good. To one person is given wisdom, to others knowledge, to still others the work of healing, prophecy, and the discernment of the spirits. By all means honor those who are serving the Church in the ordained ministry, or through social action, or through spiritual direction. But remember: You are about to become a student\u2014not a pastor, a social worker, or a spiritual director. Whatever you end up doing with your life, now is the time when you develop the intellectual skills the Church needs for the sake of building up the Body of Christ.<\/p>\n

Your Christian calling as a student does not require you to become a theologian, at least not in the official sense of the word. Speaking as one whose job title is Professor of Theology, I certainly hope you will be attracted to the work of theology. These days\u2014at least in the West, where the dominant intellectual trends have detached themselves from Christianity\u2014the discipline of theology is in a world of hurt, often tempted by silly efforts to dress up the gospel in the latest academic fashions. So God knows we need all the help we can get.<\/p>\n

But there is a wider sense of being a theologian, one that simply means thinking about what you are learning in light of Christ. This does not happen by making everything fit into Church doctrine or biblical preaching\u2014that\u2019s theology in the strict, official sense. Instead, to become a Christian scholar is more a matter of intention and desire, of bearing witness to Christ in the contemporary world of science, literature, and so forth.<\/p>\n

The Importance of Christian Friends<\/strong>
\nYou can\u2019t do this on your own. You\u2019ll need friends who major in physics and biology as well as in economics, psychology, philosophy, literature, and every other discipline. These friends can be teachers and fellow students, of course, but, for the most part, our intellectual friendships are channeled through books. C.S. Lewis has remained popular with Christian students for many good reasons, not the least of which is that he makes himself available to his readers as a trusted friend in Christ. That\u2019s true for many other authors too. Get to know them.<\/p>\n

Books, moreover, are often the way in which our friendships with our fellow students and teachers begin and in which these friendships become cemented. I\u2019m not a big fan of Francis Schaeffer, but he can be a point of contact\u2014something to agree with or argue about. The same is true for all writers who tackle big questions. Read Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and John Stuart Mill, and not just because you might learn something. Read them because doing so will provide a sharpness and depth to your conversations. To a great extent, becoming an educated person means adding lots of layers to your relationships. Sure, going to the big football game or having a beer (legally) with your buddies should be fun on its own terms, but it\u2019s also a reality ripe for analysis, discussion, and conversation. If you read Mary Douglas or Claude Levi-Strauss, you\u2019ll have something to say about the rituals of American sports. And if you read Jane Austen or T.S. Eliot, you\u2019ll find you see conversations with friends, particularly while sharing a meal, in new ways. And, of course, you cannot read enough Trollope. Think of books as the fine threads of a spider\u2019s web. They link and connect.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

A Difficult Task<\/strong>
\nFulfilling your calling as a Christian student won\u2019t be easy. It\u2019s not easy for anyone who is serious about the intellectual life, Christian or not. The curricula of many colleges and universities may seem, and in fact may be, chaotic. Many schools have no particular expectations. You check a few general-education boxes\u2014a writing course, perhaps, and some general distributional requirements\u2014and then do as you please. Moreover, there is no guarantee that you will be encouraged to read. Some classes, even in the humanities, are based on textbooks that chop up classic texts into little snippets. You cannot become friends with an author by reading half a dozen pages. Finally, and perhaps worse because insidious, there is a strange anti-intellectualism abroad in academia. Some professors have convinced themselves that all knowledge is just political power dressed up in fancy language, or that books and ideas are simply ideological weapons in the quest for domination. Christians, of all people, should recognize that what is known and how it is known produce and reproduce power relations that are unjust, but this does not mean all questions of truth must be abandoned. As I said, it won\u2019t be easy.<\/p>\n

You owe it to yourself and to the Church not to let the incoherence, laziness, and self-critical excesses of the contemporary university demoralize you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

You owe it to yourself and to the Church not to let the incoherence, laziness, and self-critical excesses of the contemporary university demoralize you. Be sure not to let these failures become an excuse for you to avoid an education\u2014a Christian education. Although some universities make it quite easy to avoid being well educated, I think you will find that every university or college has teachers who deserve the titles they\u2019ve been given. Your task is to find them.<\/p>\n

Finding the Best Teachers<\/strong>
\nBut how can you find the best teachers? There are no set principles, but I can suggest some guidelines. First, ask around. Are there professors who have reputations as intellectual mentors of Christian students? You\u2019re eighteen. You don\u2019t need substitute parents\u2014or, at least, you don\u2019t need parents who think you are still twelve. But you do need reliable guides. So rearrange your schedule to take the professor who teaches Dante with sensitivity to the profound theological vision of that great poet. You may end up disagreeing, both with the professor and with Dante, but you\u2019ll learn how to think as a Christian.<\/p>\n

Also, go to the bookstore at the beginning of the term to see which professors assign books\u2014and I mean real books, not textbooks. Textbooks can play a legitimate role in some disciplines, but not in all, and never at all levels. You want to find the teachers who have intellectual friends, as it were, and who want to share those friends with their students. If a professor has a course outline that gives two or three weeks to reading St. Augustine\u2019s Confessions, you can reasonably hope that he thinks of St. Augustine as someone he knows (or wants to know) and as someone he wants to share with students.<\/p>\n

The best teachers for a Christian student aren\u2019t always Christians. In fact, a certain kind of Christian teacher can lead you astray. It\u2019s not easy to see the truth of Christ in modern science or contemporary critical theory, for example. The temptation is to compartmentalize, to assign your faith to the heart, perhaps, and then carry on with your academic work. Some professors have become very comfortable with this compartmentalization, so be careful. By all means take spiritual encouragement wherever you can get it; these sorts of professors can be helpful in that regard. But don\u2019t compartmentalize, because that\u2019s basically putting your Christian faith outside of your work as a student.<\/p>\n

Your Calling<\/strong>
\nYour calling is to be a Christian student. The Christian part and the student part are inseparable. It will be hard and frustrating because you won\u2019t see how the two go together. Nobody does, at least not in the sense of having worked it all out. But you need to remember what Christ said: \u201cI am the Alpha and the Omega.\u201d However uncertain we are about how, we know that being a Christian goes with being a student (and a teacher).<\/p>\n

Although many professors are not Christians (at some schools, most aren\u2019t), many professors have a piety especially relevant to the academic life. One, for example, might be committed to the intrinsic importance of knowing Wordsworth\u2019s poetry, while another works at getting the chemistry experiment right. These professors convey a spirit of devotion. Their intellectual lives serve the subject matter rather than treating it as information to be mastered or, worse, a dead body of knowledge to be conveyed to students. English literature and modern science do not exist for their own sakes, and the university doesn\u2019t raise money for the sake of professors\u2019 careers. For these professors, the educational system exists for the sake of their disciplines, which they willingly serve. This spirit of devotion is not the same as Christian faith, but it can help shape your young intellectual desires and impulses in the right way by reminding you that your job as a student is to serve and not to be served. College isn\u2019t for you; it\u2019s for your Christian calling as an intellectual.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Let me return to Robert Wilken\u2019s observation about the ritual, moral, and intellectual life of the Christian. Don\u2019t fool yourself. Only a man or woman who has undergone a long period of spiritual discipline can reliably pray in the solitude of a hermitage. You\u2019re young. You need the regular discipline of worship, Bible reading, and Christian fellowship. Don\u2019t neglect them in college. Also, don\u2019t underestimate the moral temptations of the contemporary college scene. We cannot help but be influenced by the behavior of our friends, so choose wisely.<\/p>\n

To worship God and live faithfully are necessary conditions if you are to survive in college. But as a Christian you are called to do more than survive. You are called to use the opportunity you have been given to learn to construe the world as a creature of a God who would have us enjoy\u2014and bask in\u2014the love that has brought us into existence. God has given your mind good work to do. As members of the Church, we\u2019re counting on you. It won\u2019t be easy. It never has been. But I can testify that it can also be a source of joy.<\/p>\n

What a wonderful adventure you have before you. I wish you well. <\/p>\n

HT: First Things<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nov. 2010 – Stanley Hauerwas – An open letter to young Christians on their way to college \u201cThe Christian religion,\u201d wrote Robert Louis Wilken, \u201cis inescapably ritualistic (one is received into the Church by a solemn washing with water), uncompromisingly moral (\u2018be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,\u2019 said Jesus), and unapologetically … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[68,37,15,126],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-culture-war","category-moral-issues","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}