What is College For? (Part 3): Living in Grace and Truth in your Relationships

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From Deconstruction to derivation you have to deal with a lot in college that is hugely complicated. 

But stuff like this, while tough, will probably not be the most complicated thing you will negotiate in college…or the most rewarding.  The most complicated thing you will negotiate in college will almost certainly be your relationships.  Because people are REALLY complicated:

Today we are taking up the question “What is college for? One more time…

...If you remember the answer we proposed from John 1…”college is a time to grow in grace and truth.”  And we are going to zero in on growing in grace and truth in a second specific arena …moving from your studies to your relationships

No that is a huge topic, so tonight we are going to zero in on three spheres of human relatedness:

1. Friendship

2. Community

3. Romance

And it will shock you to learn that I have a lot to say about these…so we are going to get right to work.  Let’s start with friendship:

1.   Friendship

Interestingly the big findings in the recent psychological and sociological research on friendship are seemingly incongruous.  The first finding is that the value of friendship is grossly underestimated in our culture.  And John Green – my favorite vlogger agrees.   Check out this clip from his thoughts on Valentine’s day. 

(0:44 – 1:30)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma9AnIfaE30

I’m convinced that one of reasons that long term romantic relationships struggle is not because multi-decadal monogamy is impossible, improbable, or disappointing …it is that we expect our romantic relationships to carry too much relational freight in our culture.  The bottom line of a lot of the recent research is that friendship really matters.

Recently researchers at Virginia Tech recruited a bunch of students and fitted them with weighted backpacks at the base of a steep hill. 

(OK, first of all…Seriously?  I mean, I love the hard sciences…but sometimes I feel like social scientists have more fun…hey, here’s a heavy backpack, go climb a hill)

Anyway, they asked the students who were wearing the heavy packs to estimate the steepness of the hill…but here was the variable…some of them stood alone and others simply had a close friend standing next to them. Listen to how they reported the results: 

The students who stood with friends gave lower estimates of the steepness of the hill. And the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared.    

When Dr Karen Roberto, the director of the center that conducted this study was asked about the results here’s what she said: “Friendship is an undervalued resource. The consistent message of these studies is that friends make your life better.”

So, friendship matters.  Now I don’t think that’s a really controversial hypothesis.   I’m not sure it takes a ton of peer reviewed research to convince you of that.  But if it is self evident that friendship makes your life better, it is a little hard to make sense of the second big finding on friendship in recent research in the social sciences.  And that is that friendship is on the decline.  Recent studies [1] in both the US and France demonstrate that we have fewer, less substantial relationships than they use to.  Now why is that, if friendship does, as Dr. Roberto claims, make your life better why is our culture characterized by a decline of friendship?

Well, it’s because real friendship with real people with real drama turns out to be hard…because, if you recall, people are really complicated.  And while college is supposed to be a really easy place to make friends, it might not be as easy as it seems.

College is set up for disposable relationships.  You will get a new set of beautiful, interesting people in your life every 10 weeks…so relationships can become expendable, especially if they get just a little hard…instead seeing a little friction as an opportunity to grow in grace, you can just trade in a growing friendship for a new acquaintance.  And so college can become a series of …”single serving friends”

And so, friendships that last, that have the chance to do the work in your life that they were intended for, have got to be characterized by Grace and Truth. 

Grace for the other and truth about yourself.  In particular, Jesus offers us two resources to help us forge our friendships in grace and truth:  Self Skepticism and Shared Purpose:

The first resource Jesus offers to help you forge friendship in grace and truth (and frankly the one I’ve found most helpful self skepticism. 

Because a little self skepticism is the only way we can really get at self knowledge in with so much self interest swirling about us. 

And that is why Philippians 2 is one of the texts I have found most helpful in building long term friendships: 

³Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. ⁴Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

We are predisposed to prioritize our own significance and our own interests…but becoming a good friend requires the active practice of being skeptical about both our significance and our interests to try to clearly see the interests and significance of our friends.

And so the active cultivation of forgiveness, generosity and repentance (which are the tools of relational grace and which emerge out of holding loosely to our own interests and significance) are the only real way to cut through the drama that erodes friendship…and they are the only real tools to move friendships from disposable alliances of mutual convenience to long term enriching fixtures in your life.

I corresponded about this with a student who recently graduated a couple weeks ago…listen to what he said: My living situation sophomore year and was awful for this reason exactly. There was no grace, whatsoever.  So everyone kept score, “selfless” acts were only really attempts to get ahead and strong arm someone into cleaning the dishes the next time, or something like that.  By contrast, my living situation junior and senior year was fantastic because there was grace and forgiveness when people messed up and also real acts of selfless love.

So to grow in grace and truth in our friendship we need to cultivate a little self skepticism and actively seek the interests of our friend…and secondly we have to realize really significant friendships have to be built on something bigger than the desire to have friends.  Friendship has to be built on a shared purpose:

CS Lewis tackles this idea in his book: The Four Loves “That is why those pathetic people who simply “want friends” can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends…(Otherwise) there would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice…Those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers.”

In college most people try to build friendship based on Affinity - am I like or do I Iike this person…do they seem likely to make my life better.  But robust, meaningful friendships tend to be built on common Purpose – the way this works out practically is that you will end up with friends you might not have chosen.  A relationship built on shared purpose can generate affection and affinity pretty quickly, but the opposite isn’t nearly as true.

And that is why war buddies have more enduring friendships than drinking buddies…

And that is why, if you belong to Jesus, your most meaningful friendships will emerge from:

2.   Community

Community is mostly an association of purposeful friendship…friendship oriented in the same direction…

 [3]

The topics of friendship and community overlap but not entirely.  You will have friends who are not part of your Christian Community and there will be members of your Christian community that matter to you but aren’t really friends. [4]  But it is that middle area, where purpose and affinity converge…that will be the building ground of the relationships that will define your life.

Jesus following is irreducibly corporate.  Now I could have gone a number of places to demonstrate this in the Scriptures

 “they continued to meet together” Acts 2:46… But actually, it is silly to proof text this principle.  Because the truth is that every meaningful expression of Jesus following in the NT is in community.  Jesus following is irreducibly corporate.

Dan, Laeya and I have done this long enough that we can tell you with real confidence, that the quality of your college experience will be correlated with how soon you integrate into a Christian community and how committed you are to it.  The benefits of Christian community to you are numerous.  I say this all the time and I don’t intend to stop saying it any time soon: “If you spend your time here on the margins of Christian community, you are ripping yourself off.”  Getting into a Christian community is in your self interest.  But here’s the thing.  That the social and spiritual benefits you will accrue by being part of a Christian community in college are not the best reason to do it. 

The best reason is more fundamental…

When you join a Christian community, you are not just signing up for a club that will enrich your life…you are enlisting in a cosmic mission.

A Campus Christian community is an extension of Church…which is more than just a few socially awkward people going into an ideological bunker to escape the scary secular world…it is an outpost of Jesus’ kingodm…think about that…we are more than just a few people struggling to figure out calculus and chemistry who meet in a cold lecture hall after hours to sing a few songs and listen to some dude who has too many degrees and appears to cheer for an unlikable east coast bb team…we are an colony of Jesus’ kingdom…an outpost of God’s purposes. 

Christian community is about more than making friends or fitting in or meeting your felt needs…it’s about being in on the mission. 

Growing in grace and truth in community begins with understanding the theological reality of what Christian community is…and having grace for the broken people that God uses to cobble together that grand reality.

 “Soon or later those of us who follow Jesus find ourselves in the company of men and women who also want to get in on it.  But it doesn’t take long to realize that many of these fellow volunteers and workers aren’t much to our liking, and some of them we actively dislike….Jesus doesn’t seem to be very discriminating in the children he lets into his kitchen to help with the cooking….I often found myself preferring…the company of my sovereign self.  But I soon found that my preferences were honored by neither Scripture nor Jesus.  I didn’t come to this conviction easily, but finally there was no getting around it:  there can be no maturity in the spiritual life, no obedience in following Jesus, no wholeness in the Christian life apart from an immersion and embrace of community.  I am not myself by myself.” (“Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places” 226)  [5]

But here’s the thing, it is going to take a little tenacity.  Communities have an intrinsic paradox… More valuable social circles are more difficult to penetrate.  Shallow social networks with loose connections are easy to get into but do not have the pay off.  So if you are new to CL (or maybe you’ve been around for a little while, but still don’t feel like you belong here)…I want to make you a deal. 

We are committed to try to make room for you in our lives…but you have to be a little tenacious about finding that room.

And the most important aspect of that tenacity is to join a SMALL GROUP.  It is not too late.  Pick up a list in the back and just take the risk to show up this week. 

Which brings me to a question…what is the difference between a Clique and a Community.  Clique is a pejorative…but surely a small network of close relationships isn’t a bad thing…so what is the difference between a clique and a community…a community is a clique with open doors.

And for those of you who might be trying to break into this or another community, realize that if the first couple people you run into doesn’t have open sites on their relational lego, it doesn’t necessarily make this community cliquish or unwelcoming.  [6]

There are a lot of great Christian communities on campus.  We would love it if you chose to make college life your home.  But frankly, IV, Cru, and a number of others are fantastic.  I know I said this a couple weeks ago, but I’ll say it again.  What you need to know, is that more important than which one you choose is how committed you are to the process of belonging.  Really get in there.  Join a small group…and and you will find that you will not only get in on one of the outposts of God’s kingdoms…but before long, you will make some of the best friends in your life…which leads me to:

3.   Romance

When I was talking to my wife about this talk and about how much ground I needed to cover, she said: “Come on, there’s really only one thing they want you to talk about in a ‘relationship’ talk.”  So let’s get on with it:

Romance is a special instance of friendship and community.  To think it is a totally separate category is to miss the point of it all together.  It is in the deepest part of the overlap of friendship and community…of shared purpose and shared affinity that you should be looking for romance. 

The problem is, that that is not where most students look:

And we are not getting a lot of help thinking about this well from our pre-eminent cultural story tellers:

And our campus culture isn’t really helping either.

As part of her PhD research a few years ago Donna Fritas surveyed >1000 college students from 7 different institutions and conducted >100 face to face interviews to collect their thoughts about love sex and romance on campus.  She recently published the results through Oxford Press in a book she called “Sex and the Soul”.  And here is one of her big findings:[7]

“In public, women maintain a lax attitude about no-strings-attached hookups, but in private, they express ambivalence and even dismay that they allow themselves to be pressure into sexual behaviors that often make them feel used an unhappy.” 99

“When pressed, few students express a desire to hook up randomly on a regular basis – though most accept that hookups are the most likely way to find a long-term romantic partner…and even greater number wish for more respect and awe about sex from their peers.” 156

It turns out that when left alone with a journal or one-on-one with a researcher, the vast majority of students are dissatisfied with the sexual economy on our campuses. 

But they play along…because they are afraid to be left behind…and because there isn’t really an alternate script.

Back to the original question “What is college for?” which I argued is just a sub question of “what are you for?”  Let me suggest…not for that.  How do we do our romantic relationships as part of our pursuit of growing in grace and truth…well, we have to start by saying “not like that.”[8]

And our text is pretty emphatic about this:

“But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.” Eph 5:3

…in other words, that is not what you are for…and despite all the messages you will hear from peers and mentors in this place…that is not what college is for.

But just because we know how not to do it doesn’t mean that a Christian approach to romance is self evident.  In fact the more Dan and I watch Christian romance play out the more we have come to believe while a few students do figure it out, our movement on the whole has no idea how to do this.  And it can lead to some awkwardness…which has been recently captured in the website: Hey Christian Girl.

I was talking about this with a good friend recently who is closer to your age than mine …and we agreed that this is hilarious and kind of gets at the weirdness of Christian dating.  But we also felt like it only told half the story.  So we decided to start a website of our own…one that collected Christian break-up lines.  We are calling it “Good Bye, Christian Boy.”  Here the first post we worked up:

Now I don’t have time to do romance justice in 7 minutes – in the back there are CD’s with the last two talks I’ve given on this topic and the MP3’s are at the link in your handout (http://stanfordmp3.blogspot.com/).  But let me just give you two big ideas and if you’d like to hear me make the full case for these you can grab the cd’s or go get the mp3’s online.

If I was going to condense the 120 minutes or so of talks I’ve done on this topic in the last few years into a couple ideas I’d go with these two:

-Romance is the means by which we transform a friendship into a missional community.

Now, I realize that this is a huge departure from the sitcom/romcom model we were raised on.  But Dan and I really believe that the best building ground for a romantic relationship is a friendship that is characterized by a shared driving purpose and mutual affinity In that order…

Second

-Major on the friendship (don’t be in a hurry to label it – or kiss it)

The healthiest relationships Dan and I have observed over our years in college ministry are the ones who prolonged the friendship stage of the relationship and postponed labels and physical exploration.

And so the best thing you can do to negotiate romantic relationships with grace and truth is to develop a number of friendships with young men or women that you admire based on shared purpose and shared affinity in that order…and over time…real time…months to years…see if one emerges as unique and reciprocal.  The best romance emerges out of really good friendship.  It takes patient evaluation and gradual self disclosure…don’t short circuit it by prematurely exchanging labels or saliva.

And to pull that off, you are going to have to grow in grace and truth.

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[1] According to a study documented in the June 2006 issue of the journal American Sociological Review, Americans are thought to be suffering a loss in the quality and quantity of close friendships since at least 1985

[2] Which incidentally why the Scriptures uses the metaphor of family instead of friendship.  Becoming a person of grace and truth requires doing that in the context of others who are doing the same, who can provide us access to truth and opportunities to extend grace.  But that is going to require some self forgetfulness.  It is going to require the active discipline of decentering.

But your life will be enriched on a long enough time scale by the diversity…affinity can be boring and is a personality feedback…by surrounding yourself with people like you, you tend to think that the world is (or at least should be) composed of people like you…Diversity also can challenge you to grow in grace and truth.

[3] In my first version of this diagram I had a typo – under ‘study groups’ was ‘Lap Partners’  - there has got to be a joke there

[4] This includes mentoring on both ends  (finding a mentor and being a mentor).  Mentoring relationships can turn into friendship (which has been one of the unexpected benefits of college ministry for us) but doesn’t have to be valuable. Not all valuable relationships are reciprocal.  Our culture is obsessed with egalitarian relationships..where all relationships are equal partnerships.  But that’s just not always the way it works best.  Some of the most valuable  relationships are asymmetrical…with a clear direction of giving and receiving.  Benefiting from these relationships requires humility and self skepticism.

[5] I actually find Peterson pretty helpful on this topic:

Many Christians find church to be the most difficult aspect of being a Christian.  And many drop out.  There may be more Christians that don’t go to church or go only occasionally than who embrace it warts and all.  And there are certainly plenty of warts…So why church?  The short answer is because the Holy Spirit formed it to be a colony of heaven in the country of death. …Church is the core element in the strategy of the Holy Spirit for providing physical presence and human witness to the Jesus inaugurated kingdom of God in this world.  It is not that kingdom complete, but it is a witness to that kingdom.  (Practice Resurection)

Church is difficult.  Sooner or later, though, if we are serious about growing up in Christ, we are going to have to deal with church.  I say sooner…many Christians find church to be the most difficult aspect of being a Christian.  And many drop out.  There may be more Christians that don’t go to church or go only occasionally than who embrace it warts and all.  And there are certainly plenty of warts…So why church?  The short answer is because the Holy Spirit formed it to be a colony of heaven in the country of death…Church is the core element in the strategy of the Holy Spirit for providing physical presence and human witness to the Jesus inaugurated kingdom of God in this world.  It is not that kingdom complete, but it is a witness to that kingdom.  But it takes both sustained effort and a determined imagination to understand and embrace church in its entirety.   Casual and superficial experience with church often leaves us with an impression of bloody fights, acrimonious arguments and warring factions.  These are more than regrettable, they are scandalous, but they don’t define church.

Church is an appointed gathering of named people in particular places who practice a life of resurrection in a world in which death gets the best headlines.” (Practice resurrection)

“People can think correctly and behave rightly and worship politely and still live badly – live anemically, live individualistically self enclosed lives, live bored and insipid and trivial lives.” (229 CPITTP)

[6] Listen, freshman, Jesus doesn’t redshirt.  There are no redshirt freshman in College Life, Cru or InterVarsity.  In the kingdom, freshman play.

I thought of this the other day when I was talking to Ryan Gross.  Ryan is a freshman who grew up in Davis and went to First Baptist in high school.  He got recruited to UCD for soccer and I asked him if he was going to red shirt.  He said…”our coach doesn’t really red shirt”…and it turns out to be a good decision because through four games he was leading the team in points.

And this is not unlike several of the CURRENT freshman…During welcome week there were several new freshman young women who actually got out and pounded pavement with Sarah Johnson. They were among our early season stat leaders.  Because Jesus doesn’t red shirt.  Freshman play.

[7] I wrote an extended piece about this book which is here http://stanford-gibson.blogspot.com/2012/01/relationships-part-4-sexual-snapshot-of.html

[8] When I was young, all the progressive people were saying, ‘Why all this prudery?  Let us treat sex just as we treat all our other impulses.’  I was simple minded enough to believe they meant what they said.  I have since discovered that they meant exactly the opposite.  They meant that sex was to be treated as no other impulse in our nature has ever been treated by civilized people.  All the others, we admit, have to be bridled.  Absolute obedience to your instinct for self preservation is what we call cowardice, to your acquisitive impulse, avarice.” CS Lewis - We Have no Right to Happiness

[9] One of the best variations on this theme is the one where the hey girl/boy approach is applied to Foccault photos and quotes:

What is College For? Finding Grace and Truth Between Russell and I80

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John 1:1-18

So, your college choices have brought you to this little town where you are going to spend 60 to 80k and 4 of the most energetic years of your life.  And tonight I just want to pose a simple question …”Why?”  Seriously, why would you do that? Why would you drop that kind of coin and that many years (not to mention the opportunity costs) to spend a few years reading Foucault, going to Football games and doing 8 page Fourier Transforms?  The question I want you to consider tonight is really fundamental, and how you answer it will affect your experience…the question I want to ask is ‘What is College For?’  You see, it is pretty important to understanding what a thing is for BEFORE you try to use it:

And what you’ll find if you start looking into this question is that a lot of smart people have thought about this and come up with very different answers.  For example Gary Gutting, a NY Times opinion columnist and a professor at Notre Dame recently posed just that question in a piece called “What is college for?”  He starts out:

 “the raison d’être of a college (ok, you already know this is going to be REALLY practical– I mean, who talks like that – but I digress)

Now that sounds very elegant and grand…But he got eviscerated in the comments by people who argued that the huge cost and debt burden is not worth this kind of flowery abstract purpose…so he wrote an unprecedented sequel called “What is College For: Part 2” where he got more practical

In other words going to college proves to the corporate world that you are good information age cubicle fodder.  When he really got pressed on it, he admitted that college is essentially a 4 year endurance sport that will signal to perspective employers how responsible you are.  Kind of like a white collar version of ‘Survivor’ where as long as you don’t get voted of the island, you’ll win the fabulous prize of getting to work a dull job….well at least that’s what you would have won in a good economy…now you might get a dull unpaid internship…if you’re lucky.

Are you inspired yet?  So far it’s pretty grim.  Now I found a bunch of attempts by smart people to answer this question, ‘what is college for’ that were exceptionally diverse…and I had to cut most of them for time…But surprisingly, possibly the best answer I found out there was from the famously scholarly website, known for its incisive analysis and depth of insight: “Cracked.com” Seriously, this was right next to the “you might be a zombie internet quiz.  Which makes me wonder, who’s taking that quiz.  I mean, if you are a zombie…are you really not self aware enough to realize it.  And are there non-zombies who wake up wondering if they are one?  I have so many questions…Anyway the article starts out:

But then it delivers this answer to the question ‘What is college for?’

It's Not About Getting a Degree, It's About Becoming a Person 

And here’s the thing, I think they totally got that right.  But the problem is that it just poses another question.  It moves from the why question to the how question.  And, here is the method that the article gives for ‘Becoming a person’ in college:

 “College is the ultimate self-discovery school, a Brownian personality-builder that bashes you off other people to help you all stop sucking.”

Essentially they argue that college is a string of random events in which a homogenous group of people bash into each other aimlessly and randomly and somehow acquire wisdom and character in the process…and honestly, that strikes me as optimistic…that a bunch of random encounters with other people is going to automatically build wisdom and character…when it could just as easily go the other way. 

It makes you wonder…is there a better way to take on this project of ‘becoming’ without aimlessly bashing into other people who have dignity and nobility of their own, in a kind of chemically fueled, sexually charged, random number generator.  Is there a way to optimize the acquisition of wisdom and character…and maximize the ‘becoming’ while minimizing the damage you do to yourself and others?

And for that Cracked.com may not be the best source of wisdom.  Because as one of the commenter’s on this article said:

 “Honestly people, if you are taking advice from a site that specializes in Batman and (penis) jokes you are beyond help.”

But, if college is, in fact, not primarily about getting a degree or making social contacts but about becoming a person…the question of ‘What is college for?’ is just a version of the question “What are you for?”

The answer to the little question “Why are you here (at UCD)” is also the answer to the Big question “Why are you Here (existence)”…

…and the answer can be found in a text more ancient but more helpful than Cracked.com or even the NY Times opinion page.

 So tonight we are going to look at the first 18 sentences of one of the ancient narratives that tells the story of the life of Jesus…the New Testament book of John…a text that we are going to spend roughly 20 of the Tuesday nights we get together this year walking trough.  And tonight’s passage gives a concise yet profound mission statement for your project of “person building.”  Twice it points to two distinct yet intertwined pursuits that are at the heart of “the process of person building”:

John 1:14 “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

John 1:17 “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

What is college for?  It is an opportunity to grow in grace and truth.  It is a time to build a foundation of grace and truth that will set a trajectory for the rest of your life.  And so we are going to look at what these opening sentences of the story of Jesus has to say about each of these in turn.  Tonight I am going to focus on the truth component by looking at 2 big ideas and 3 implications…we are going to do a little theological heavy lifting with the two big ideas and then bring that to bear on our college experience with the 3 applications…and then will briefly turn to grace as an introduction to what we will be doing in the next 3 weeks. 

(Note: Thanks to Landon Elis for the art)

So, What is college for?  Well, unsurprisingly, it is a time to grow in “Truth”

1. Grow in Truth

 

You see the people who say college is all about forming advantageous relationships and that what you learn doesn’t really matter miss part of the point.  College is a time to uncover and discover “Truth”.

But, you will find that around here, before you can ask a question like ‘what is the truth?’ you have to answer the question ‘is truth even a thing?’

Most of your academic mentors here will be skeptical about the existence of a Truth capitol “T”.  And you know what, they should be.  The academic tools you will be offered, both in the sciences and the humanities, are valuable but fallible.  And your academic mentors will have spent their careers embroiled in debates where highly intelligent and educated people come to fundamentally different explanations of reality.  If you spend enough time trying to squeeze ideas into words you realize the simple fact is that words are slippery…

If you think about it little symbols on a white background might seem to be a pretty thin medium for transmitting something as grand as truth…yet, there they are the main currency for the process by which we engage ideas.

But here’s the incredible thing about this text…God totally seems to get that.  God realizes that words are complicated, but that does not mean that truth is unattainable. 

You see, the big idea of this passage is that when he wanted to give us Truth…he didn’t just put it in sentences…he didn’t just use text…he also showed up…he spoke AND embodied.  The passage makes the counter-cultural assertion that “truth” comes through Jesus…it argues that if you want to grow in truth, the process needs to include Jesus…and it makes that case by introducing us to two big theological ideas: incarnation and illumination.  So let’s take them in turn: The first reason that Jesus should be central to the process of growing in truth is The Incarnation:

Big Idea 1:  Incarnation 

Incarnation is just a fancy word for the idea that Jesus is simultaneously God and human.  And so, the reason that Jesus is the interpretive key to reality is that he fully inhabits empirical and metaphysical reality…the material world and the spiritual world.  He was an agent of creation and also a participant in it.  And so he has unique insight on how it all works together.  Here’s how GK Chesterton puts it:

“For orthodox theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half-human and half-not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly.” Chesterton – Orthodoxy 138

Which reminded me of 90 of my favorite youtube seconds of all time…

http://youtu.be/oJGgJmnKS_k

(Note: I cliped the trapper keeper joke for the talk.)

You see, most people think that Jesus is a lot like a unicorn…99% person and 1% more awesome person.  But JESUS IS NOT A UNICORN.  And he isn’t a centaur

…this kind of awkward half person and half god entity with all the mental gymnastics that requires…he is a unique entity in all of reality…all God and all human…simultaneously bipedal primate with a nervous system and brain chemistry and yet the creator of carbon itself…he has fully experienced material and metaphysical reality…and having walked and lived in both, he has unique insights into how we can live as little carbon creatures which also have spiritual reality…he becomes uniquely qualified to guide us into truth.

Which brings us to that obtuse opening sentence of this passage.  Let’s look at it:

 “In the beginning was the Word (Logos) and the Word (Logos) was with God and the Word (Logos) was God.”  -John 1:1

Um..What? 

Um…let’s try that again:

“In the beginning was the Word (Logos) and the Word (Logos) was with God and the Word (Logos) was God.”

OK, good thing it is early in the quarter, because that one is going to take some work.  You see the Greek word used in the original, ‘logos’, is one of the most difficult to find a good English equivalent for.

Here’s what my favorite commentator, FF Bruce says about it…just a little Braveheart joke there…:

“No doubt the English term ‘Word’ is an inadequate rendering of the Greek logos, but it would be difficult to fine one less inadequate.” 

Here’s what’s going on here.  You see, John who is a follower of Jesus as well as his biographer, has also kind of gotten into Greek philosophy.  He digs it.  And at that time The big questions in Greek theology was what is the thing that makes senses of everything else.  And they came up with all sorts of ideas about this…some said it was water…others said it was spirit…but in John’s time, this central thing in Greek philosophy that made sense of reality and human relationships, was called ‘the Logos.’

And John kind of looks at the state of philosophy and says, ‘you know’ that’s totally the right question.  There is a logos, a central interpretive truth that gives coherence to the rest of reality...but what it turns out to be is a little surprising.

You see, it turns out that the Truth, capitol T does exist, but it is not a what, it’s a who.  In a plot twist so shocking that he loads it into his opening sentence…truth is not a something, it’s a someone…Jesus   

There was a movie that came out a couple years ago called ‘Stardust.’  Now everyone I have talked to about this film has said essentially the same thing “You know, that wasn’t half bad.”  It is one of those films you go into with no expectations and turns out to have likeable characters and engaging plot and at one point, Robert Dinero is dancing around in a dress and Ricky Jerveis gets his voice stolen by a witch because he is being annoying (and honestly I’m not sure which moment I enjoyed more)…I mean just good times all around. 

But at one point, the protagonist is trying to impress this kind of vapid pretty girl.  (Dude really needs to come to a good CL dating talk...but we will talk more about that in 2 weeks.) Anyway, while they are talking, a shooting star flies over their heads.  And so the girl, played by Sienna Miller tells the young man that if he can return with the falling star in a couple days, she will marry him.  So like a total tool he takes off looking for this falling star and he gets to the crater and looks into it…there in the middle of the crater…is Clare Danes. 

And that’s the central plot twist of the film.  It turned out that the object of his quest was not something…it was someone. 

And that is essentially the central plot twist of our narrative as well.  The preeminent object of your quest for truth isn’t a something…it’s a someone.  And that will fundamentally alter how you go about trying to grow in Truth. 

The one thing that gives the right context and scope by which all of the other ideas are to be organized and evaluated…the Logos…is the one who was God from the beginning, who made everything, yet has done the whole ‘living on earth and being made out of carbon thing’ and has unique insight on how to integrate material and spiritual realities… In the words of the passage:

¹⁴The Word (Logos) became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

its Jesus.  So you want to grow in truth…you need to get to know Jesus, and come terms with the incarnation. 

And, briefly the second big idea this passage gives for why Jesus needs to be involved in your pursuit of truth is: 

Big Idea 2: Illumination

You see, the word “Light” is used six times in this passage.

⁴In him was life, and that life was the light of men. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it…⁹The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

And this is a familiar one if you have given any attention to the UC Davis seal:

Light is a metaphor for the conditions of truth seeking both in the Scriptures and in UC Davis’ symbology…because, we are not objective perception machines.  How we see the world has a lot to do with how it is lit.  To illustrate this idea I am going to have to roll out a clip I know a few of you have seen before, but it illustrates the point so I’m just going to run with it.  This is a clip from The Office where Dwight and Michael are getting ready to have a party in their hotel room and they decide to test the black light.

 Office illustration: http://youtu.be/aKCS49wfdpE

“Semen, blood or urine.”  You see, Michal learns a very important lesson in that clip…he learns that there are aspects of reality that can only be perceived with the right light.  Which, in a sense, is exactly what John 1 says.  There are aspects of reality - both disturbing and lovely - that you can only see with the right light….which is Jesus. 

This text argues that Jesus is instrumental in growing in truth, because he illuminates reality.  You see, Jesus might not be a unicorn, but he is the blacklight of reality. 

He gives perspective and context that you need to put the puzzle together.  And so, that is the theological heavy lifting…Jesus can help you grow in truth because he brings Incarnation and Illumination to the table.  But these kind of abstract theological ideas have a couple practical implications for how you ‘grow in truth’ here in this place. 

First of all, All truth is God’s truth…and so you can take your studies seriously.  You see, the passage argues, that every aspect of the natural world, artistic expression and human interaction fundamentally emerge from Jesus. Look back at those opening sentences:

“In the beginning was the Word (Logos) and the Word (Logos) was with God and the (Logos) was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made.  Without him nothing was made that has been made.” 

Here’s the idea.  All truth is God’s truth.  God cares about your studies, wants you to see the world of art and science and philosophy in light of Jesus…and see Jesus in them.  He is not confined to religious studies classes.  He made it all, so we can expect to find him there, if we look for him.  I mean, just look at our text…the apostle John obviously found non-Christian philosophy interesting valuable…but he studied it with and for Jesus.  So Jesus people should be the most intellectually curious and academically adventurous people on campus. 

I mean if John could find Jesus in greek philosophy, you can find Jesus in anthropology, entomology or etymology.  John found Greek philosophy useful…but he did not allow it to define his reality.  Which lead us to the second application: 

Second, Not everything you hear in college is true.

But not everything that challenges your world view is false

Not everything you learn in college is true.  Tim Keller likes to say, 1 book will make you annoying, 2 books will make you confused, 100 books will make you wise.  The same is true with classes.  And this was captured perfectly in that iconic bar scene in Good Will Hunting.  You know the scene…but I’ll play it anyway.

http://youtu.be/e1DnltskkWk  (start a few seconds earlier when Affleck is hitting on Driver and end after Damon’s evisceration)

Don’t go all in on the first idea you hear.  Maintain a little healthy academic skepticism.  By the time you are a senior you will realize that most of the tidy materialist theories you learned in your intro classes are not nearly as tidy as they seem.

A lot of people come to college ready to be skeptical about their faith, to reject the advice and wisdom of their parents and youth pastors, only to uncritically embrace a new narrative from a tenured professors.  What you have to understand is that these students haven’t become skeptics.  They have just transferred their allegiance to a new set of clerics.

And so you have to realize that not everything you learn in college is true.  But just because not everything you learn in college is true, it does not follow that everything you find challenging to your faith in college is false.  The honest pursuit of truth will require reassessment of a wide variety of things you believe. 

So study whatever interests you…but also throw yourself into a Christian community and spiritual disciplines to help you process the new ideas…which leads to the third application…  

Third, Add Jesus to your Course List.

Don’t limit your investigation to the material realm.

You see, I’m a scientist.  I love science.  Seriously, I freeking love it.  Science is the means by which we unlock empirical and material realities.  And it’s really good at that.  But science only claims to access to observable and repeatable phenomenon.   And here’s the mistake people make…they make the mistake of thinking that because science is really cool and these are the only things science can know, they are the only things that humans can known. 

And that is an epistemology fail.  It’s just bad philosophy.  Growing in truth has to include the pursuit of material AND spiritual realities…and they need to happen in parallel, because they inform each other.  So you need to add God to your course list.

If you already follow Jesus…if you recognize that he is indispensible to the process of growing in truth…then you need to keep office hours with Jesus.  Choosing the right major is not as important as choosing the right tutor.  You need to get into a Christian community as quickly as possible and develop spiritual disciplines that will keep you connected to Jesus while you process all the amazing things you are going to learn.

If you aren’t really committed to this narrative but are fundamentally a truth seeker…I would encourage you to add one more line of investigation to your inquisitive portfolio this year.  You see the Christian story says that if you want to know what God is like you need to get to know Jesus.

You see a lot of people start with a fuzzy picture of what god is that they got from sit coms, music and film and then figure, well if Jesus represents god, Jesus must be like that.  But that is exactly backwards. 

And the passage tells us why.

John 1:17-8 “…grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.”

You see, the central insight that Christianity getting to know Jesus is the means God set up for getting to know him.  And it just so happens that we have an opportunity for you to do just that. You see, we are going to spend 20 Tuesday nights this year walking chapter by chapter through this story of Jesus.  So join us for Tuesday nights this quarter, and test the hypothesis I just offered you…see if Jesus doesn’t bring an unexpected clarity to the fog of ideas and facts you learn in your classes. 

Ok, so let me just say a couple words about grace before I wrap up. 

2.     Grow in Grace

Even with its considerable deficiencies the university can be an ally in your pursuit of truth…but the hard cold fact is that this place has no interest in growing you in grace. 

This place will build your collection of facts, it will build your capacities and it will build your capabilities.  But this institution will not build your character…not on purpose at least.  College can be a catalyst for character formation…but the actual process of character formation is on you.  You will receive no grade in humility.  Generosity will not be computed in your GPA.  Your transcripts will not include a line reporting your self forgetfulness. 

Just stockpiling truth can make you an unbearable person.  The way my brother puts it is that… ‘Love is the stabilizer of knowledge.’ Or Grace is the stabilizer of truth.

Your time here needs to be a two-pronged quest…a quest for Grace AND Truth. 

So you need to pair your academic exploration with a robust pursuit of the person of Jesus…and you need to take this time as season of serious character formation in the context of Christian community. 

And so over the next few weeks we are going to get really practical with a topical series where we will talk about how to grown in grace and truth in college in the context of: 

1.     Your Studies (next week)

2.     Your Relationships (the week after)

3.     Your Spiritual Development (at retreat)

You see I could not be more committed to this idea that our projects of person formation should revolve around these two poles of “grace and truth”. 

And so let me wrap up with a brief illustration that will seem like a total non-sequiter but you’ll just have to trust me that it isn’t…I want to wrap up by introducing you to my daughters… Charis and Aletheia.  These are great (and truth be told, occasionally bizarre) kids…and one of the things that we love about college ministry is Audri, Michelle, and Haley are among their favorite people.

Now let me go back and read our central verses again…and just like I did with ‘Logos’ I’ll leave a couple key words un-translated:

John 1:14 “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of charis (grace) and aletheia (truth).”

John 1: 17 “…charis (grace) and aletheia (truth) came through Jesus Christ”

You see, my wife and I are all in on this.  We named our first two kids Charis and Aletheia…‘Grace’ and ‘Truth’…because we can think of nothing that we want more for them…and we can think of nothing that we want more for you.