College and the American Dream

Here's an old post by Anthony Bradley about Christians in college and what their true motivation is for getting a degree. After i read this, I felt both affirmed and convicted in my own education. Take a look. And here's a little taste:

"What is man's chief end? Americans answer this way: to glorify himself and live in comfort and ease forever. American evangelicals think no differently. Ask Christian college kids WHY they choose their major. And the answers at times will depress you. It's not the vocation that's the problem but the motive. So now we have Christians missing from certains sectors of society because those areas don't pay well. It's SICK!!"

"Doesn't it just make you sick to think that many Christian kids in college or soon there after do not see the purpose of their gifts, interests, and abilities to serve God and other people. That's right, Christians use what God has given to serve Him and others...."

"Nowhere in the Bible are Christians encouraged to work hard for the material rewards. I wish someone would tell this to Christians in America. The American dream in motivated by and grounded in pagan idolatry promoting material success, ease, and comfort at all cost."

"Wouldn't it be great if Christians were motivated to pursue vocations because God revealed some of the needs in the world and gives the interest and ability to meet some of the needs in the world."

"What does mean for a Christian to be living a "successful" life?"

"But the idea that "getting an education to aid in providing for your family" is what Christians need to think about more deeply. Namely, we need to ask what, then, is the purpose of education? If we look at Daniel, for example, the purpose of his education was service of God and other people, not a future economic safety net. Christians have become utilitarians with respect to education. Education from a Christian perspective used to be about learning about God's world and being broadly equipped to do whatever God might call a person to do vocationally. Even, now for Christians, education is not directed at discerning one's calling but the utility of the economic result. Is education's only value an economic one? This is exactly why kids don't want to learn information for the sake of knowledge but want to get good grades because of the long-term economic consequences. People don't care if they learn anything or not."

"I would be more comfortable if Christians thought like this, "I'm getting an education in order to pursue and prepare for God's calling in my life vocationally." If we pursue God and not economic safety then we will find that Jesus' words are true that if seek first the kingdom of God all the other material things in life will be taken care of."

what a sabbatical.

you may have noticed i took a short sabbatical from the blogging world from june 3rd up until right now. my mind was overloaded and rest was needed and had. i didn't feel like there was anything i was learning that was really worthwhile to post. but i'm back in action! refreshed and ready to go for a new season of life.

here's a little snippet of what i've been learning this summer. i presented it as my independent study for project: columbia, so when you read this, know that there are many things in it that i wish i had time to develop more.

"I did my study on busyness and the Sabbath because it’s something that I continually struggle with, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly—it never ends, and it’s something that I continually wrestle with. So why am I a slave to busyness, and a slave to something that I have been freed from in Christ? Knowing that I am a slave to it, it’s still something that I like, something that I don’t necessarily want to be freed from. It gives me pleasure, it gives me worth, and ultimately busyness is something in which I find a part of my identity—my identity apart from Christ. That’s not what I was made for and I want to desire to live differently and live obediently to the holy calling of Sabbath and to rest and refreshment in the Lord. Because it is a direct disobedience to God.

I did a lot of study on the Sabbath and learned a lot from looking at this area that I purposely don’t ever think about (even though I want and need my soul to be continually rejuvenated). God gives us the gift of rest in the fourth commandment in Exodus. It is a privilege that I keep it, and I want to think of this as more of a gift, something that benefits me, rather than another religious duty or something that I should do legalistically. Because of the fall, work has been polluted and is described as a painful toil, but God, in his love, wants us to be able to work hard without being worn down by worry—thus the Sabbath. God knew when he was writing these commands that we need rest, and it shows how devoted our God is to loving us despite how foolish we are that we even need a command. The commandment requires rest both physically and spiritually. There is a gladness that comes from relief of the body and according to Genesis 2:3 (“So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.”), there was an inactivity—a simple enjoyment of the world that God made, a delight and thanksgiving in his Creation.

One article I read talked about rest and work as a rhythm that God built into the world when He made it.

I wanted to look at my life and see what this means for me and my busyness that I hold onto. If I know the way God made it, that I am supposed to rest, to seek that out and to make that a holy priority in my life, then why don’t I do it? Ultimately it stems from my own unbelief in the gospel—an unbelief in the Lord’s promise to control my life despite my actions, and an unbelief in the Lord’s sovereignty. It also shows my lack of love for the Lord, because I am not obeying Him in this area, and shows my lack of trust that he will take care of me. God is sovereign over time. One article I read stated, “God sets boundaries of time for our activities, and our submission to those limits represents our trust in him to take care of us. One entailment of God as Lord of time is that we are to recognize time as a gift. We do not control the time we have—God has given it to us and can do with it as he pleases.” We can only humbly receive time from him, and we must be good stewards of it. So there is a tension between using that time wisely for good, and using it to rest. The practice of this in my life is hard. Wisdom is taking every opportunity and fully using the time granted us. It’s in Scripture to both make the most of evangelistic opportunities and also to seek God’s will and cultivate holiness. “To redeem the time means to fill it with divine purpose, not just with any and every activity.”

Another article talked about something called “holy busyness.” It is okay to be busy if it is a balance of working hard as a manifestation of trusting God and cultivating times of rest, but not if we are busy to justify ourselves. It must be grounded in the gospel: Who we are comes before what we do, and we must remember that our relationship with God precedes the activity we do for him. God has provided the gifts of time and work, and we can trust that each is sufficient for the other. Therefore, holy busyness foes not complain about not having enough time, for ultimately such grumbling is directed against God—He has given us our time. But when it comes to rest, we have to remember that God made us creatures before he made us Christians.

Our priority has to be relationship with God, and out of that should flow our activity. “Too much busyness today is not rightly oriented, even if it has good motives, because it has lost sight of the primacy of knowing God.” One question my mind continually comes back to is ‘Do I love my works/ministry/job/people (and even doing these things in the name of the Lord) more than I love Christ Himself?’ I think that hits the heart of the issue. I love what I am doing more than I love Christ, and that is why it is a struggle for me to rest."

TGIM - Thank God it's Monday.

Check out these two articles (part one, part two) by Justin Taylor on how we should view work as Christians. The second part of the article talks mainly about how to work to the glory of God, how to determine your calling (relevant, anyone?), and how we integrate work and faith. They are great, please read them!

Here's some excerpts:

Have you ever seen a TGIM (Thank God It’s Monday) bumper sticker? I haven’t.

As Americans—and Christians usually aren’t much different—we spend many years and thousands of dollars getting an education, all to prepare us to get a job. Then once we get a job, we spend many years and thousands of more dollars awaiting the soonest time that we can retire! In the meantime—we live for the weekend.

As Christians we should view work differently, because God views work differently. Work is a gift from God and can be a source of meaningful fulfillment—and at the same time, it can make us weary and full of frustration.

In my view, we are due for another reformation with regard to our view of work. Although it’s much more subtle, many of us can still perpetuate a sub-biblical view of work. I remember once hearing a student leader suggest that the norm was for Christians to consider themselves called to vocational ministry—and that a calling to a so-called “secular” vocation was the exception. In other words, the default for Christians should be to go into vocational ministry unless they feel compelled to do something else. But I don’t find that idea taught anywhere in Scripture. The result is that we sometimes have people in vocational ministry, not because it is where they have been called by their church, or equipped by God, but simply because they never prepared to do anything else.

We need to recover the reformational understanding of vocation: all of life—in every sphere and in every calling—should be lived to the glory of God and in obedience to his Word. Abraham Kuyper wrote, “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’” If that’s true (and it is!), isn’t it worth our time and effort to think through how to glorify God in the area of work to which he has called you?