And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God. — Philippians 1:9-11

Many of us are comfortable with saying that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. But what happens in the gritty-ness of the daily, real world life in which God calls us to love Him, our neighbors, and the creation with our bodies, all the gifts which He’s given us, and the skills which we’ve honed in higher education? How do we choose to follow Jesus on A Long Road of Obedience in the Same Direction instead of the temptations offered to us by the flesh, the devil, and the world?

We are apprenticed by God the Father through the Word and the Spirit, in the context of the people of God, worked out in the daily grind of following Jesus on campus, and as part of larger mentoring communities such as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s Emerging Scholars Network. Love of God, love of neighbor, love of creation, and proper self-understanding is set in the context of the Biblical story. Some texts which have informed my thoughts are Romans 12, Philippians 2:1-18, and Psalm 122.

So how do the flesh, the devil, and the world influence our perception of reality and press us into its mold? The answer is uncomfortably easy, we follow our greatest love. Augustine comments in his Confessions: My love is my weight: wherever I go my love is what brings me there (13:9). Have you ever considered that what you give your greatest time and energy to may very well be your greatest love?? David Naugle, professor of philosophy at Dallas Baptist University and author of Worldview: The History of A Concept, draws attention to the danger of The Socialized Mind which…

• understands and thinks what our society says it should understand and think.
• loves and values what our society says it should love and value.
• does and achieves what our society says it should do and achieve.

Wow! And what religion accompanies such a perspective in many Christian households? Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, in their analysis of the National Survey of Youth and Religion (NSYR) entitled Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, terms the de facto dominant religion among contemporary U.S. teenagers “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” The creed of 3,370 U.S. teenagers can’t be wrong and it doesn’t become more orthodox in most institutions of higher education!

• A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
• God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
• The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
• God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
• Good people go to heaven when they die.

—Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton. Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp.162-163.

Paul exhorts us not to be conformed to the world, to reject its corrupted storytelling influences on our perception of reality. But how do we go beyond saying that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, to doing such in the daily grind? How do we reproduce the likeness of Jesus as individuals and a community of scholars? How do we reject what Smith and Denton term, “a pathetic version” of Christianity, one “being colonized and displaced by a quite different faith?” (p.171)

By embracing God and receiving His embrace, by locating ourselves in and living as part of the true story, i.e., an extension of what He has to say in His Word. And what’s the story?

The Biblical Story begins with the most excellent, beautiful, and true being (i.e., God) lavishing His good gifts and phenomenal energy on fashioning a good creation only to have it subjected to frustration by the local and systemic sin of the stewards of His garden earth (i.e., Adam and Eve and their descendants). By His grace, God set into motion a miraculous and dangerous recovery mission that placed enmity between the evil one and all broken-ness . . . playing out through history via a series of movements from

Belonging – Leaving – Transition – Entering – Engagement – Belonging Anew

The seed had been planted, the tree of the Kingdom of God grew and in due time bore the blossom of Hope in the person of Jesus Christ. Now by the power of His death on the cross and triumph over death, we as Spirit-filled people of God live in the first fruits of a world turned right side up by Jesus, but we long for the day when all will be good again and we will once again tend the garden as we were originally intended. Today, we are in the midst of the recovery mission.

Conclusion

We live in exile, eagerly anticipating the day of redemption. Let us be bold, shameless followers of Christ, not the systems of this world. Let us extend the Gospel and its ramifications in word, life, and research. But let us not forget to search the Scriptures and speak with zeal according to knowledge (Acts 17:11, Ro 10:2) for we live in a time of great resources and as a result great responsibility (Luke 10:23-29, I Peter 3:15). This is not for applause, but to know, worship, and glorify God . . . drawing others to Him, not to ourselves (I Cor. 8:1). If you lack wisdom ask God (James 1:5), draw on the community of faith. May God be gracious to us as we take part in tending the garden with joy as we offer everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have to God first and foremost.

In July of 2006, after 10 years of ministering with InterVarsity in Pittsburgh, Tom began pioneering InterVarsity’s Faculty Ministry in central PA. His area of emphasis is to identify, encourage, and equip Christian scholars to be redeeming influences among the people, ideas, and structures of higher education. As efforts among faculty at small liberal arts colleges and state universities is a new area of ministry for InterVarsity, he is collating his methods and findings to make them available to other staff. Tom enjoys special projects as well. Currently he directs a winter retreat for graduate students in the Mid-Atlantic area (which includes Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.), develops material for students considering higher education as a vocation, serves on an InterVarsity Staff Advisory team to InterVarsity Press, participates in the Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science, teaches adult electives for Elizabethtown Brethren in Christ, and has become connected to Brethren in Christ World Mission.

Tom and his wife Theresa, along with their children, including twins Hayley and Ellen, Eden, and Lily live in Central PA. To know more about Tom, visit the ESN blog.

Photo Credit: Circle of Life Photography. Portrait Photography by Marci Weidler.

Photo credit: Christine’s Photostream