Part V – Spiritual Formation of Higher Education Students

A Paradigm: Revisiting Transformed, Transcend and Transformational

My essay so far has been an attempt at arguing the necessity of getting at the real Spiritual Formation issues in the life of Christian Higher Education Students; and the wonderful possibilities that can come from unleashing young men and women who are spiritually in the process of vigorously becoming inwardly whole and complete; so that they might be outwardly competent by authentically demonstrating the life of Christ. The essential point being that what the world needs most are men and women who go at life as a genuine as Christ Himself would, in wherever circumstances they are called and find themselves in. This is the only way that they can become the dynamic transformational force in all of society and culture.

A Hero of Mine: William Wilberforce

In fact and actuality, this is not without significant precedent. One of the most inspiring examples that I can think of is the life and work of William Wilberforce -- one of the primary leaders of the Clapham Sect in the late 18^th and early 19^th century England. Clearly, England as a nation and culture at the time had much in the way of our problems, and perhaps even more. It has been argued by some historians for example, that Great Britan managed to dodge the phenomena of the "French Revolution" that swept across Europe at the time; largely because of the exhausting and dedicated work of men and women like William Wilberforce, Charles Simeon and John Thorton. It is truly astounding that a few people could affect that much change within a culture that was incredible in its moral decadence, corrupt political system, and an elitist snobby aristocracy still living out the last vestiges of the Divine Right of Kings.

Shortly after his conversion experience, the very wealthy and socially popular Wilberforce thought of resigning from his position in the House of Commons and going into the professional ministry. Seeking council from a pastor friend John Newton and author of the hymn: Amazing Grace; as well as a career as a former slave trader; Newton encouraged Wilberforce to remain in the House of Commons and affect change for the Kingdom through his political office. Over the course of his life time, Wilberforce was able to achieve the following: 1. The abolishment of slavery in England (a monumental battle!). 2. Later the complete abolishment of slavery throughout her colonies (The Empire upon which the sun never set!) 3. The invention of Sunday School – to provide educational opportunities for the poor and homeless children. 4. The radical development of Missionary Societies – a hugely successful work, that recruited, trained and supported professional missionaries – they not only shared Christ, but also penetrated some of the most remote regions of the world – taking with them many things like medication and scientific advancements. 5. They created and lobbied for the first ever child-labor laws to protect the abuse of children from cruel employers. Those same employers who worked children as young as eight years old, 12 hours a day in Coal Mines and as Chimney Sweeps . Undeniably, Wilberforce and the rest of the Clapham Sect were able to put things into motion that not only changed their culture, but the entire world around them.

Wilberforce's efforts were possible because to him, it was crucial that his heart life reflect Christ… His capacity to be inwardly transformed enabled him to transcend the pervasive and alluring cultural temptations of social popularity and a stultified and corrupt political tradition that resisted any manner of change – the result of which enabled him to become one of the great, world transformational figures in the history of the world – for Christ and His Kingdom! For Wilberforce, there was no "compartmentalization" and/or a life in Christ as a form of "individualism."

When We Are Not Inwardly Transformed, Outwardly Transcendent and Capable of Being Transformational Agents

By way of providing a dramatic opposite example, the lack of inner transformation, transcendence and transformational ability always bodes ill, particularly in the Church and her leaders. In my studies on genocide for example, I was initially startled to discover that within virtually every genocidal context, uniformly the Church as well as individual Christians tend to respond very poorly. Why is this?

Genocide, which is a political and cultural attitude of virulent anti-relationship, aimed at a people group that have been deemed no longer worthy of life, is antithetically and diametrically opposite of the Jesus' teaching on the Kingdom. If anybody ought to know about relationships, forgiveness, grace and healing, it ought to be the Church and her followers. But this was not the case, in the most recent example of mass genocide practiced in Rwanda. Within 100 days 800,000 to 1,000,000 members of the Tutsi tribe were either largely bludgeoned death with clubs and/or hacked to pieces by machetes, by members of the Huitu tribe. 

Statistically, I was startled to find that there was virtually no difference in the behavior from the churched and self-proclaimed Christians and the non-Churched and non-Christians – across denominational lines and faith traditions. Hutu Christians simply didn't have the ability to overcome their cultural prejudices and systematically murdered their national and Christian brothers and sisters.

In a more recent example of genocide pertaining to Rwanda, an Editor's article from Commonweal Magazine notes the following of individual Christian and Church behavior:

(In June of 2002) "two Benedictine nuns were convicted in a Belgian court of collaborating in the murder of thousands during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Sister Gertrude Mukangango and Sister Maria Kisito were sentenced to fifteen and twelve years' imprisonment, respectively for their roles in turning over to their Hutu killers seven thousand Tutsi who had sought asylum in the nun's monastery, the sisters willingly provided the gasoline used by Hutu militiamen to burn down a garage in which five hundred Tutsi men, women, and children were hiding… There appears to be little doubt about the women's guilt. Crucial to the prosecution was the willingness of other Benedictine
sisters to testify against them."

…Catholic bishops, priests, and sisters suffered martyrdom at the hands of the militias, and ordinary Hutu Catholics were killed trying to protect Tutsi neighbors. It is equally true, however, that other clerics and nuns supported the Hutu genocide or stood by silently as it unfolded. Catholics were found on both sides of this enormous crime, and it is sobering that the pervasive Catholic institutional and cultural presence in Rwanda proved little impediment to such mind-numbing savagery."

Andre Sibomana, a Rwandan Catholic priest, journalist, and human-rights activist records in his book: Hope for Rwanda, details the following in his conversations with Two French journalists Laure Guibert and Herve Deguine, about the role of the Catholic Church during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

           The church did nothing to prevent tragedies which could have been prevented. When 
           the bishops were informed that a genocide was about to happen, when they saw the 
           increase in killings in the period leading up to the genocide-on average five every 
           night- their attitude didn't change. The leaders of the church stood by the 
           government, particularly the bishops of Kigali and Byumba. They failed to react in an 
           appropriate way toward the role of the government in the preparation of the       
           genocide. They should have broken away[….] […]The fact that society was unable to 
           prevent the catastrophe shows that there was a fundamental breakdown. Christians 
           shouldn't suffer a situation; they have a responsibility to take control."

Later in his book Sibomana offers this brief exchange of one of his church member's behavior:

          Some believers were weak and irresponsible: They did not weigh the consequences of 
          their actions. I asked one of my parishioners who carried a grenade, 'What are you 
          doing?' He replied, 'Don't you understand the situation we're in? We'll think about 
          religion later."

Stephen R. Haynes, associate professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College and a member of the Church Relations Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council shares his thoughts on a slightly different take than Sibomana, but similar non-the-less (I quote at length):

Like Nazi Germany, genocidal Rwanda is an exceedingly unattractive venue for Christian self-examination. Much of the evidence indicates that "blood" proved thicker than baptismal water, that faith was powerless to overcome the interests of class or ethnicity. And Rwanda has provided few stories designed to restore our trust in humankind or the role of faith in confronting evil. So far, we know of no Rwandan Bonhoeffers with whom mainline Protestants can identify; no Hutu Corrie ten Booms to sustain evangelical's belief that God protects the righteous; no Catholic bishops who risked their lives to speak out against the violence; no Le Chambon-sur-Lignons where the persecuted were sheltered by simple Christians in a "conspiracy of goodness."

YET PRECISELY BECAUSE so little good news can be gleaned from the Rwandan genocide, Christians must not ignore it. One pressing issue raised by Rwanda is human nature, what theologians have traditionally called anthropology. Although scholars of the genocide assiduously avoid theological questions, Christians must ask what this and other episodes of mass killing reveal about the essence and extent of our falleness. Reinhold Neibuhr reportedly said that the doctrine of original sin is the only doctrine for which Christians have any empirical evidence...

These are disturbing words of indictment and at the heart of it, many people died horrible, senseless and tragic deaths in Rwanda, by the hands of their fellow Christians and Church members, because as participators in genocide, they lacked the inward transformation of Christ and were not capable of transcending their cultural conditioning and circumstances, this left them as non entities as transformational agents. In short, they simply not able to do the things that Jesus would do, if He were they, in the here and now…. Kierkegaard is problematic for many of us:

But genuine religion has an inverse relationship to the finite. Its aim is to raise human beings up so as to transcend what is earthly. It is a matter of either/or. Either prime quality, or no quality at all; either with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength, or not at all. Either all God and all you, or nothing at all."

Spiritually Formed = Leadership

In our Principles of Leadership class we provide for the class a definition of what we consider genuine leadership to be:

Leadership is the passionate, faithful commitment to one's

giftedness and calling.

(rsg)

One of the significant outcomes hoped for those who participate in Christian Liberal Arts Higher Education, is that in their faith and vocational integration, that they might exert Christian Leadership within the culture and change the world for Christ around them. I believe this Christian leadership is truly impossible in a pervasive sort of way, unless their leadership is a result of a determined response to imitate Christ, know what He desires of their life and are able to employ their giftedness to that particular end. In other words, we are obligated to imitate the ultimate leader, Jesus Christ, by being made over in His image and having Him ignite all of our potential for His cause.

Conclusion:

The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."

                                                          Kierkegaard from his: Journal

Killologist, David Grossman tells of the following story, observed and recorded by a Reporter who observed the following events. Immediately after the battle of Normandy, and the Allies steady advance over German territory, Hitler desperate to regain momentum responded with a full-scale and vicious counterattack. Throwing all of his reserves and material that he could muster at the Allied advance, it consequentially stalled; and then began to slowly fall back. Allied command responded in part by flying and dropping the infamous 101^st Airborned Division to blunt the counter attack by the Germans. We know this as the Battle of the Bulge.

One reporter, who was walking down the dirt and gravel road, noted with interest a soldier from the 101^st emerge silently from the hedgerows and walk down onto the road. Several days of beard growth covered his face and he was dirty and worn from days of fighting. Over his back he carried a rifle. In his hands, he held a bazooka. He started walking towards the Northwest – towards Germany – towards the fighting. Up the road, in the direction to which he was heading, they could both hear the roar of a Tank engine, moving towards them at a high speed, retreating before the German advance. The soldier stopped… Soon the Tank, an American Sherman tank, came into view and continued its advance towards them. The soldier now stood in the middle of the road and did not move. The Sherman tank stopped in front of him, its engine idling. The hatch on the front of the tank popped open and a man peered out, his face clearly masked with fear… "Are you looking for a safe place" said the 101^st Airborne Soldier? "Yes," said the tank soldier… "Then stand behind me." Said the soldier from the 101^st.

I love that story, because I think that it parallels so much of our current circumstances within the Church and in the world… We have many of our Christian brothers and sisters who are quickly retreating before the advancing evil of our day. And we desperately need Christian soldiers who are clear about their mission and determined to make it happen. We must be "soldiers" who are willing to engage the enemy on his turf, at great cost.

German Scholar and Nazi Resister, Dietich Boneffer is noted for saying: When Christ calls a man He bids him to come and to die." Jesus' admonition to us is that in order to truly follow Him, we must "die to ourselves." This is God's expectation of all who claim to know Him as Savior and Lord. But we can't give our life to Him and in service to this world ultimately, unless we are willing to have Christ in us, in the world, with His marching orders in hand. Perhaps more than anything it takes determined obedience. In light of this I am reminded of Thomas R. Kelley's comments in his A Testament of Devotion:

We are torn loose from earthy attachments and ambitions – contemptus mundi. And we are quickened to a divine but painful concern for this world – amor mundi. He plucks the world out of our hearts, loosening the chains of attachment. And He hurls the world into our hearts, where we and He together carry it in infinitely tender love.

For every Student that finds a way to become inwardly transformed, so that they might transcend personal and cultural inhibitors, in order that they might like Christ "amor mundi" and transform the world… They become like that soldier from the 101^st Airborne Division… Trained, skilled, Obedient, Focused on the Mission at hand and ultimately successful against the enemy. They provide the "safe place" for others through their calling, giftedness and vocation. They are in fact the kind of young men and women who know authentically how to be Inwardly Transformed, so that they can Outwardly Transcend; in order that they become overtly Transformational Agents in obedience and love for Christ and the Kingdom of God!

Part IV Spiritual Formation and The Integration of Faith and Vocation

An Example: "Respectable Businesses"

Without A Redemptive Christian Approach

I am mindful of C.S. Lewis' book: The Screwtape Letters, in which he is often noted for his comments on evil with the following statement:

"The greatest evil is not done those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."

Lewis' point is well taken if we were to examine the origin and promotion of Pornography in our culture. For example, in a fascinating article in the Sunday, October 29, 2000 Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette an article in its Commentary section featuring the following:

General Motor Corp., the world's largest company, now sells more graphic sex films every year than does Larry Flint owner of the Hustler Empire. The 8.7 million Americans who subscribe to DirecTV, A GM subsidiary, buy nearly $200 million a year in pay-per-view sex films from satilite…"

EchoStar Communications Corp., the number 2 satellite provider, whose chief financial backers include Murdoch (chairman of News Corp.,), makes more money selling graphic adult films through its satellite subsidiary than Playboy…"

AT&T Corp., the nations biggest communications company… also owns a company that sells sex videos to nearly a million hotel rooms

The article goes on to say: " For all the money being made on sex – legally – by mainstream corporations, the topic remains taboo outside the boardroom. The major satellite and cable companies do very little marketing of the X-rated products, and they are not mentioned in annual reports except in the vaguest of euphemisms… None of the corporate leaders of AT&T, Time Warner, General Motors, EchoStar, Liberty Media, Marriott International, the Hilton, On Command, LodgeNet Entertainment or News Corp. – all companies that have a big financial stake in adult films and are held by millions of shareholders – were willing to speak publicly about the sex side of their businesses."

To the astonishment of Flynt… his competitors in the 10 billion annual adult market are mainstream corporations whose board members are among the American elite."

Clearly these large "respectable" corporations described above have great need of a redemptive Christian influence. But, where was it? At the risk of appearing to moralize, are there not Christians associated with those corporations who have voting and policy power? Were there no influential Christians in management or on the Board of Directors, who would govern with the mind of Christ? If so, did any of those Christians have a faith and vocation integration perspective and commitment, or is their worldview compartmentalized? Or perhaps there simply are not enough of them and they are simply too outnumbered to make that much of a substantive difference… Of those who might be there, did any of them come from a strong Christian background and/or Christian Liberal Arts Colleges like Geneva College? If so, what was their approach to procuring their various positions? More specifically, did they get their position with the idea that they would keep the toxic parts of the job from infecting them; or did they take the job with the idea of infecting it for Christ?

Could it be possible that there were no Christians there, who intentionally chose that kind of work, that career path because they felt called by God to penetrate it as a Mission Field and use their calling and gifts to create a "good infection" that C.S. Lewis discusses in yet another book Mere Christianity? And because they did so, what they have, is not really a job but rather, a "vocation" that they are committed to? A powerful sense of God's design and purpose for them; a passionate calling, desire and commitment to transform this part of society for Christ, that the Apostle Paul encourages us with from Ephesians 2:10 For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

Higher Education Students and the Practice of "Individualism" by Default…

Recalling that many young Christians choose their perspective majors for: First, not out of a sense of "calling," but because it will meet their lifestyle wants and "needs;" and secondly because those same students often engage in the subtle interplay of vacillating between "vocation" and "livelihood." In other words, they choose their livelihood predicated on wants and needs and then declare it their vocation!
Third, perhaps, even before Christian students come to Colleges and/or Universities, they really haven't been given the necessary experiences or diagnostic tools to be able to ascertain their vocational calling. Therefore the "individualism" practiced here is the kind that comes by default. They default and do, and act, on only what they know and have experienced.

As a Youth Minister involved in numerous churches and communities, it was no secret that most students spend the lion's share of their time and energy doing those activities that reap the most rewards socially; and through which their parents cold live vicariously. Over time this often resulted in emphasizing the development of secondary gifts and talents and not so much their innate and primary ones… In High School, a student can function reasonably well with this approach. But when they go to College or University, they discover that their secondary gifts are not weighty enough to allow them to perform at the next level. Conversely, their primary gifts, the ones that are directly related to their vocation and calling, withered, became truncated and are often grossly underdeveloped. This condition as well, will not permit them to perform at the next level… As a result they are often lost and confused about how their faith can work with their vocation - whatever that may be… The resulting primary objective becomes social and financial "survival."

This situation is exacerbated all the more, when they receive pressure from family members about choosing a particular major that will enable them to pursue a specific and narrow career path for the rest of their lives! I recall reading a number of years ago, that of those students who graduate from a college or university, only half go into a field of their particular major; and of that half, another half of them move out of that field altogether within five years. In addition, the average person changes, not their job, but their career 3-5 times in their life-time.

My thought is that those of us who do Youth Ministry, as well as those of us who are involved in Christian Higher Education, have a significant if not vital role to play in guiding students in this thought process. Clearly, what we have been doing so far is not working. As of today, there is not one major institution in our culture in which the Christian community has any significant influence. We are indeed in a Post-Christian Culture. This despite the fact that Christianity and those who embraced it are either responsible for and/or shaped significantly things like: Hospitals, Schools and Universities, Democracy/Politics, Business, Non-Profits etc. etc. We have lost our way from the faith and vocational integration principle - because over time, like the proverbial frog in the kettle, we were wooed into a highly privatized, intellectualized and compartmentalized expression of our faith. How odd it is that what we fail to recognize that what we build in life, is actually what we live in. Soren Kierkegaard once said:

"Most systematizers stand in the same relation to their systems as the man who builds
a great castle and lives in an adjoining shack; they do not live in their great systematic
structure. Metaphorically speaking, a person's ideas must be the building he lives in ---
otherwise there is something terribly wrong

We always do what we always are, because we can only do what we only are….

Part II – Spiritual Formation In Youth Ministry and Higher Education

Contributions from the Discipline of Spiritual Formation

I am convinced that if we are to produce the kind of students who have the capacity to implement a faith and vocational approach to their life, then we must begin with the foundational issue of their Spiritual Formation. It's the challenge of enabling them becoming whole and complete in Christ. Therefore, what is meant by Spiritual Formation is more than (what in principle is practiced in many evangelical contexts) as "verse-a-day" to keep the devil away". And/Or what Dallas Willard brilliantly describes in his seminal work: The Divine Conspiracy, as "Sin Management."

Can we validly interpret it's (the Bible) portrayal of faith in Christ as one concerned only with the management of sin, whether in the form of our personal debt or in the form of societal evil? …History has brought us to the point where the Christian message is thought to be essentially concerned only with how to deal with sin: with wrongdoing or wrong-being and its effects. Life, our actual existence, is not included in what is now presented as the heart of the Christian message, or it is included only marginally. That is where we find ourselves today… When we examine the broad spectrum of Christian proclamation and practice, we see that the only thing made essential on the right wing of theology is forgiveness of the individual's sins… The current gospel then becomes the gospel of "sin management." Transformation of life and character is not part of the redemptive message."

To put it another way, one's ability to manage their sin, to keep it from influencing negatively and overtly one's life, is often seen as the primary goal of Christian maturity and discipleship. Willard's critique, directed mostly towards evangelicalism, goes on to argue in his book that transformation of life and character necessarily means that one must engage the world… In short, according to Willard, our faith is to be all about the Kingdom of God, as it was for Christ. There can be no decompartmentalization, for the Christian, between faith and the rest of one's life. We cannot continue to practice, as many Christians do: Live in the world, despite the world; and not for Christ, to change the world.

Evangelists as Modern Day Gnostics:

In like manner, there needs to be an overhaul for many of us in how we present the Gospel to young adults. Numerous students hear the Gospel presented to them in what is nothing more than a form of modern day Gnosticism. The-would-be evangelist presents it in the following manner:

"I have some important information that you need to know about and if you listen to me and choose to respond, you can go to heaven and not to hell."

In other words, it's all about collecting vital life-saving information that in turn becomes an almost magical incantation. Once the words are spoken, then heaven is all but assured. The new believer then enters into a life of doing those things that will mostly "maintain" their faith; so that they are confident enough that if they died they would go to heaven and not to hell. This is the lowest common denominator of what can be offered still be considered the Gospel. Very little is said about counting the cost and the Lordship of Christ. Instead of enhancing their restored relationship with Christ, they craft into their life only those things that give them comfort of their eternal standing. There is a very felt need to grow into the image of Christ, because the emphasis is all about doing the right things… The unfortunate repercussions of this kind of Christian life style are disastrous and feed directly into a maintenance only mentality.

Right Being vs. Just Right Knowing or Right Doing

Nor should we, on the other hand, mistake Christian maturity as just having the ability to master intellectually and articulate correct theology… They are not the same. Soren Kierkegaard notes the following in his essay entitled: The Weight of Inwardness

… Certitude and inwardness determine whether or not the individual is in the truth. It is not a lack of content that gives rise to arbitrariness, unbelief, mockery or religion, but a lack of certitude. Whenever, inwardness and appropriation are lacking, the individual is unfree in relation to the truth, even though he otherwise "possesses" the whole truth[…]"

[…]our age is a master in developing truths while being wholly indifferent to certitude. It lacks confidence in the good."

"Truth exists for the particular individual only as he himself produces it in action. If the individual prevents the truth from being for him in that way, we have a phenomena of the demonic. Truth has always had many loud proclaimers, but the question is whether a person will in the deepest sense acknowledge the truth, allow it to permeate his whole being…
…Without inwardness, an adherent of the most rigid orthodoxy may be demonic…"
Kierkegaard passionately believed that right knowing did not always mean right being. He believed that while right doing didn't always mean right being… right being did always mean right doing… I am reminded of J.I. Packer's comment on the world "theologia" from which we get our world theology. Prior to the Reformation, according to Packer, the word "theologia" meant: "To study God in such a way, that what you learned became a part of you." After the Reformation, "theologia," in many Christian circles, came to mean simply the intellectual and scholastic study of God. Mystery and emotion in the Christian experience were disabused and deemed irrelevant.
Many Christian traditions eventually gave themselves permission to see one's Spiritual Formation as that of knowing only about God rather than the experience of knowing God personally. Again, I quote Kierkegaard: "Nobody knows more of the truth than what he is of the truth. To properly know the truth is to be in the truth; it is to have the truth for one's life. This always costs a struggle." Theology then must be internalized inwardly, in order that it be authentically manifested and represented outwardly.
What is Spiritual Formation? It is the commitment to the process of inwardly becoming like Jesus Christ, so that you can outwardly do the things that Jesus would do, if He were you, in the here and now.

Spiritual Formation in Christian Higher Education

The connection to Higher Education to me is obvious. Those of us in Christian Higher Education must challenge our students to advance further from the weak praxis of what it is popularly believed it means to be "Christian." They must move beyond practicing the Christian faith as a form of cheap fire insurance (i.e. "cheap grace" according to Bonhoeffer), the belief that Jesus came only to save them from their sins. They must understand that the decision they make for Christ necessarily means a life transforming encounter with the person of Christ… …that they have been saved "to" (Christ) and not just saved "from" (hell). That it's a decision having mostly to do far more with restoration (of relationships) rather than a region (heaven over hell).

Transformed, Transcend Transformational

O eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity! You are my God; to you I sigh by day and by night. And when I first know you, you raised me up so that I could see that there was something to see and that I still lacked the ability to see it. And you beat back the weakness of my sight, blazing upon me with your rays, and I trembled in love and in dread, and I found that I was far distant from you, in a region of total unlikeness, as I were hearing your voice from on high saying: "I am the food of grown men, Grow and you shall feed upon me. And you will not, as with the food of the body, change me into yourself, but you will be changed into me." Augustine Book VII pg. 149-50
It's crucial for them to understand that their Spiritual Transformation must lead them to the hard belief and practice that the more they are inwardly transformed, the more capable they are of transcending those compartmentalizing personal and cultural inhibitors that keep them from being transformational agents within the world of their private and professional lives.
Johann Arndt, German Lutheran pastor who heavily influenced German Pietism in the later 15^th and early 16^th centuries, noted in his essay on True Christianity the following:

Everyone wishes very much to be a servant of Christ, but no one wishes to be His follower… And although we cannot, in our present weakness, perfectly imitate the holy and noble life of Christ… nevertheless, we ought to live it, and yearn to imitate it, for thus we live in Christ, and Christ lives in us, as John in the first Epistle 2:6 says: 'He who says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked.' …No one can love Christ who does not follow the example of His holy life… True Christianity consists, not in words or external show, but in living faith, from which arise righteous fruits, and all manner of Christian virtues, as from Christ Himself."

And so we have this challenge before us… The challenge of helping our students transforming their inward nature into the nature of Christ Himself, so that no matter where they go and what they do, they would do it has if Christ Himself where doing it. I believe that it's only with this kind of heart and mind, that our students will have the motivating passion (because it's Christ's) and the moral and spiritual resolve (because it's the character of Christ, redeeming and energizing their own) that will enable them to be toxic to the very worldliness in which they find themselves. They will truly be able to believe: "Greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world." (1 John 4:4) It will be then, and only then that we will be able to penetrate and transform those major institutions in our world e.g. the worlds of Business, Government, Education etc., that heretofore have been impenetrable and any substantive manner.

Christ in and Through Us, In the World

What the world desperately needs to see is not a Christianized us, but rather us, in Christ, in the world. In essence, it's the practice rejecting the corrosive values of the "world" and instead, choosing to connect lovingly and meaningfully with Christ's omnipresence within the world. It is not our job to take Christ into our professional work and world… He is already there! It's a matter of deliberate choice to have our life resonating with and accommodating His presence so that what He is reflected in and through us in a powerful, authentic, compelling and restorative manner to all of those people that He had determined to restore to Himself.

The love of God is hatred of the world and love of the world hatred of God. This is the colossal point of contention, either love or hate. This is the place where the most terrible fight must be fought. And where is this place? In a person's innermost being. Whether the struggle is over millions or over a penny, [in the world of business for example…] it is a matter of loving and preferring God – the most terrible fight is the struggle for the highest. What immeasurable happiness is promised to the one who rightly chooses. If anyone is unable to understand this, the reason is that he is unwilling to accept that God is present in the moment of choice, not in order to watch but in order to be chosen…"

What does the world need more than Christ? In Acts chapter one Christ ascended. In Acts chapter two the Holy Spirit descended... to live in us... that we might become the image of Christ once again in the world.