Today eighty students will become perpetual members of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University.
Here are three thoughts for this day . . . and a reminder that the day itself is not the reward for the study. The reward is in what you carry within you. The ceremony is just an outward sign of that inner reality. If you carry nothing in your soul, the ceremony is meaningless. If you carry the pearl of great price, this is just a pleasant reminder of that awesome fact.
First, working for money is not bad, but living for money is.
Some took a practical course of study in school. Soon, even in this economy, decent jobs in your field will open up. You also were wise enough to earn a liberal arts degree which means you have also dedicated a large amount of time to the arts and the humanities.
Do not let the joys of your job cause you to live for your job. This will be a great temptation. You should keep writing, reading, and growing in other ways. There was nothing wrong with your practical choice of majors, but do not forget your equally valuable choice of hard study in the liberal arts.
It is not so hard to do both, though it might mean passing on quick promotions and living a quieter life in your profession. At all costs do not become a man or woman who lives to make money.
Making money can be a good means to achieving good ends. For a Christian, at least, money making is a wholly illicit “end to life.”
Many of you chose to learn things that a free market justly does not want to reward for jobs. Graduate school is not for everyone, especially if you have no reasonable chance of getting one of a shrinking number of teaching jobs
I don’t think that means you chose badly, just that there is hard course ahead in your immediate future, but one that can be rewarding in every way if you keep two things in mind. Hard work in a “practical” area is not shameful and it is not inconsistent with keeping up the skills you learned in your “impractical” discipline.
My grandfathers both worked hard jobs in the chemical industry, but poured the best part of their lives into being leaders in the local church. Nobody talks much about this path any more, but though it is hard at the start it is a path with great rewards.
Many of you should become scholars that work.
You took on an academic discipline, not a career course of study. You have your reward if you have cultivated the habits of mind and heart that are part of your discipline. Do not now try to mix altruism with money and demand something that your studies cannot provide: a job in your field.
Not every person who majored in literature, philosophy, or mathematics, can or should teach. I hope most you do not expect to do so. College and your field of study gave you a lifelong interest, made you interesting, now let the world of business keep you fit to live that examined life.
Do not forget the importance of practical work . . . of keeping body and soul together. If Saint Paul could make tents and still write Romans, more is possible in this area than academia is willing to admit.
Choose a profession, perhaps in sales, and work from the very bottom. Do not expect to make much money at first. Work hard. Use your free time to continue to grow in your college discipline, do not waste your four year investment. With hard work in both your job and your discipline over ten years, the fact that you live in this blessed land will produce a decent standard of living. New technology means that your ideas, such as they are, can be published to a waiting world at will. Do so!
If what you want is a whole life, then such is available for you.
Of course, the temptation will be to live for money and let the other parts of your life “go.” Your college education will been seen as impractical. The opposite temptation might be to refuse to work for money and waste time pitying yourself that your genius is unrecognized and culture will not pay you to write on Shakespeare or science.
Instead, work for money and live for your art.
Second, live for long term human flourishing and not short term happiness. Do your duty.
I do not have to tell liberal arts graduates, I hope, that Aristotle’s notion of happiness, the pursuit of which the American Founders thought a basic human right, is not our modern idea of fun. Aristotle thought happiness was flourishing as a human being and that this flourishing required a focus on important things and could not take place outside of the life of a community.
Of course Aristotle subordinated the happiness of most of the community to the philosophers. Under the influence of Christianity, Western thinkers modified Aristotle’s idea by making making long-term happiness possible for all. It is perhaps unfashionable to say it, but this meant living for Paradise and performing duties in this life for our fellow men.
Avoid the siren call of this age that says that if I am happy that will mean society is happy. Rich and meaningful culture is not built up from an accumulation of individuals looking out for self alone. Noble culture comes from the voluntary sacrifice of personal happiness for the greater good.
Duty might not make us happy in this life, but in past times it was seen as an outward sign of our being ready for the happiness in the world to come. Of course, these duties were general and the wisdom of the church recognized particular exceptions to them, but in this age we are apt to think ourselves the exception far too easily.
What are some simple examples of those general duties?
For the single, it was to make spiritual children, deeply mentoring those around them. For the married it was to have biological children if they could and sacrifice much of their own goals and happiness to raising them well. Though recent studies show that having children will not make you happier, parents of graduates might generally attest to that, they will make the community happier.
For the citizen, it was to provide poorly paid and sometimes heroic work for the community to defend it and help it flourish. For the churchman, it was to cultivate virtues and live moderately behaving in a manner that would leave future generations a faithful example.
Western men and women, in better times, were taught first to think not “What do I wish to do? What is best for me?” but “What is best for the family, the nation, and the church?”
All of us will fail this high calling to some degree. The temptation is to give up when we see those failures in history and in our own lives. Just, however, as high romantic ambition is only whetted by failure, so the call to duty should only be made more alluring by our previous failure.
I have failed, but need not do so today. We live under the Mercy, but need not presume on it.
Finally, live for the Lord Jesus Christ without fear and with great love.
If this is a post-Christian age, then consider carefully if the claims of Jesus the Christ are true. If you are convinced, as I am, that they are, then live them out. Do not count on the applause of the world, because you may not always receive it.
When you receive criticism, examine your actions first. Are you being criticized for living for Christ or for some failure of service? I have found critics to be valuable checks to complacency, spiritual pride, and errors that I cannot see, but outsiders can.
C.S. Lewis presents an ideal Christian community in his book That Hideous Strength. This community contains an outsider, a non-believer, who acts as the house critic. Make sure to have such critics in your life . . . the good news being that it will not be hard to find volunteers. The friendly critic is, trust me, much harder to find!
Do not let any good, true, or beautiful thing or idea rest long outside the Church. Take it and redeem it. Make the crooked straight and the rough places smooth. It will be hard to do this without compromise, but start the hard work anyway.
Some artists create great beauty, but marry it to false ideas. We cannot condone the ideas for the art.
The culture tries to declare vices virtues and this we cannot do.
The culture may try to force a false equality or a meritocracy on every relationship, but Love knows nothing of that.
We need not react in fear or only with jeremiads to these problems, though a few of those will have to be preached. Instead, we must be hopeful and look for the good in any work of art or any movement. What can be redeemed? Can the old god, pagan Eros be subsumed to Christian romance and redeemed by Saint Valentine? Can compassion and holiness give hope to all of us? Can justice replace demands for equality?
It has done so in the past and in worse cultural situations than America. This is a hopeful time when there is reason to believe that a revival of true faith is coming. The Holy Spirit does not need us, but very well may chose to use us to bring justice and mercy to our time.
Go into God’s world with humility, but with boldness to proclaim His goodness, truth, and beauty.