The kind of vision for work that I posted about here breaks down the sacred/secular divide that operates in much of our thinking where one sphere of life is the God-honouring, Christ-glorifying part and the other is simply not considered important to God. Christian students are called to be disciples of Jesus, to live for Jesus and speak for Jesus, and this isn’t to be reduced to ‘evangelistic conversations’ and other so-called ‘Christian activities’ as if following Jesus where simply one pastime of many that we put down in the activities section of our facebook profile.
This bigger and more biblical picture of work outlined above tells us that God is at work through our university courses, not only in all of the other bits outside of them. They are used to hone skills and develop competencies and are part of our response to Jesus which seeks to steward what God has given us. The courses are to lead us to worship. They are also a means of sanctification; our characters are shaped in self-discipline and self-control in order to meet personal deadlines and through group-work. Do all-nighters honour God? What do they say about what we really think about our work? Does this match up with what God thinks about work (for example here)? We need to see that when we talk about the different disciplines: geography, cellular biology, history, inorganic chemistry, English that this word is really meaningful related to the word disciple.
The key question though is who are we following. It is possible to be disciples of Jesus in our lectures. It is also possible to follow another, to be shaped by their designs, plans, goals, ideas and theories. To accept their ‘gospel’. We are all disciples, but of whom?
Students will face choice-moments in lectures, seminars and tutorials where there is an time to choose to follow the lecturer, the other students and functionally deny Jesus or to deny those around you and follow Jesus. Are you ready for those moments? Are you growing in discernment but soaking in the Bible and meditating on it’s implications for your subject so that you can recognise those moments when they come? Sadly, many are not and so functionally deny Jesus in the academic sphere whilst living and speaking for Him outside of it. As someone once said, if Jesus is not Lord of all then Jesus is not Lord at all.
If this is new for you and you want to learn more then a great place to start is Marcus Honeysett’s website and his book: Meltdown. Dave Bish also posts some cracking stuff on this and points out lots of great resources collected by UCCF at bethinking.org and also theologynetwork.org.
