want to know what will happen to the team for the next season. Student athletes need to have a new father figure . . . quickly. The press wants news.
Fortunately Christians will not be threatened by a vacancy at the top. Christ’s tenure is secure because of his resurrection, and we are not vulnerable to any leadership change crisis. In this early Christian hymn, the focus has shifted from the cosmic Christ (verse 15) to a more personal level—God’s desire that you and God be reconciled. The facts about Christ and his cosmos are now tied personally to you through a historical event (the cross) and the community of the church (body of Christ).
Opening this letter with such a positive affirmation of his readers and of the positive and absolutely cosmic scope of the work of Jesus Christ (from creation to reconciliation) is such good news. It is like a welcome sign just for you at the gate of your college. Studying this letter should produce a lot of strengthening to your faith and some specific answers to some of the many challenges to a Christian student in college.
Prayer: God, help me get my head around Jesus’ cosmic creativity and his work on the cross. Amen.
8 – Lord, When Was I a Mad Scientist?
Colossians 1:21–23 — (21) And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, (22) he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him—(23) provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.
The mad scientist is (usually, thank goodness!) fictional and is often portrayed in bad movies where his diabolical plot to take over the world issues from a genius-level IQ gone berserk. By contrast, college folks tend to think of the mind as good. The Greek philosopher Plato (427–347 BCE) is an early advocate of the view that the mind is the essentially good core of humans. In college circles it is pretty much assumed that the mind has great potential.
You are the intellectual great-grandchild of the Western philosophical tradition (Plato and company), the grandchild of the Enlightenment (Kant and company) and the child of modernism. Part of the inheritance you share with your predecessors is an enormous confidence in human reason. The founders of those traditions all believed in the positive power of the mind. Well, perhaps not so much confidence in the reasoning of others, but plenty of confidence in their own.
You know that each of us has an individual bias, point of view, or perspective. But to what extent do you take seriously the possibility that one of the factors that may negatively affect your thinking is sin? It is hard to acknowledge that sin has what one writer calls the “epistemic impact of sin” or the impact of sin on your thinking. But if you take sin seriously—woe to us if we don’t!—you can understand your self-centeredness and your estrangement from Christ. To the extent that Christ has not reconciled one’s mind to God, there is a little of the mad scientist in everyone.
The good news is that Christ has put you in a new place. Once you are reconciled to God in Christ, there is no need to go about—as the Colossians apparently did—still looking for some additional truth to perfect Christ and fulfill the gospel. Now all there is left is for you to live out the faith you have been given.
Prayer: God, thank you that your reconciling love is more powerful than my hostile ideas. Amen.
9 – Vocation with a Vision
Colossians 1:24–26 — (24) I am now rejoicing in my suffering for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. (25) I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, (26) the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints.
You plan for a career. That is part of what you will do in college. It could be a job, like it was for the father of a student of mine who had decided on his major by looking at a list of the best-paying jobs; he chose the top-income career . . . and hated it. Paul seems pretty happy about his “job” (“I am now rejoicing”—while suffering, and in jail!), which had to do with spreading God’s word about Jesus Christ.
Do you know the story of the two workers who were asked what they were doing? The first, a bricklayer, said he was laying bricks. The second, also a bricklayer, responded that he was building a cathedral. They had the same skills, but radically contrasting frames of reference. They employed the same techniques, but saw themselves functioning in radically differing vocations. The one was locked in the tedium of doing the same task repeatedly; the second saw the worth of that mundane labor as part of a grander panorama.
Jobs can have their tedium and their pains. Jobs can be a drag or they can grab you as a vocation. They can give you identity and purpose, or they can be hated and feared. College is overwhelmingly about selecting and preparing for the working part of your life.
Have you decided what your career path is? How does that fit in “the big picture” as you view it? What kind of a person will that career make of you? Do you know the requirements and do you have a plan, the resources, and the will to carve it out for yourself?
Some people are claimed by a career. They have a vocation, a calling. They are part of something greater, called by something outside of themselves to build something grand. Paul tells the Colossians about his vocation. How are you coming along in choosing and preparing for yours?
Prayer: Thank you for those I name and those I cannot name who have prepared the way for me. Amen.
10 – Good Advice: If You Can Get It, Take It
Colossians 1:27–29 — (27) To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (28) It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. (29) For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.
One of my pet peeves is that conversation you often overhear at church before morning worship—the conversation that focuses on the weather or the latest football game. The atmosphere is more “good ’ole boy” than an encounter of members of the body of Christ who are concerned to “present everyone mature in Christ.”
In college, the role of your adviser can range from . . . well, one extreme to the other. Some faculty bridle at the role of en loco parentis—being in the position of parent—and avoid involvement in the nonacademic side of their advisees’ lives. They see their role with their students as confined to the matter of academic requirements and signing forms.
Other faculty feel comfortable playing a more involved role in the lives of students. Theirs can even be an “in your face” approach to their students, confronting them with big issues and major decisions, tracking them down when they miss class, conversing with them about any and all issues in their advisees’ lives.
If Paul had been an academic adviser, his commitment to “warning everyone” and “teaching everyone” clearly would place him at the intrusive end of the spectrum. You may be fortunate and get a good advisor and mentor. Accept it and listen. You may even get good advice and some tender loving care.
Paul’s mission is not only to touch every one with the gospel but to equip and strengthen the Colossians in their Christian maturation. This letter was preserved in Scripture because it continued to be useful in doing the same thing for later generations of believers. As a young, and perhaps not as wise or as mature a Christian as you hope to be,
