Fides Quaerens Intellectum

Last evening the 2nd class in IMPACT 360 (www.impact360.net) history graduated. Exhausted but joyful, a new class of alumni has launched. Book after book, article upon article, and lecture followed by Socratic discussion on everything from evidence for God’s existence to the purpose of a college education, not to mention all the community service hours worked, Chick-fil-A leadership training absorbed (including leadership lessons taught on the corporate jet!), Bible studies led and spiritual disciplines practiced…these alumni understand that all of these growing experiences were not ends unto themselves but rather means to a divinely established end, namely that of discerning their callings in this world.

John Calvin once said that “the Lord enjoins every one of us, in all the actions of life, to have respect to our own calling. He knows the boiling restlessness of the human mind, the fickleness with which it is borne hither and thither, its eagerness to hold opposites at one time in its grasp, its ambition. Therefore, lest all things should be thrown into confusion by our folly and rashness, he has assigned distinct duties to each in the different modes of life. And that no one may presume to overstep his proper limits, he has distinguished the different modes of life by the name of callings. Every man’s mode of life, therefore, is a kind of station assigned him by the Lord, that he may not be always driven about at random” (Institutes, Book III, ch. 10, section 6).

Through it all they–and we as staff–have learned time and again that achieving the kind of discernment necessary for hearing God’s call is seemingly thwarted by a restlessness of heart and mind that Calvin describes, namely one that is a symptom of a less than fully integrated character. The battleground is one where the the vices and affections of the old, empty self (Eph. 4:22) have less and less power over the ability of the Christ-follower to choose the good, and yet it is still a battleground where the Christ-follower is all too aware of the stranglehold that certain vices still have in the depths of the soul. Citing C.S. Lewis, one of our coed students drove this point home as well as I’ve heard in recent memory: “Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is.” She went on to say “My reaction to situations, and how I treat the people involved, shows me how sinful I really am. I do bad things because I am a bad person.”

Still, this alumnae from Illinois and indeed the entire class now know that one of the means of God’s grace in the midst of this restlessness was their life together as believers at this “station” called IMPACT 360. Their call to Christian community was (to use Calvin’s verbiage) a station that none of them would have guessed would be so crucial for their future, and yet none of them on this side of the experience would now trade that in for anything. They leave us understanding that God’s presence in their lives means that the “bad person” is redeemed and is constantly being refashioned into the image of Christ, and they leave realizing that the evidence of that redemption and its corresponding image is far more visible and tangible than it was nine months ago when they began this past September. And they leave with an eagerness to serve each other, and to serve those brothers and sisters who will comprise their next station for the next four years of their lives.