C.S. Lewis put it this way:  “…we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time.  When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected) he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly.  When troubles come along–illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation–he is disappointed.  These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now?  Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level:  putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before.  It seems to us all unnecessary:  but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us.”   -from Mere Christianity

http://hunterbaker.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/advice-to-new-graduates-in-recessionary-times/

The point:  there are some GREAT campus ministries out there doing fantastic evangelistic and discipleship work.  But who is out there coming alongside millennials to help them understand that their faith is not something merely to be put alongside their coursework, and showing them in intellectual fashion that God’s Word and his world are inextricably intertwined?

“To understand why the negative prejudice [with regard to the claim that God is Creator and Sustainer of all] is so strong now, just reflect on how the entire system of human expertise, as represented by our many-tiered structure of certification and accreditation, has a tremendous vested interest in ruling God out of consideration.  For, if it cannot do that, it is simply wrong about what it presents as knowledge and reality–of which God is no part….God currently forms no part of recognized human competence in any field of knowledge or practice.  But if this actually is God’s universe, the current lords of knowledge have made what is surely the greatest mistake in human history.  Believing the world is flat or the moon is cheese would be nothing in comparison to their mistake.”

Back to the point, namely why money won (unearned) isn’t sweeter than money earned and why the project of educating towards a virtuous citizenry matters now more than ever: Lottery studies have shown that money won is negatively correlated with long-term happiness about life in general (see Brooks, pp 75-81).   If this is true, then the current generation of college students is being sold a bill of goods about how this economic mess will get fixed once and for all.  Brooks argues that “If money without earned success does not bring happiness, then redistributing money won’t make for a happier America” (81).  I agree with him.  But redistribution has been the underlying (although often an unspoken term by its advocates) strategy to counteract the recent evils of Wall Street.  So what?  What bearing does all this have on educating the millennial generation? Brooks points out that a majority of late teens to early thirty-somethings tend to be quite comfortable with socialist policies.  A 2010 Gallup poll proves it.

I’m simultaneously concerned and not concerned about these stats.  Not concerned because it won’t take long for millennials to understand the hollow promises of an increasingly socialist-leaning government.  Concerned, because once we start down this road as a country, it’s really hard to right the ship.  Earned success increases overall happiness about one’s life, unearned success doesn’t, and those of us who have been in the working world for longer than a few years know it.  If higher education has anything to do with helping young bearers of the imago dei to flourish in the deepest sense, then can we really afford to continue educating on this issue in the smorgasbord-kind-of-way that has become the norm?

The point of the graveyard exercise was to remind these young leaders that, in one sense we’re all destined to become part of the earth once again and that our days in this life are just a few handbreadths (Ps. 39:5).  Given that fact, how do we hope our epitaphs will read?   What legacy will we leave?  There was another point to the activity, however, namely to crystallize in their souls a hope-informed understanding of human existence that flows out of God’s plan to redeem the created order itself and make all things new and to remind them that the degree to which they live with an eternal perspective in this short life is the degree to which they will be participating as God’s vice-regents in restoring all aspects of his original design—of living in this world coram deo, before the face of God through a deep awareness of creation, fall, redemption and finally, yes, consummation.

This coed really knew more than what she realized.  As we discussed her question in greater depth, she began to see how all the worldview studies and related ethical issues we had covered last year in the formal classroom ethos as well as service to others outside the classroom has eternal value.  The nature of learning itself for creatures made in God’s image is such that studies and practice in the various disciplines, whether the humanities, music, art, business, or the helping professions, will change us, literally forever. Our formal college studies as image-bearers ought to so shape us that we gain new depth of insight about how we should treat each others at the beginning of life, how we do or don’t love God and neighbor inside the covenant of marriage or in the workplace, how we care for the elderly in their frailty.  How we think and act in these spheres of life will necessarily change us in such a way that will affect how we live out the rest of our days on earth as well as affecting our souls’ capacities to glorify Him fully in the new heaven and earth.  The redeemed human disposition to learn and serve others as a response to what we learn isn’t something that passes away because our physical bodies are mortal.  What we learn in this world and how we live that out in this brief life will have implications for both the scope and depth with which we glorify God when we are resurrected in the next.

The inquisitive coed student would agree with N.T. Wright that the Christian “mission must urgently recover from its long-term schizophrenia. The split between saving souls and doing good in the world is not a product of the Bible or the gospel, but of the cultural captivity of both.”  Seems to me that unlike evangelical boomers and x’ers who have demonstrated more susceptibility to the residual effects of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, millennials are less willing than their predecessors to settle for Dwight Moody’s “sinking ship” understanding of the culture and the rather thin view of hope that corresponds to it (“God has given me a lifeboat and has said ‘Moody, save all you can’”).  They are far more likely, once made aware of it, to embrace C.S. Lewis’s paradigm:  “Hope…means…a continual looking forward to the eternal world….It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is.  If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.”  So may it be for those of us who are called to teach and mentor this millennial generation of Christ-followers.