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PACE 13
The Role Of The Believer In An Academic Community
Editor's Note: John Dunsway my own cue. I mu* admit. I enmloved bv the church .nri ih. * c
employed by the church and the
reet of ui were juat euppoeed to
be hearers of the word who
were to come worship, on
Sundays and be nice to people
the reet of the week.
Four years ago I discovered
that God had a ministry for me
to perform even without going
to theology school. Laymen
have just as much of God's work
to do as the clergy. Religion
can't just be once a week; it
can't be icing on the cake of life.
You know, added as an after
thought just to make everything
else—wealth, good looks, popu
larity, etc.—seem that much
better.
What I’m trying to say here is
that living on a college campus
as a Christian, you will be
expected to practice what you
preach. You can't juat talk
about what the Christian faith is
and leave all the social action to
thehumanista. College students
and professors are among the '
first to see through religious
hypocrisy. And if you profess
Christ with your tips without
responding to real human needs
around you, your non-Christian
friends won’t be able to see
Christ in you. A verbal
testimony is immessureably
strengthened by the believer
who embodies Christian charity
in his relationships with others.
A good start in this matter
would be to search the
Scriptures for the social Gospel-
what Christ says about human
needs and our responsibility in
the contemporary world, identi
fy the needs that we can
respond to, and prayerfully go
about making our contribution.
I think it's important to realise
that one person can't do it all
(prisons, hungry, elderly, handi
capped, etc.) and that God
doesn't expect us to accept
every worthwhile charitable
project that comes along. He
Samaritan. >
Now I realize that if I
recapitulated for you the main
points of this little talk, it would
sound a lot like Rudyard
Kipling's famous poem "If”.
It's a pretty tall order. After all.
Christ never promised us a rose
garden; he didn't say it would
be easy. In fact. He charged us
in the sermon on the Mount to
be perfect, "even as your
Father in heaven is perfect .!
But remember that Christian
perfection is a goal within the
reach of all believers. The whole
plan of the Gospel demonstrates
that God doesn't expect us to
measure up to these standards
on our own. He provided us
with the power to live the
Christian life through faith in
His Son. Our perfection is in
Him. The more fully we come to
open ourselves to His power,
the closer we come to Christian
to pray because I couldn't feel
persuaded that anyone waa
really listening. I began to look
for some kind of intellectualized,
de - mythologized, secular model
to fill the void left by the demise
of my childhood faith. And yet
nothing I could come up with
was able to aetiafy the spiritual
hunger within me. It wasn’t
until 1 was thirty years old and
facing the task of answering the
hard quertiona of parenthood
that I finally took a different
path. You know, when you think
of the enormous responsibility it
is to bring a new human being
into this world and to be
responsible for his spiritual
growth, you realise you juat
can't concoct fake answers to
those hard questions. My own
quest led me to V^moment of
relinquishment just over four
years ago when God made it
inescapably clear to me that He
eras real, that He eras concerned
about me and working through
the presence of the Holy Spirit
in my own life. And I
understood that my only choice,
if I wanted peace, eras to
commit myself to a spiritual
discipline of daily Bible study,
prayer, and obedience to His
gliding.
I hope it won't take you that
long to decide that yop aren't
going to be ashamed of the
Gospel. When I was in that
secular theology stage back at
Emory, I used to think the
fundamentalists had taken an
intellectual cop-out. I didn't
realise then that a believer
seeks understanding in God's
Word through the eyes of faith
and that faith is itself a-means
of perception without which
ooe's wisdom is impoverished.
So if it's impostant for a
Christian to strive for intellec
tual excellence, it's equally
important for him to be a
faithful witness, to speak the
truth in love. In Matthew 10:32,
Jesus says. "Every one there
fore, who shall confess Me
before men, I will also confess
him before .My Father who is in
When I was asked to talk to
BSU. I remembered something
that was said to me and my
roommate during my own
college days. We were very
interested in theology and in
what the Christian waa called to
be in our little academic world.
And the setting, by the way,
waa the activiem of the
mid-sixties on college campuses.
It wqs the campus minister who
told us that in that situation we
were called to be good students
before we tried to go out and
change the world. Not that he
didn't believe in student activ
ism. but he did believe that the
priority of the college student
should be on one's academic
growth.
It is truly sad that so many
gifts suited to particular minis
tries and we should each
prayerfully seek out where our
gifts can be used. But when I'm
driving down the highway and
pass a motorist in trouble
without stopping to ask if I can
help. I'm guilty of the same
thing as the priest and the
Levite in the story of the Good
makes it all the more important
for one to grow intellectually.
People on a college campus
tend to have a distorted
preconception of Christians as
mental midgets who have been
hoodwinked into some kind of
humiliating antiquated super-
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be well-armed for hie role es
defender of the faith, he must
be willing to teens about
alternative philosophies or
world views: other world
must be knowledgeable enough
to deal intelligently with the
challenges posed by such
alternatives. >
So, tha first thing I thought I
should sey to you tonight was:
Don't accept the role of
intellectual mediocrity that ma
ny will try to impoee on you ss s
When I was a child, I heard
our pastor preach a sermon on
the ten, "Be ye doers of the
word, and not hearers only.” It
teemed that everything he said
was directed especially at me.
and I somehow got the notion
from that sermon that God had
called me into the ministry . You
see, I was laboring under the
m^conception that the only way
to be a doer of the word was to
writ wtxiuiu.
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Only during the'following limes when your Jostens representative
will be on campus.
PLACE