A few weeks ago I wrote about purpose; I presented a handful of perspectives on the purpose of our human existence and asked the question, Why should I go to grad school, anyway? Today I want to zoom in on one particular thread that, as you may have noticed, traced prominently through two of the given perspectives. That thread is the glory of God. Now, before I lose you completely with those worn out old words, let me shake them off and give them back their . . . glory.
Irenaeus, a father of the early church, famously said:
The glory of God is the human person fully alive.
That is, when a human being experiences and enjoys the richness of God and his creation, that human being puts God on display—he or she shows to the cosmos the true nature of its creator. Jesus was and is the human being who most clearly displays the creator’s nature. He is the very renown and wisdom and honor of God in human flesh and, when he went to the cross, he displayed God’s mysterious core: justice and self-giving love.
But what about us? How can this possibly relate to work in a science lab or at an editing desk, or, in my case, in a religious studies seminar? Here’s the thing: God has created all of us individually, to act as his representatives, his ambassadors (2 Cor. 5:20) in the world in very real, specific ways. Jesus’s specific vocation was, in complete obedience to the Father, to reveal the self-giving love of God through his life and work and, ultimately, his death on a roman cross, taking onto himself the sins of the world, rising to prove the weakness of death and evil, and sending his Spirit. (I’m sure I’ve left something out here, but you get the idea.) [Read more…] about How to Be a Christian Academic: A Brief Theology