BY JULIETTE MIN
Dear future students of the Joseph and Alice McKeen Study Center,
Where all dwell, everyone is charged to make a choice to be on the winning or losing side. Yet where you dwell, the choice of following Christ will be met with even more toil, persecution, rejection, and struggle.
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Rob, our study center leader, once told me about the time he interviewed with the New York Times and was asked the question – “Is Bowdoin following culture or making culture?” This seems like a simple question, and one who spends a sufficient amount of time at Bowdoin would easily be able to say, “both.” But the nature of this question hints at a deeper observation that Bowdoin is both the originator and propagator of alluring moral viewpoints in our communities. Contemplating this truth can help us frame the way we as Christians can and should engage with the changing moral backgrounds of the college.
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Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.
When I contemplate the new and emerging secular social gospels that claim to bring freedom and justice to the marginalized and oppressed — gospels that Bowdoin prides itself in championing — I am cautious, primarily because they are new, as in their foundation is not in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that we have first heard. I recall John 1 whenever I engage with these new ideologies. The First Letter of John was addressed to a group of churches in which false prophets preached a gospel contrary to the one they first received, causing division in the orthodox church.
John writes,
Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.
But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.
Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us— eternal life. (1 John 2:18-22,24-25)
These verses have always been so striking to me because they emphasize that the Gospel of Jesus, the risen Christ is enough. This means that throughout the passage of time, the Gospel will continue to be enough to address and be the solution to all events and occurrences under the sun. And in our context as students of an American liberal arts college in the 21st century, it means that the Gospel provides us with enough language and the means to reckon with and combat the injustices of our society — oppression, racism, poverty, slavery. The Gospel has always given us the language, understanding, and charge to do justice (Micah 6:8).
The Church has one Advisor and Consultant. The person who walks among the lampstands (i.e. the churches) in the Book of Revelation is not the government, an educational institution like Bowdoin College, or an institution of history and culture, but is Jesus Christ. All ideas, practices, and dispositions are filtered through this one person, who is the Standard and the Judge by which all things are measured.
As Jesus walks among the lampstands he commends and reproves us, giving guidance to those who are willing to listen. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches (Revelation 2:17).
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The Book of Revelation is one of the means God gives to us to better discern what new and emerging ideas point us towards God and which ones drive us further away under the disguise of good. In particular, I look to the image of the First Beast in Revelation 13.
In Revelation 13, a beast appears out of the sea, which is a place identified with evil, chaos, and a resistance towards God. This beast is granted authority, power, and a throne by the dragon — it represents a world leader empowered and supported by Satan.
This beast sports a mortal wound which is then healed, a similar image to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This marvels the whole earth, who worships the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?” When the beast is given a mouth, it pounces at the opportunity to utter haughty and blasphemous words, tainting God’s name and those who dwell in heaven (Revelation 13).
This image reflects an essential character of evil, which is to parody God in order to appear praiseworthy. While the beast is a character in the revelation for the end times, this characterization of evil that is present in the beast has always existed and can be seen as early as the story of Adam and Eve. We see how the serpent in Eden coaxes Eve by making disobedience appear like a good choice, for at the moment of decision, Eve sees that “the tree was good for food, and it was a delight to the eyes, and [the] tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6).
Evil can disguise itself so well that if not careful to test and discern all that is around us, we may easily be one of many who not only mistake evil for Good, but also support the blaspheming of God’s name by those whom evil has delegated authority to.
Another essence of evil is that it willingly makes itself clear that it is not of God or the Church. For John writes in the First Letter to the churches, “they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). The beast in the story above blasphemes against the Lord the moment it receives a mouth to speak.
Thus, be careful to test and discern the ideas that you encounter throughout your life — as a student at Bowdoin, as a citizen, but more importantly, as an image bearer of Christ in a fallen world. You need only to look for those that seek to imitate the work of Jesus in freeing the enslaved, caring for the poor and marginalized, and doing justice while leaving Christ out of the picture — performing a parody of the character of our Lord Jesus — or speaking blasphemies against the Lord when given the platform. God certainly calls the Church to understand the language of culture, to “be all things to all people” (1 Cor. 9), but that should never be at the expense of the Gospel. The Church is not given license to assimilate to the values of the world while losing its distinct identity as followers of Christ who speak the truth as “salt and light” in the world (Matt. 5:13-16). Instead, we are called to be a community that is rooted in the truth of the Gospel, testifying to the reality of the perfect love, freedom, and satisfaction that is found only through faith in Jesus Christ. This itself is not an easy task. But not only do we have to test and discern all things, we also have to love and witness well in this space, a world plunged in a spiritual battle where the means, with or without Jesus, to achieving common ends (e.g. human flourishing) compete.
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In the culture from which I am writing this, the ideas of Christ are increasingly obscured, misrepresented, and undermined. We live in a culture that sees freedom as a proxy for human flourishing, and historically, freedom in the face of oppression has been a great means through which justice and flourishing are brought about. However, we must remember that this freedom was never meant to be absolute. Even in Eden, God defined prohibitions in addition to Adam and Eve’s privileges so as to preserve the flourishing of mankind.
The Christian life does not entail an absolute freedom to abdicate our responsibility to witness in difficult spaces. True freedom is a liberation from enslavement to sin into a complete surrender to the authority and command of God. Bowdoin College is a difficult space to witness in, but Jesus who walks among the lampstands that are in tribulation commands them to hold fast His name and keep His word, for those who endure faithfully will be given the crown of life (Revelation 2-3). From this delineated box, however it is shaped and filled, we operate. Within this box we must witness and give our testimony.
During our four years at Bowdoin College, this looks like holding fast to Jesus’ name and not denying our faith in Him amidst a campus community that not only rejects Him, but also appears to be the first of earthly rulers who take counsel against the Lord and against his Anointed, plotting in vain (Psalm 2). In this space, we are called to toe the line between meaningfully engaging with our peers in love and learning how to walk away when the pressure to conform is too great (Acts 19:9).
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Be vigilant — but do not live in fear. We witness and live from a place of victory, for Christ has already inaugurated the beginning of His Kingdom on the cross, having written the fulfillment of His Kingdom into a coming reality.
“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
“It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 21).
To the one who conquers, God will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God (Revelation 2:7). Life in the full, a relationship fully restored to our Father is our reward, and we need only to remain faithful to the end (John 10:10).
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Finally, do not lose your love. It is a curious thing that John, in his first letter to the churches, writes successively in the same chapter to not only “test the spirits to see whether they are from God,” but also “love one another, for love comes from God” (1 John 4). It is important to be vigilant, but our vigilance must not be so large that it sows seeds of anger and judgement in our hearts. We must be critical enough to test falsehood while not losing our love (Revelation 2:4). For Jesus says to us, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:44-45). God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. Let us love, because He first loved us (1 John 4).
Where all dwell, all are charged to make a choice to be on the winning or losing side. Yet where you dwell, the choice of following Christ will be met with even more toil, persecution, rejection, and struggle. In this space, the love of Christ that dwells in and pours forth from us gives us confidence — not only in the midst of trials, hardship, and suffering, but also on the day of judgement — that we will be recognized as His own, as a lampstand that has testified faithfully until its appointed course is complete (Revelation 11).