This was the Disputatio address that I gave to the New Saint Andrews student body in the fall of 2020. This is important to note because some of my comments are very oriented to that particular moment.
“‘Have you ever noticed,’ said Dimble, ‘that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point? . . . I mean this . . . If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family—anything you like— at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.’”
C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength
I want to flesh this observation out a little bit for you.
Time
First, let me begin with some obvious observations. We live in time. It is for good reason that in Genesis 1, when God creates the world that man will inhabit, He creates space (the dry land), but He also creates markers of time—the sun, moon, and stars, the alternating of day and night, all of which are intended for marking out days and year. So, we live in space and in time. Thus, time is a dimension that must be accounted for—if I say meet me at Sixth and Main, but I don’t say when, well, you aren’t going to be able to find me.
Come at this from a different angle for a moment—obedience is located not just in a place but also in a time. Geneva, Switzerland, was a place where God did amazing things in the sixteenth century, but not so much now. Harvard was a school deeply committed to educating young men to glorify God with their minds in the seventeenth century, but not so much now. Or we can say the same about people. David and Solomon were both great and righteous kings, but it depends at what point in their respective reigns that you look at them.
The world is ever shifting. And back to Lewis’s point, it is growing sharper. Today’s questions are harder, more pointed than yesterday’s. For instance, I said that King David was a righteous man, though he later stumbled. But even in his glory days, before his sin with Bathsheba, if we plopped that King David down here, in the present, we would be staring at a barbarian with a multitude of wives, at least one of whom was won with a necklace of Philistine foreskins, cut from his slaughtered enemies. But the world has grown sharper, more pointed since then. We don’t especially go for polygamists with foreskin collections anymore.
In Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, Merlin is called up from the grave. And when he shows up, he comes in with a kind of Old Testament ethic. He lived at a time when the moral naiveté of the world allowed for that sort of thing. But the world grows sharper, more pointed. Revelation comes and the laws grow narrower.
But it is important to note that God’s character is not subject to this kind of changing. It is we, His people, who are changing, because we are growing older. And as we grow older, more is revealed to us and more is expected of us. Or to pull an analogy from watching my son have his first season of football— the players are progressing, slowly moving from that first practice with no pads, up to a full-contact practice. More is required of us because the world is sharpening. We are moving closer to game time. And it is in time and through time that we see this sharpening.
This is all important to take note of because it is something that we are prone to resent rather than acknowledge. Take, for example, parents dropping their freshman child off at college, a moment many you recently experienced. They have to look this sharpening in the eye and face it. The world has changed, and they are acknowledging that when they let go of a child, even though they hate doing so. The sentimental side that pulls us towards nostalgia hates to acknowledge the existence and power and authority that time has.
Time and Obedience
I want to argue that the sharpening of time is a fundamental part of obedience. Every morning, the sun rises on a new day, a day that God has sovereignly decreed to be different from the day before. A day that God has sovereignly decreed to be sharper than the day before. We always want yesterday, but God says, no. You have today.
The Philistine foreskin necklace—no longer cool. Time to take that off. And because time causes the world to change around you, even if you don’t move from your geographic location, this means that changes bringing challenges are coming for you whether you like it or not. Every day, the lines change, and you have the job of figuring out what obedience looks like today, not yesterday.
Incidentally, this is something that we as an academic institution will struggle with. As academics, particularly as academics who treasure the great books, we tend to look backwards. But decision-makers have to make calls forward. And this is hard because the past is like a dead butterfly, pinned to a board, easy to examine. But the future is like a live crocodile, loose in your lab.
You Must Choose
As the Lewis quote indicated, everything gets sharper by becoming narrower. This means that time has a way of taking yesterday, chopping it in half, and making you choose which half you will take. So, say yesterday you were a freshman, and you didn’t know what vocation you wanted to pursue—doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief. All were viable options. But since you were a freshman, you didn’t need to choose. You could leave all the options on the table and go merrily on your way. But let’s say that today you are a senior, and it is time to choose. The world has grown sharper for you. You will pick one and say no to the rest.
Or, say, yesterday, you were a high school senior imagining the kind of man you would one day marry. But, say, today, there is a very particular man on his knee with a ring in front of you. Whether you say yes or say no, the world will grow much sharper for you.
Or pick an option more pressing for all of us right now. Let’s say that six months ago, you had hardly an opinion in the world about the role that a mask might play in protecting against a virus, or the relationship between the civil magistrate and your Sunday morning worship, or how Romans 13 applies when you and your mayor disagree on your understanding of civil liberties. Well, today, you suddenly need to have an opinion on these things. And your opinion divides; it separates people. It cuts the world in half and asks you which one you will take. The world is getting sharper, more pointed.
And on that issue, notice that you didn’t get to have any input on what controversy the world would be having. You didn’t schedule this controversy for yourself. In fact, if you could have, you probably would have rather skipped it altogether. But here we are, regardless.
Defense Mechanisms Against Time
And we employ various defense mechanisms against time. I remember as a little kid being at wrestling practice watching another kid who was having his first try at the sport. His opponent had him in some painful hold on the mat. No doubt somebody had their head in somebody else’s armpit, because that was where it seemed like you spent most of your time in wrestling. And the kid who was being beaten started screaming, “Time-out, time-out, time-out.” The coach kind of chuckled and just softly said, “There are no time-outs in wrestling,” and the struggle went on. It was a cruel but important lesson. Calling time-out is a kind of wish that we have when we want to just stop time from happening so that we don’t have to face the inevitable. But there are no time-outs in real life.
Sometimes, we just try to just ignore what is happening. We try to pretend it isn’t happening. We treat this present moment as something to be endured and that, once we get to the other side, everything will all go back to the way it was before. But the cruel truth is there are no roads back to 2019. We can’t go backwards. Make no mistake, the rolling out of a vaccine is not going to magically return us to a pre-pandemic world. We can’t go back to before, just like we can’t suddenly start sporting the Philistine foreskin necklace and pretend like it is still cool.
When people stick their heads in the sand like this and ignore the struggle of the present moment, they need to understand that they’re really opting out of all decision-making. The present becomes something to be endured rather than something to engage with. When you see the present this way, you are really just waiting to arrive on the other side, thinking that you will then start engaging again. And until that time comes, you might decide to just watch Netflix. But stalling means that you are abdicating decision-making in the present moment.
People tend to do this when the present moment feels too big for them. And this bad habit of abdication has a way of infecting the rest of your life. For instance, if you are the kind of student who skips the day of the test that you were not prepared for, then you will be the kind of boss who won’t show up to work on the day that he knows will be difficult for him, or the kind of husband who wanders out whenever a difficult decision needs to be made. And in those moments, your abdication won’t keep time from moving forward or keep the decision from being made. It is just that you have made yourself a passive recipient of the grade, the trouble, or the decision, rather than an active decider. The world grew sharper, but you were the bit getting shaved off.
Or maybe instead of ignoring it, you try just sitting back and resenting it. Imagine a man stuck at the ticket counter at the airport. His flight has been canceled, but the airline can rebook him on one of two other flights. The attendants make him an offer, but he tells them he would prefer the flight that he had originally booked. They need him to make the decision now because both of those other flights are about to depart. But he is still arguing with them about the first flight. He has not come to grips with what time has done to his travel plans. And rather than address this new situation and make the necessary decision, he just stands there resenting the moment. And because of this, he catches neither of those two flights and will sleep on the floor in Atlanta tonight.
Our Present Moment
I say all of this because we are in the midst of a moment where everything is being turned on its head. The world is being shaken all around us. And you are surrounded by people who can’t handle the moment, who try to employ these various flawed defense mechanisms against the moment—they sit and wish it away, wait for it to pass, resent it, etc.
But here you are at a college with the mission of graduating leaders who shape culture under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. This means that in your four years here, we are seeking to equip you to lean into uncomfortable cultural moments. And if you can determine now that the world is going to keep getting cut in half in front of you, that you are going to have to keep deciding which half to take, and that actually this is going to be a glorious opportunity for faithfulness rather than a sign that everything has gone wrong, then you are likely to emerge as one of the actual decision makers who shape our future. And suddenly, what looks to most onlookers like a microwaved disaster will appear to you as a wide-open opportunity.
So, let me give you several pieces of advice in this moment.
First, the obvious—don’t ignore the decisions that are before you. The passivity that plagues us is an ineffective defense mechanism. Change is coming, and you have a duty before God to get up and make decisions about how you will handle it. Put another way, if you are one of the people whose goal right now is to simply survive until things go back to normal, then you are one of those people who will passively receive rather than actively shape the next decade. In particular, the moment before us actually presents a number of real opportunities to be decisive with the Gospel. You are the people who know about eternal life, living in a nation that is terrified of death. You have tremendous opportunities all around you now to turn a profit on the gift that God has given you.
Next, don’t be paralyzed by tidy-mindedness. What do I mean by this? One of the things that thwarts people in decision-making is that they don’t like either of the options before them. Think again of the man who was stuck at the airport with two workable flights in front of him, but who couldn’t choose either because his heart was still set on the flight that had been canceled. His decision-making was paralyzed because the two options before him were not the ones that he wanted. You must be prepared to be decisive with less-than-ideal options. Now, the truly great leaders are the ones who are able to discover the options that no one else thought of. But even then, there is usually still a need to adjust present goals to fit the actual world of the possible.
There is a tidiness of the mind that is crippling for leadership. It paralyzes the thinker in decision-making because it can never find that choice that ticks all the boxes. This does not mean that you should embrace blurry thinking. But I do think that this explains why there is a kind of blurry thinking that can actually do quite well in business. What I mean is this: inarticulate people who allow themselves to be led by a visceral gut instinct can actually do quite well in business because, although they can’t put into words what they know, they are still able to put into action what they know. A very articulate mind that can explicitly break each question down into its components will often find itself frozen—and it is frozen because of its very precise thinking.
You will regularly be given limited choices, none of which perfectly fit with your convictions. And you must choose regardless. Do you worship in-person, or do you go online? If you were in MacArthur’s church, would you be joining him for in-person worship on Sunday? What if you believed that you should go, but you disagreed with the reasoning that MacArthur gave? Would you still go, or would you need to distance yourself from him? Or, on another topic, how will you make your presidential vote this year? Do you have a candidate who completely satisfies all your criteria? If so, that is scary. But if not, will you vote anyway?
At the same time, don’t give way to blurry thinking because, in the end, blurry thinking will also fail. The position that you choose today will likely get cut in half tomorrow. And tomorrow, you will need to choose once again. If you have blindly identified yourself with yesterday’s choice in its totality, you will not be prepared for the decision-making that tomorrow will demand of you. As the world gets ever sharper, your mind must get ever sharper. You must be clear-thinking and decisive at the same time.
Lastly, let me leave you with a piece of encouragement because the image I have painted for you appears quite pessimistic. It looks like you are the survivor on a ship that is slowly breaking up at sea. Every day, half of the ship floats away and sinks. And your life depends upon you picking the correct half every day and remaining on it. Even if you do always pick the correct half, sooner or later, there is not enough ship left to keep you afloat. The image foreshadows your doom no matter how you act.
But I don’t think that summary is quite right. Now, it is true that this world is breaking apart into pieces and sinking. But as this happens, something else is happening as well. As the Apostle John described, “Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (Rev. 21:1). This sharpening that I have been describing is the work of God in peeling off the layers of dead skin in order to reveal His new creation. As Jesus declared from His throne at the right hand of the Father, “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). Or consider His words in Matthew: “Assuredly I say to you, that in the regeneration, when the Son of Man sits on the throne of His glory, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life” (Matt. 19:28-29).
You see in those verses a few critical things all wrapped up together. There’s a hard decision-making, the sort where everything is ripped in half, and you have to choose between Jesus and family or Jesus and home. That kind of decision-making is what it takes to be a ruler. Remember, Jesus tells us that the ones who made these decisions to follow Him will later sit on thrones with Him. Also notice that these kinds of decisions, though they feel like they are stripping you of your most precious belongings, are actually leading you to a glorious inheritance. These are the decisions that produce a hundred-fold return (not a bad return on an investment). And then, you get eternal life, as well, on top of that return.
So, this discipline, which feels like it will cost you everything, is God’s way of pouring blessing onto you. And isn’t that the way that He always does it? The front of the line is the back; the head of the table is the foot; the servant is the master. And so, it only makes sense that making hard decisions in the midst of devastation would be God’s way of bringing you into great blessing.