Reflecting the world

by Phil Brown
Synod Executive

I like questions. I walk with questions – those for myself and those I ask. Good questions seek knowledge and understanding – foundational for Presbyterians.

You may wonder or can probably anticipate where questions led my commencement address (see the previous post) to Buena Vista University graduates.

I talked about the questions they had brought with them to college four years earlier. Is this the right place? Can I make it? Can I afford it? Will I find new friends?

And, based on their college experience, there were those questions upon leaving and moving into the world. You can guess some of them. Can I pay my debt? Will I get the grad school I want? Will I find the right Job? The right spouse? And on and on.

I had some real live answers to those questions because I’d interviewed a dozen or so students a few months earlier. I hoped that at least those students would be listening. I enjoyed and found meaningful the opportunity to share their comments.

But I needed then, and now, to move question a bit farther along. Keeping the question theme in the realm of academics only works so long. The graduates, each in their own way, needed to take that next step beyond their diploma.

And they were entering a world with incredible divisions, from our towns to our states to our country and across the globe. It was true last spring and it remains true today – think of the Super Committee and its inability to resolve differences. There’s the gap that exists between rich and poor – think of Occupy Wall Street. There are governments that are not of the people and for the people – look to the Middle East and the revolutions in the streets. Maybe our own nation?

Then think about how we live. There are amazing advances in technology and science – think Time magazine’s piece on technological singularity. There is a significant emphasis on the individual and far less on interpersonal community – unless the community is virtual.

There is a disappearing capacity to articulate and live out a moral life. And I know if I asked you, the list would multiply. The speed of communication is mimicked by rapid social change.

So my challenge to the graduating class, my challenge to you and, in its own separate way, my challenge to me is to formulate a question to carry – not just about individual lives and journeys, but about the common good.

What question do we live with that will lead us to serve the common good?

Do we see the disparities in the world around us, in the places we live, work or go to school? Where are the divisions? Where can we serve with our gifts? What difference can we make?

These days we seem to have more answers than questions, and we seek company among those who agree with us.

And we seem to be living that way as a church – a reflection of the world in which we live.

I don’t sense faithfulness to Jesus Christ in such behavior.