Commencement Address
Graduating High School Class
Cumberland Co. Home School Association
Hay Street UMC
June 2, 2001

These famous lines from Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet, are given to introduce the character of Polonius.  The temptation to offer some sound advice to young people who are preparing to leave home is overwhelming for parents.  Polonius represents this drive to advise run amok.  He is a pompous old windbag and his self-important, meddlesome character provides some comic relief in an otherwise bleak drama.  There's just something funny about the older generation trying to impart wisdom to their young charges as they prepare to go and face the world on their own.  I think that Laertes is probably rolling his eyes as Polonius pontificates over him. 

Well, prepare to roll your eyes, because here comes the advice.  But unlike Polonius' worldly, utilitarian counsel, I hope that these words have greater depth and will be worth remembering and applying to your life.   As you prepare to take this next step in your life's sojourn I want to offer three points for your edification.

I.  Learn the art of taking the right things more seriously, and the right things less seriously.  And this is an art!  Learning to strike the appropriate balance in life will enable you to avoid falling into being either a person permanently stunted in irresponsible adolescence on the one hand, or, on the other hand, the obnoxious worker drone who believes that any sign of enjoying life is an indication of moral weakness and a flawed character.  

A.    The things that you must take seriously tend to center around self-discipline.  This is the hardest lesson to learn in life and those who do not learn it end up ruining their own lives and becoming a source of heartache for those who have to be involved with them through family or employment. 

Prov. 18:9  One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.

Prov. 10:26 As vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is a sluggard to those who send him.  

1.      Be diligent, see your tasks through to the end.  Learn self-control, DO NOT LET YOUR APPETITES DOMINATE YOUR LIFE. (One of the fruits of the Spirit is self-control, so we can call upon God for supernatural help in this area!)  Learn to delay gratification.  Realize right now that there is no way to avoid hard work in this life.  But the good news is that if you do that work as unto the Lord you will find enjoyment and satisfaction in your occupation.  

2.      Don’t expect this life to be fair – that’s why there is a judgment after death!  God ultimately settles accounts.  Yet you are called on by God to be agents of his Kingdom justice in this world. 

John 15:18-20  If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.

Fair doesn’t happen in this life! If humanity managed to crucify the pure Son of God as a criminal, why do we expect that life is going to treat us justly.  Commit you way to the Lord and he will cause the righteousness of your cause to shine forth as the noon day sun. 

3.      Don’t expect life to be pain free.  Suffering brings depth to the soul and the world is sorely in need of DEEP PEOPLE.  Indeed, the shallowness with which most people live, the trivial nature of their interests and concerns may be one of the most distressing things about our culture today.  God allows suffering to enter our lives to form in us the likeness of Jesus Christ.  It is doubtful that God can use anyone greatly until He has hurt him deeply--A.W. Tozier

1 Peter 4:12,13  Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. 

B.     With all that said, some of us don’t need to take life more seriously, we need to lighten up!  Yes there is hardship and hard work in life.  But Jesus said in John 10:10 “I have come life and have it more abundantly.  Abundantly living is joyous living.  One beef I have with Christians is we don’t seem to be living life fully enough, expansively enough.  As a corrective I share the words of an 85-year-old Kentucky woman named Nadine Stair:

           If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time.

      I would relax. I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I know of very few things I would take seriously. I would be crazier. I would be less hygienic.

      I would take more chances. I would take more trips. I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers and watch more sunsets...

      I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.

      You see, I am one of those people who lives… sanely and sensibly, hour after hour, day after day.

      Oh, I have had my moments and, if I had it to do over again I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead each day.

      I have been one of those people who never go anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute.

      If I had it to do over again, I would go places and do things and travel lighter than I have.

      If I had my life to live over, I would start barefooted earlier in the spring, and stay that way later in the fall. I would play hooky more. I wouldn't make such good grades except by accident. I would ride on more merry-go-rounds.

      I'd pick more daisies.  

II.  The second point of wisdom I want you to take with you as you graduate from High School is that you need to learn to love the life of the mind.  God wants us to honor and love him with our intellect.  Jesus reiterated the Torah’s command: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30)  In your everyday life become Christian philosophers and pursue the philosophical virtues of the TRUE, the GOOD, and the BEAUTIFUL.  Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living.  I think this applies for us a Christian intellectuals as well. 

A.    Don’t equate anti-intellectualism with holiness.  Be brutally honest in your academic pursuits – you have nothing to fear in the truth, because all TRUTH (or as Francis Schaeffer called it, “True Truth”) is God’s truth.  If your studies seem to strike at the root of the Christian faith, then you haven’t studied deeply enough.  Don’t bend the facts to suit your own presuppositions!  This is a bad witness and collapses under rigorous scrutiny 

B.    Cultivate what I like to call a “Holy Skepticism” about truth claims.  This attitude has biblical support: Test everything. Hold on to the good. (1 Thess. 5:21)  This advice from Paul was specifically given in the case of truth claims being made in the church.  Don’t be afraid to tell the person who is trying to get you to affirm some experience or truth claim, “I don’t know about that, let me look it up in the Scriptures and study what the early church believed about this.”  

C.    As Christians who are learning to love God with our minds, we need to be open mined, but not so open minded that our brains fall out!  Many of us are going on to secular colleges, or schools with Christian names but are actually secular institutions.  You are going to have to work harder than your non-Christian colleagues because you will have to discover the unproven assumptions and the presuppositions that cause your instructor or text to present the material in a particular way.  The following poem, Creed, by Steve Turner illuminates the materialistic, naturalistic, atheistic worldview with which you will be contending:

III.  Finally and most importantly you need to ask yourself right now, “What is my passion in life?”  Within you and from without come the siren calls of hundreds of voices that seek to lay claim to your heart.  But the  human heart is only large enough for one great love.  That love, that passion will determine the course of your life.  Diagnose your passion right now.  Ask yourself:  “What do I have to live for?  What do I have that is worth dying for?” 

If your passion is making money, or gaining power, or influence, or immersing yourself in pleasure and entertainment then your life will be empty and futile.  Shortly before his death, Mark Twain wrote these bitter words because his life’s passion was ultimately unfulfilling:

A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat  and struggle;...they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble  for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them;  infirmities follow; ...those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. It (the release)  comes at last--the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them--and they vanish from a world where they were of no  consequence,...a world which will lament them a day and forget  them forever.

Even better are the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes.  The life lived “Under the sun”, focusing only on this world without a relationship with God is declared to be meaningless:

Eccles. 2:17-23 So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless.

The life lived well is governed by a single passion, a burning devotion to Jesus Christ.  Jesus called this being “pure of heart” and bestowed a blessing on all those who live this way.  Soren Kirkegaard said that purity of heart is to will one thing.  Jesus said, “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is [single], your whole body will be full of light.” Matt. 6:22 

A single-minded devotion to Jesus Christ brings everything else into proper perspective.  Your continued education will flourish, your career will be more meaningful, your relationships will be more fulfilling if Jesus Christ fills your existence.  St. Paul sums this up in Philippians 1:21 when he says, “For me TO LIVE IS CHRIST and to die is gain.”

With his life dominated by this passion, he did not end his days in bitterness and futility like Twain or Solomon.  Instead, writing from the darkness of a dungeon cell, awaiting execution he writes these triumphant words:

For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. 2 Tim 4:6-7

So, unlike Polonius, I will not encourage you “to thine own self be true”, but rather, To Jesus Christ be true.  And if you don’t follow any other of this advice, but keep this one point then neither I nor your parents have much to fear on your account.

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