The following is a lightly edited transcript

I am so glad that I’m here to hear these testimonies and the interaction. Congratulations to all of the graduates of the first year of your college life in the Insight Program. May God prosper you in all that you set your hand to do. I pray that he will establish the work of your hands.

At my last count, I have 29 nieces and nephews, and I was with one of them in the car today. He is a student at Bethel and he said, “I might be interested in firefighting as a vocation.” I know some wonderful firefighters, so I’m excited about that. I’m glad such people exist. He told me he said that to a friend and his friend said, “So why are you in college?” We looked at each other knowing that’s a dumb question. I hope you think it’s a dumb question too because the assumption behind that question is that you only do education for skillsets, and the skillset for firefighting is not liberal arts. Well, that’s not the main reason to go to college.

I still remember it well enough to know how happy I was that I didn’t know what I was going to do when I grew up while I went to college, so that I didn’t waste my time getting ready to do it. Instead, I looked at my college as an opportunity to become a person, to become wise, and to get exposed to more reality.

I’m sure you have read often this year that “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Christ Jesus” (Colossians 2:3). Now, it would be an absolutely foolish inference to draw from that verse, “You don’t need education; you just need Jesus.” That’s a category confusion.

If all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are in Jesus, because he made them all and they’re all rooted in him, it just might be implicit in that verse that you should have your eyes open in the world that he made so that you know him better, not just that you find a way to him that avoids the world in the hope that you might know all that you need to know. In effect, that would be saying, “You don’t need math, you don’t need English, you don’t need history, you don’t need anthropology, and you don’t need philosophy; you just need Jesus,” as though you wouldn’t find Jesus in all those places. It would be as if the things you saw there wouldn’t lead you up the beam into the Christ from which they’re all streaming — when there’s truth in those areas.

So I don’t feel excited when I hear a question like, “If you want to be a firefighter, why are you in college?” or, “If you want to be a homemaker, why are you in college?” We’re in school to see a whole panorama of life that comes out in all manifestations of disciplines in the hopes that all these beams of light, refracted in human minds, will lead us to the source of all things so that we know him better.

Four Mistakes

Every time I send Talitha off to school (she’s in fifth grade now), I try to remember to connect for her what she’s about to do each day with Jesus, and not in a superficial way like saying, “If you know this fact it might be useful in witnessing.” Well, that’s true and wonderful, but instead I would say, “If you study math, you’re going to know God better. I promise you, as you advance through the complexities of math from fifth grade to calculus, you will find out things about the nature of the mind of God that you would not get any other way.” It’s the same thing with the way language works. It’s the same thing with processes in history. It’s the same thing with politics, social studies, and art.

So thank you so much for believing that and not being too worried about what you’re going to do when you grow up. I had four years at Wheaton, three years at Fuller, three years in graduate school, and at age 28 I did not know what I wanted to do when I grew up. I just knew a few very central realities. I loved the Bible, and I wanted to use it to help other people obey it for Jesus’s sake. That leaves open a lot of possibilities, and I didn’t know which one I would take. So you know what I did? I took the first job that was offered to me, and after that I took the second job that was offered to me. I’ve been here ever since.

So I’m here to try to share a little wisdom with you, and I couldn’t care less, as long as it’s not sin, what vocation you use this wisdom in. There are four mistakes I don’t want you to make. That’s what I’m going to talk about. I started to learn how to not make these mistakes from my mother. It’s Mother’s Day, so I want to make sure I say that. I also learned these from my father, and then from wonderful teachers at Wheaton College and others in my education life. To this day I’m watching wise people live their lives and I’m learning these lessons.

I’m going to state them negatively as mistakes that you could make, but I don’t want you to make them. I’ll make some comments about each one.

1. Big Is Better Than Small

It’s interesting how we’ve heard some testimonies to that already. Mike was outlandishly speaking what could well be true, that this little class could in God’s mind be the most significant freshman year in the world — what an outlandish thing to say! That’s sort of like saying a mustard seed could fill the earth, or five loaves and two fish could feed 5,000 people, or that 300 men with Gideon could undo the Amalekites when they were filling the valley like the sands on the seashore — silly things like that.

Big is better than small is a mistake that many people will try to get you to believe. Do you want to know the biggest problem with evolution? It’s not just that it relates to biology, but that it relates to everything. Up until the First World War or so, people believed that things always get better; that as time goes by things get better. That’s what evolution does. It’s survival of the fittest so you always have the best surviving. Well, it doesn’t work that way, and history won’t necessarily bear that out; at least, that’s my reading of Mark 13 and Matthew 24. It won’t necessarily only get better toward the end of history and God’s reestablishment of his kingdom, where it will be better.

Big is better than small is not true, and I love to teach that to children with stories, not only like Gideon, but David and Goliath. Isn’t that just a great story? I just read it again because we’re reading through 1 Samuel. I have such good memories of teaching that story to my boys because it’s a real boy story. Goliath says, “Come, I’m going to feed you to the birds” (1 Samuel 17:44). My kids just loved that line. And of course, David responds to that statement by Goliath:

This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel (1 Samuel 17:46).

Do you know the reason why God uses people like David with slingshots? It’s because he is jealous to get the credit. So it would be just like him to use this little class to shake the world in ways nobody could dream, but only God could do, just like with the loaves and fish. He who is faithful in little things will be faithful in much, and he who is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much (Luke 16:10).

Saturated with the Bible

When I was in seminary, knowing that I wanted to use the Bible vocationally, I was willing to be an English teacher saturated with the Bible. That’s in my journal. I was willing to be a writer, or a missionary, or a teacher, or a pastor, as long as I could have the Bible at the center of my life and help people understand it, live it, and praise the God who’s revealed in it.

What do you do to get a start? Well you join a church. You don’t play footloose and fancy-free. You join a church and then you say to the leadership, “I’m available, and I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” I said that to John McClure, the head of the youth department at Lake Avenue Congregational Church, and he said, “Well, we need a seventh grade boys Sunday school teacher this year.” I said, “Count me in.”

So my freshman year at seminary I taught seventh grade boys. I poured my life into those boys. There were about nine of them. Steve Fuller was one of them, Dan Fuller’s son, who is a pastor now in San Jose. Four hours every Saturday afternoon I worked on my lesson, and at the end of that year, I said, “Now what do you want me to do, the same thing?” He said, “No, now we need a ninth grade teacher.” So I said, “Okay,” and I jumped over a class and taught ninth grade.

Midway through that year, the Galilean Sunday School Class of young married couples said, “We would like you to teach our class if they can do without you teaching the youth.” This is the way it’s gone my whole life. My dad said, “Keep the room clean where you are, son, and he’ll open the door when the next one’s ready.” Give your life to seventh graders, and they might need you with the ninth graders. Then if you give your life to ninth graders, they might need you with some young married couples.

After that, William Sanford La Sor asked me, “Would you be my Greek tutor for the summer?” and I said, “Well, yeah. But I don’t know Greek very well.” He said, “You will once you write the index for my book.” So I taught Greek, and then I taught Sunday school in Germany, and little by little I discovered gifts. I didn’t know what I could do at first.

Most of you know the story that when I was in high school I could not speak in front of a group. What you did here when four or five of you came and spoke, I could not have done. I stand amazed. At your age, I wouldn’t have thought I could do that in 1000 years. I would have totally shut down.

Ripple Effect

So it was incrementally that the Lord put me where he put me because I think, by grace, he helped me to work my head off at whatever task he gave me to do. If somebody gives you a task, do it with all your might and people will look at that and say, “Maybe you should do this other thing then.” Pray that you don’t ever fulfill the Peter Principle and get into a job that’s beyond you. It’s okay to say, “I think I just need to stop right where I am. I’m not going to do anything else. I’ve reached the apex of my ability. I love what I do here, and I hope that I can just keep doing it faithfully to the end.”

So in your life, don’t worry about how big the things you do are. Rather, worry about being faithful. Worry about working hard and giving yourself to what your hand finds to do with all your might. I use the phrase ripple effect a lot. That’s one of the little catch phrases that goes around here. What I mean by ripple effect is when I pray about a moment like this afternoon, what should I pray? I always pray for a ripple effect to happen. I’m dropping a pebble into 40 or 50 lives here. I’m just dropping a pebble. Other pebbles were dropped as well. What is that? It’s whatever God wants to make it; that’s what it is and no more.

So you pray, “Lord, I’m dropping my pebble this Sunday. I’m dropping my pebble in Chicago or Indianapolis.” Then you go out, dropping little pebbles at a banquet here or something else over there, and then just pray, “Lord, if you breathe upon a ripple, it can become a wave, maybe even a tidal wave, if you will.”

It isn’t so much that the little pebble that will determine whether the ripples reach the shore; it’s whether the wind catches it. So we drop our pebbles faithfully and pray. That was mistake number one. Don’t count on big being better. Be faithful in the small things, and God will do what he wills.

2. New Is Better Than Old

People think new ideas are better than old ideas. That’s not necessarily the case. Jeremiah 6:16 says:

Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.

C. S. Lewis, one of the most influential people for me, right up there with Jonathan Edwards, said, “I have lived nearly 60 years with myself and my own century, and I am not so enamored by either as to desire no glimpse of a world beyond them.” He thought of the 20th century, and he thought of his 60 years of life, and he considered, “You know, I would be a richer man if I got outside my century and outside myself.” So he prescribed this:

It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one until you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones. We all need books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period, and that means the old books. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the 20th century lies where we have never suspected it.

None of us can fully escape this blindness. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.

I think that’s true. Keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries coming in so that you can be aware of the folly of what you just heard on NPR. This is a parenthesis. I was just listening to NPR today and they were interviewing a woman because she wrote a novel, or maybe a non-fiction book, about her life and how she got pregnant as a 16 year old. Her mother disowned her and she went to live with her father. They were divorced, and they kept her in the house and didn’t let her get out. She may be about 40 years old now.

The interviewer said to her, “Why did they feel that way about your pregnancy? Did they feel you were contagious?” I was just thinking, “Lady, you may not think it’s shameful to get pregnant out of wedlock — which is irrelevant here — but you’re asking this question as if you don’t know why one might feel that way 40 years ago.” The clean sea breeze of the centuries has not been blowing through this lady’s head. Rather, a teeny, small, unclean, stagnant, non-breeze has taken up residency in her brain, such that she wants to ask the question, “Why do you think it was that they were concerned to keep you out of circulation?” Well, there are a few possible answers to that.

Seek Wisdom

Old people should be respected, as Job 12:12 says:

Wisdom is with aged men, and understanding in length of days.

Don’t mainly read books by emergent writers. First, and mainly, you should read books by old men like J.I. Packer and R.C. Sproul. Men with long years of battle who have learned, not only from the Bible and from books, but from life. The advice that I gave when students came to me at Bethel to find out what major they should take was to say, “I don’t really care at all what you major in. Find the wisest teachers and take everything they offer. I don’t care who they are. Just ask around. Ask who the teachers are that make you feel like light-years of wisdom have been imparted to you when you come out of their class.” You can pick up skills, right? You will pick that up. But as far as what’s going on at the level of wisdom, growth, and perspective, ask about that.

The Reformation, which you’ve been studying at some stage, was a great leap forward precisely by going backward. They rediscovered Augustine, they rediscovered the church fathers, and mainly, they rediscovered the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Old Testament. That flowered with what liberated the church, I believe, from the kind of folly that was so prevalent in the medieval Roman Catholic system. So go back, especially to the Bible. That’s mistake number two: New is better than old.

3. Having Is Better Than Being

Luke 12:15 says:

And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

That’s a very provocative statement. Not even when you have all that you could dream of having does your life consist in it. What’s he saying? He’s not just saying riches are dangerous, which they are. He says that in other places more clearly. He’s saying, “That’s just not what life is about. There’s no correlation between the fullness of life and the muchness of having.” In fact, there’s probably an inverse correlation, since he says it’s hard for the rich to get into the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 19:23).

I saw a picture in the paper the other day of Coronado Bridge. I remember I’ve only been across that bridge one time, and on the other side of the bridge were these condos that started at three quarters of a million dollars. So this is a rich place. The Coronado Bridge goes up, curves around, and stretches over to the rich place. There’s a beautiful beach over there and they actually have what looks like flecks of gold in the sand, which is why it’s called what it is.

I was told there that there are more people who jump off the Coronado Bridge to kill themselves than off the Brooklyn Bridge — the Brooklyn Bridge is near poor people, and the Coronado Bridge is near rich people. If you were to do a study of suicide in this country, there would be no correlation between poverty and suicide, at least not a clear, one-to-one ratio. Riches do not satisfy the soul. They do not make you be what God makes you to be. Being and having are not the same thing. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:34). You want to be something, not have something.

Don’t reduce your education to acquiring marketable skills. Study to become and behold, not to be rich. Study to become and to behold. In the end, we’re going to behold the Lord. The way that Paul argues about riches is this:

So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

So don’t boast in, “I’ve got this teacher, I’ve got that teacher, and I’ve got this advantage.” It’s all coming to you. You’re heirs of the universe. If you care about having, just wait, you will. Right now, become the kind of person who will know what to do with it when you get it, and it will take a certain kind of being. In the end, we will see him and we want to be the kind of people who can see him well.

So, to summarize where we’ve been so far:

• Mistake 1. Big is better than small.
• Mistake 2. New is better than old.
• Mistake 3. Having is better than being.

4. Visible Is Better Than Invisible

Finally, mistake number four: Visible is better than invisible.

The New Testament speaks about you not caring much about your outward appearance compared to your inward reality. Your adornment must be not merely external in braiding your hair, wearing gold jewelry, putting on dresses, etc. But let it be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God (1 Peter 3:3–4). That’s addressed to women, but the same kind of thing would be said to men who are into bodybuilding, hairstyling, body piercing, having two buttons open with a gold cross on their hairy chest, or whatever else you think is visually cool.

The Bible emphasizes: Don’t go there very often. Go to your heart. Become an invisibly beautiful person so that your behavior, which is visible, will be different. God is invisible and he is the greatest reality of all. No man has ever seen God (John 1:18).

So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:6–7).

I think that means we treasure in this world and we bank on in this world the most important things, and they’re not seen. We’re not walking by sight. If you structure your life around sight, it will be out of touch with reality, which sounds paradoxical. The world structures its life around sight. The last thing I heard before I came over here on NPR was all about investing. That’s what you do on Sunday afternoon on NPR — you learn how to put your money in the right place, which means put it everywhere because if you put it in one place it will go bad. They say, “Diversify, diversify, diversify,” and I said, “I think I’ve heard this before.”

These people are totally building their lives around what they can hold, touch, and see. The thought that the most important things in the world are invisible, especially God and the risen Christ, makes no sense to them. First Peter 1:8 says:

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.

Jesus Christ cannot be seen right now, and nobody is more precious to us. Nothing is more precious to us than Jesus. We will see him again, but the main thing we will experience when we see him with our eyes is the visible manifestation of invisible glory — the glory of love, the glory of wisdom, the glory of truth, and the glory of spiritual beauties. So don’t make the mistake of thinking visible is better than invisible.

Here’s my concluding summary: If God is God, and he is, small with him is better than big with anybody. His old things are better than anybody’s new things. Being his child is better than having the world. It is better to be blind with the invisible God than to see everything without him.