Last spring, a graduating senior reflected with me on his learning experiences at Taylor. I asked what course had demanded the most of him. “Western Political Thought,” he answered immediately, recalling all the rigors involved in a class with Dr. Brad Seeman.
After a pause, in almost an afterthought, he added one more observation: “I think I learned the most from that class."
No one who ever apprenticed in a craft, trained for an athletic task, or pursued a relationship would find this surprising. The Scriptures tell us that grace is a gift, “not from ourselves” (Eph. 2:8-9), and we should never forget it. They also record Jesus warning that the wide gate and the broad road “lead to destruction” (Mt. 7:13-14). Easy paths do not produce flourishing.
Yet downstream of the Fall, we humans love what Andy Crouch calls “instant, effortless power”; in shorthand, “magic.” We order our lives around the quest for convenience. In some domains, that’s perfectly appropriate, but corner-cutting exacts a cost in the long run.
As an example, consider citizenship. The writer Christine Rosen has noted, “On-demand works well for video, but not always for democracy.” The U.S. Constitution presumes a citizenship that is anything but convenient. We love to invoke our rights. To practice any of the “five freedoms” guaranteed in the 1st Amendment, however, you will need to venture out into public, form coalitions, encounter people with different outlooks, and do the hard work of persuasion.
But let’s move to a topic that’s more germane for you: college. Have you ever wondered why folks at Taylor talk so much about the Foundational Core? There’s a reason your professors will recoil if we hear you mention “getting a class out of the way.” The very idea of a university assumes that other people have something you need. In the 21st century, we tend to think of it as a credential. And if all you need is a group of letters after your name, then, by all means, take the most frictionless path available.
The best Christian thought on education has understood the matter differently. More than any credential, what we need is wisdom, and for millennia humans have studied the liberal arts as a means to attain it. In the pursuit of wisdom, friction is a feature, not a bug. Those Foundational Core classes, the source of so much friction in your college journey–they are grist God uses to refine you.
I majored in history as an undergrad, and I loved it. But the person I am today cannot be understood apart from my Foundational Core classes. God used courses in math and the sciences to show me divine order in the universe; courses in communication and psychology to demonstrate the complexity of interpersonal relationships; courses in computer science and comparative religions to teach me about systems that structure the world; courses in literature and the arts to reveal what it means to be human.
I did not choose the Foundational Core, and that’s precisely the point. As with every grace, I was given a gift I did not earn, one hard-won for me by generations of Christians who had labored to determine the path of wisdom.
This principle matters for more than your years at Taylor. The instinct to choose convenience taints nearly everything about modern life. We see it in all the statistics about community, relationships, and loneliness. From food delivery to shopping to dating to health care, nearly all the most successful apps from recent years have removed friction by drawing us out of human-to-human interaction.
Collin Hansen and Jonathan Leeman have analyzed the same pattern with “virtual church,” a development they fear threatens to “individualize Christianity” by convincing believers “that they can follow Jesus . . . in some abstract sense, without teaching them what it means to be part of a family.”
Frictionless apps have benefits, and I’ve observed firsthand how a streamed church service can minister to a person isolated by illness or infirmity. But we need always to remind ourselves that convenience suits some tasks better than others.
So in your education, your relationships, your discipleship–take active steps to reject “magic” and to choose hard things. Most importantly, do this in community. It is hard to be countercultural alone! Find friends who share your desire for more–a richer classroom experience, a better politics, a community that reflects the spirit of the early church–and prayerfully pursue it together. The inconvenience is the point.
