I recall only one detail from my 1969 campus tour at Iowa State University.
Friendly student ambassadors explained procedures and traditions as they showed us around the main buildings. Here’s ISU’s Memorial Student Union, a wonderful, grand building dedicated to graduates who perished during WWI. Lots of history, a place of beauty and reverence. In the west entrance, engraved in stone above the doorway, the guide pointed to a quote:
“We come to college not alone to prepare to make a living, but to learn to live a life.”
My path didn’t suddenly change. It wasn’t a miraculous fork in my immature, teenage road. However, it’s worth noting that nearly fifty years later I remember standing and pondering that quote.
Making a living…living a life.
The notion hung in the background as a confused kid navigated working-my-way-through-school and confronted war protests and encountered ideas that didn’t fit into my privileged, white, middle class, small town box. It was there when I signed my first teaching contract – and took a pay cut from the grocery store job.
It was there a decade later when I met Jesus and began to understand the horrible price we pay when we buy into the lies of transactional, USAmerican consumerism.
What’s in it for me? The good deal. Win-lose. It’s gotta be “fair.”
Jesus, of course, cared nothing about our notions of fairness and deal-making. During the first Holy Week He was beaten, tortured, and crucified, not for His sins but for mine and yours. He accepted the punishment we deserve. The Gospel is totally unfair, a completely one-sided transaction that comes with an invitation: Follow Me.
Making a living…living a life.
When school becomes all about making a living, education becomes a transaction and students become consumers focused on short-term targets: pass the tests and get the degree. No time for challenging questions or deep reflection, those are just obstacles in the shortest-path-to-the-goal.
When following Jesus becomes a transaction, we get self-centered prosperity preaching and ends-justify-the-means politics. Following becomes conditional, as long as it’s a good deal, if there’s something in it for me.
So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:31-33)
“Your heavenly Father knows that you need them.”
It’s important to make a living, to be a responsible steward. It’s good to learn and practice a craft, a trade, a profession – with skill, integrity, and success.
Essential, though, to first live a life, to first seek the kingdom that values unfair, non-transactional notions like service, sacrifice, grace, and unconditional love. Living a life isn’t fair. We don’t get what we deserve.
We get what Jesus deserves – everything.