While it is true that the New Testament writers did not attend college as you know it, they certainly did know a lot about the kinds of problems that occur on the college campus: intellectual challenges to the faith, conflict, pride, failure, questions of fairness and justice, getting along with others, sex, alcohol. What if you wanted to interact directly with those writers and could learn how they dealt with similar problems? What if some of those New Testament authors could be quizzed about their understanding of college-type problems and were asked for solutions to some of those issues? The results could be useful in terms of both analysis (of the college experience) and support (for you while you are experiencing it).
Each meditation in this book invites you to a conversation with the first-century Christian who authored the portion of Scripture printed at the top of each page. You have your story (who you are, what you are doing in college, where you are heading) and the biblical writers have their own faith story that informs what they write in their letters. Why were these four biblical texts used as the basis for the following meditations chosen and who is the Jesus you will encounter in each of them?
Colossians is a letter of St. Paul the Apostle to a church of Christians in what is today central Turkey. Those folks were honestly seeking to live their lives based on, and in accord with, Jesus Christ, and they wanted to make sure they had all their bases covered. The Paul-Colossian dialogue provides a positive, Christian understanding for someone with a vocation to be a theologically focused college student. It introduces a Jesus who is cosmic in creativity yet who still will make sense of things for you on a personal level.
The Gospel According to Matthew offers the complete picture of this Jesus who is so grandly described in Colossians. And it is the one of the four Gospels that particularly offers a Christology—a title or nickname or summary explaining some particularly important aspect of Jesus—that is most appropriate for your situation: Jesus the Teacher. Perfect!
Then First Corinthians. Things were not always sweetness and light in the early church. At Corinth they were particularly messy: conflicts, schisms, misbehavior, selfishness, pride, sexual deviance, overindulgence. (Almost begins to sound like life on some college campuses, doesn’t it?) When Christians began to invent the church a lot of things needed attention. This letter can function for you as a kind of first-century preview of the academic life. But in this letter St. Paul offers a concrete and powerful focus to generate appropriate faithful responses to the various errors embraced by the Corinthians: the crucified Christ.
Finally, First Peter readjusts its readers’ self-identity: they are “exiles”; and First Peter points out that Jesus provided both the model and the strength for you to follow in Jesus’ “footsteps” as you finish your tenure as a student in the college experience and prepare to set out on the new phase of your vocation as a faithful Christian, seeking to be obedient and to find justice in following Christ who himself was an “exile.”
May your story be strengthened by engagement with the stories and struggles these early texts offer. May your story be one that you write faithfully, nourished by those who have gone before and by the community of those to whom you are vitally connected through Christ in his body, the church. You’ve got messages; let’s see what they’re about.
Dale Goldsmith
Amarillo, Texas
August 1, 2015
Acknowledgements
Every book has a story behind it. The story for this volume began long ago when, as an undergraduate far from my home church, regular (or at least intermittent) Bible study became a fruitful source of stability in the swirling chaos of an unexpectedly challenging college experience. As my time in college extended into a career as teacher and academic dean in college settings, the conviction grew that Scripture could be a source for making sense out of the American college experience—especially for helping individuals grow in faith, sort the “wheat from the chaff,” and make sense out of the always new and often bewildering complexity of “going to college.”
I am convinced that Scripture brings us as close to Jesus, the Lord and Teacher, as we are likely to get in this lifetime. My hope is that judicious, prayerful, and diligent openness to the Scripture and the meditations in this book will prove useful to students in navigating the sometimes-rough waters of academia.
Finally, no one has been a better teacher and practitioner of Scripture than my wife Katy, whose own engagement and application of Scripture began on the campuses where she studied and taught. There is no one to whom I owe more.
Tips for Getting the Most from These Devotions
Devotional readings, or meditations on Scripture, need no special guidance; just jump in and start reading. But a few comments might be helpful.
First: Notice that each of the four biblical texts or “books” tells its own “story” of something that was important to the founding, the character, and the future viability of the earliest Christian church. So reading the devotions in order and noticing the underlying narrative framework will enhance the conversation that you have with the biblical authors.
Second: Remember that you are an important member of that grand community of Christians that stretches across time from Jesus up through today. Bring your personal story to the text’s story—its portion of the great story of God’s salvation history—and let the two stories meet, interact, conflict, merge, connect. The biblical text may seem unsettling at times, even impenetrable, and occasionally hard to apply to your situation. That’s okay. Maybe the next reading will be just what you need. And maybe the one that didn’t work for you today will be meaningful tomorrow. You don’t have to “get it” every day. The meditation offered on the biblical text is certainly not the only way to reflect on this piece of Scripture. Be ready to follow your own insights.
Third: When reference is made to another biblical “book,” that source is referred to in abbreviated form (example: Matt 1:5); when reference is to another verse in the same “book,” only chapter and verse are used (example: 3:16).
Colossians
Academically Inclined Christians
The first readers of Colossians grappled with the nature of Christian faith in a setting where knowledge was a premier hallmark of religious life. These were folks who wanted to understand everything from science to philosophy. The letter deals with questions of an intensely personal nature as well as questions of cosmic proportions. The bonus is that both questions tie together in Jesus Christ.
The Colossians lived in a town—no longer extant—in what today is Turkey, and they had experienced the devastation of mass destruction by earthquake in 60–61 CE just prior to the writing and their reading of this letter. They had also experienced cultural and religious changes and the breakdown of old religious certainties. Perhaps in part to address the uncertainties of the times, they were experiencing a rise in the popularity of various religious cults and were even flirting with the possibilities of making up their religion as they went along. They were people trying to be religious and seriously thoughtful, piecing together a personally tailored mosaic of religious faith to address life’s questions. Paul addresses the Colossians as fellow believers with whom he is eager to discuss issues of serious importance. His purpose was to encourage them to see that Jesus Christ could be at the center of their lives, hold things together for them, and make sense out of life.
1 – Warmest Greetings
Colossians 1:1–2 — (1) Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, (2) to the saints and faithful brothers and sisters in Christ in Colossae: Grace to you and peace from God our Father.
This is sacred Scripture. It is also a letter from one of the first Christians to several communities of new Christians. It is a positive letter, encouraging and uplifting, despite the fact that the author (Paul) has never seen these folks and that he is probably