(The following post is the third of three adapted from a message presented by Academic Dean Sam Koenen at our new Thursday morning Lyceum. Read Part 1 and Part 2.)

When the story begins, John’s world is very narrow and purposeless. He thinks that his reason for existing is simply to follow the Landlord’s rules. He doesn’t understand much about the world around him, and he hasn’t seen much because he hasn’t gone far from what is familiar to him. It is only when he ventures outside of what is familiar to him, when he goes a few yards farther down the road, that he experiences something that alters his life forever.

All of us are in a similar position. Like John, we don’t see very clearly and we don’t understand very much. We often obey our Landlord’s rules out of fear of the consequences rather than love for the Landlord. Like John, we need to hear a voice calling us, a beauty that draws us out of our common experience and fear into a new reality.

I submit to you that for those who have ears willing to hear and eyes willing to see, your humanities classes this year will offer many opportunities to experience the kind of Joy that came to John. Ask the seniors if they have ever had a moment in humanities class when they felt a “sweetness and a pang so piercing” it made them forget about everything else, a sudden shocking moment of a beauty that pointed beyond itself to that which is ultimately Beautiful. The same can happen to you if, like John, you are willing to venture a few yards farther down the road, a little way past the familiar, a little way beyond what you are used to.

It may happen to you when you read of Aeneas returning to rescue his people, helm afire and god-forged shield held high. Or when you read of Beowulf’s body, broken in his final battle. For some, Joy will come when Elizabeth finally sees that all the pride she had been seeing in Darcy was mirrored in her very own prejudice, and that she does love him, she does.

Perhaps Joy will come when you read of the simple obedience and faith of the early fathers of the church, willing to die joyfully for Christ, or read in George Herbert’s poetry how God uses our afflictions to tune our hearts to the key of his love. Or when you read of how the Redcrosse Knight’s first glimpse of the Celestial City breaks his heart with its beauty.

At some point, the moment for Joy will come, and the only question is whether you will be ready for it. Will you? Will you be ready to hear the voice say to you “Come”? Will you hear the sweet musical sound? Will you see the mist part and glimpse the island? Will you see the object of your nameless desire?

At the end of The Pilgrim’s Regress, John eventually realizes that the object of his desire cannot be found in this world. All the beauty and delight he found in objects in this world were signposts pointing him to a beauty and a delight of an object that transcended this world. At this point John realizes the truth of the words St. Augustine wrote in the opening of his Confessions, words addressed to God:

“You stir us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is [restless] until it rests in you.”

John realizes that the voice he heard long ago, and the island he saw, and all the beauty and joy he had known from that day to this was all used by God to draw his heart to its proper place. God made John restless by design so that John would learn contentment in God alone and not in the gifts of God.

The same is true of each of you. God has poured numerous blessings into your lives. One of those blessings is that he has placed you at Petra this year to learn and grow in wisdom and virtue. But this year won’t be all beauty and joy and glimpses of islands. There are papers to be written, speeches to deliver, tests to take, conflict with friends to resolve, sins to confess. But this is all part of the work of planting and pruning apple trees so you can enjoy an abundant harvest of the sweet fruit of good education.

And rest assured that while you labor toward this harvest of education, God himself is at work in you, watering your weary roots, pruning your dead branches, and preparing you for the harvest of mature godliness.

He has made you restless by design, and he will not rest in his work until you find perfect rest in him.

(The following post is the second of three adapted from a message presented by Academic Dean Sam Koenen at our new Thursday morning Lyceum. Read Part 1 and Part 3.)

In his autobiographical allegory, The Pilgrim’s Regress, C.S. Lewis tells the story of a young boy named John who lives in a town full of rules. His parents tell him that if he doesn’t follow the rules, the Landlord who owns the town will throw him into a black hole full of snakes. This naturally upsets John, who strives as hard as he can to keep the rules. He strives so hard that the rules are almost the only thing that John can think about.

Lewis writes,

Now the days and the weeks went on again, and I dreamed that John had little peace either by day or night for thinking of the rules and the black hole full of snakes. At first he tried very hard to keep them all, but when it came to bed-time he always found that he had broken far more than he had kept: and the thought of the horrible tortures to which the good, kind Landlord would put him became such a burden that next day he would become quite reckless and break as many as he possible could; for oddly enough this eased his mind for the moment. But then after a few days the fear would return and this time it would be worse than before because of the dreadful number of rules that he had broken during the interval…

John went out one morning and tried to play in the road and to forget his troubles; but the rules kept coming back into his head so that he did not make much of it. However, he went on always a few yards further till suddenly he looked up and saw that he was so far away from home that he was in a part of the road he had never seen before. Then came the sound of a musical instrument, from behind it seemed, very sweet and very short, as if it were one plucking of a string or one note of a bell, and after it a full, clear voice–and it sounded so high and strange that he thought it was very far away, further than a star. The voice said, Come.

Then John saw that there was a stone wall beside the road in that part: but it had (what he had never seen in a garden wall before) a window. There was no glass in the window and no bars; it was just a square hole in the wall. Through it he saw a green wood full of primroses:  and he remembered suddenly how he had gone into another wood to pull primroses, as a child, very long ago–so long that even the moment of remembering the memory seemed still out of reach. While he strained to grasp it, there came to him from beyond the wood a sweetness and a pang so piercing that instantly he forgot his father’s house, and his mother, and the fear of the Landlord, and the burden of the rules. All the furniture of his mind was taken away. A moment later he found that he was sobbing, and the sun had gone in:  and what it was that had happened to him he could not quite remember, nor whether it had happened in this wood, or in the other wood when he was a child. It seemed to him that a mist which hung at the far end of the wood had parted for a moment, and through the rift he had seen a calm sea, and in the sea an island.

What John experiences out on the road is the awakening of a nameless desire, a desire that is simultaneously sweet and painful. This is what C.S. Lewis calls Joy, with a capital “J”. Joy is an extremely important concept to Lewis: experiences of Joy and the search to find what caused it eventually led Lewis to become a Christian.

Lewis scholar Louis Markos explains what Lewis means by Joy this way:

Joy signified an intense, overwhelming desire for an indefinable, numinous “something” that was just beyond his grasp. Joy, that is, was a feeling, but a feeling that pointed beyond itself. If one tried to hold on to the feeling and enjoy it as an end in itself, it would quickly vanish…Likewise, if one tried (greedily) to reproduce the feeling, it would never come; joy comes only when the mind forgets itself and seeks something else.

As the story goes on, John leaves his family and sets out from his hometown in search of the object of his nameless desire. His search is made more difficult by two things. First, he finds many things that pretend to be the object of his desire–art, music, girls, ideas, fame, etc. These do indeed give him pleasure for a while, but not for very long. Second, John’s search grows desperate when he realizes that the more counterfeits he finds, the harder it is to remember what Joy really feels like.

What does all this have to do with humanities, Mr. Koenen? Well, everything, which I will explain in my third and final post.

(The following post is the first part of three adapted from a message presented by Academic Dean Sam Koenen at our new Thursday morning Lyceum. Read Part 2 and Part 3.)

Why study humanities? As the name implies, we study the humanities in order to become human. Think about what this means. Since we are studying to become human, that must mean we are not human yet, or at least not fully.

So what does it mean to be human? Certainly we are all human biologically, and fully so in this meaning of the word. None of us are semi-species, half-human and half-something-else (though some may act like it at times). From a Christian worldview, we must define “human” by looking at Jesus Christ, the only perfect human. To be human means to be like Christ.

This helps us understand the purpose of the humanities then: we study them in order to become more like Christ, and therefore more human. And we all know that we need to grow in this way. But if we are to grow in Christ, why do we study so many books written by humans, many of them profoundly flawed, many of them not even Christian, some of them wildly antagonistic toward Christianity?

This is an excellent question, and its answer has two parts. First of all, because all truth comes from God even when uttered by pagan tongues. All beauty, even if painted by rebellious hands, has its beginning and its end in God, the Supremely Beautiful One. And all goodness has its measure in the goodness of God.

The second reason such books can help us become more like Christ is because of the doctrine of common grace. God graciously gives good gifts even to those in rebellion against him. To many non-Christians, God has revealed truth, given artistic gifts, and even the ability to love, sacrifice, and live virtuously. By studying the best that humans have thought, said, and done through the ages, we begin to participate in a Great Conversation of what it means to be human. We recognize both our common humanity with these authors and humbly acknowledge that though they may not have full access to the truth revealed in Jesus Christ, yet in many ways they are far more human than we have yet become.

Finally, we don’t just read these books on their own. We also study them from a Christian framework, learning to see the world through the lens of Scripture, trying to see through the eyes and heart of Christ. And as we read these books, they begin to change us. They make us restless, awakening in us deep desires that we can’t quite name. The best way I can explain this effect books have on us is by telling a story…which I will do in my next post.