Philip's Tunnel to Nowhere 3

My career goal* is to research and teach about youth culture, emphasizing youth subcultures, with the goal of informing the church to help it communicate the Gospel.

This is just a slight rewording of what I’ve been pondering lately, but this isn’t Jeopardy so it probably makes sense to change it from a question to a statement.

*Tentatively.

I should probably get my latest news up here so I can point people here instead of writing long e-mails.

In early 2009 I was accepted into the Masters program at the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education. This M. Ed. would open the door to working at a college in many capacities, but specifically in my case what interests me is working in career services, advising college students on how to meet career goals. It’s a great program (ranked #2 in the latest USN&WR, down from #1 in 2008) and I’m greatly honored to be accepted. But for various reasons I deferred starting the program until Fall 2010.

This has given me some time to address a nagging feeling that, although an M. Ed. would be a very good career path, it might not be the best career path. Back in May I formulated my aspirations in the following question:

What would be a career path for someone who wants to study youth culture (and especially subcultures) as an academic with the goal of informing the church to help it communicate the Gospel?

I’m not sure I’ve found the answer, but I’ve come up with a plan that’s got me pretty excited. As I understand it, Fuller Seminary is one of the leaders in the field of missiology — they even have a School of Intercultural Studies. They also happen to have a professor who’s one of the leading researchers in youth culture. So it seems like a great combination where I can go study both youth ministry and the theory of cross-cultural outreach, with the goal of integrating both into my eventual academic career.

They don’t have a doctorate program, so getting a Masters would be a prerequisite to moving on to a Ph. D. At this point I’d say I’m about 80% sure I’m at least going to apply, and then weigh options accordingly. I have until March to decide to enroll at Michigan or not.

It’s a little daunting to envision paying (for at least one year) for a degree that, once I finish it, won’t qualify me to do anything else but pursue another degree! Stay tuned for details.

It really annoys me when other people, especially Christians, believe that happiness is just a matter of deciding to be happy. I got told today that Jesus told us to love people, implying that we can make a choice contrary to feelings there, so therefore it follows that we can just decide to be happy too. Arrrrgh.

I turned off my automatic feed on Facebook so that this post won’t get pulled into there via RSS/Atom. I’m just not up to all the well-meaning comments and all that, and feeling needy, and burdening my friends. Funny enough, posting it on here is about the closest thing to a private journal that exists. (Of course I could make it literally private, but part of the fun is expressing these thoughts publicly, even if it’s only a nominal kind of publicly that no one will ever see. I’m a strange person.)

Over the years I’ve become pretty good at the parlor game, so I think I can play both roles here.

- I’m unhappy with life. I don’t think God answers my prayers or cares about anything related to me. Sometimes I wonder if I’m even deceiving myself to believe God is out there, but then I think of the evidence and am pretty convinced there is a personal higher power. He just doesn’t seem to want much to do with me.

- How can you say that? Don’t you know Jesus died for you?

- Yes, and to the extent that this makes for a happier afterlife, I’m genuinely grateful. But it’s all abstract. I see nothing relating this reality to the earth where I live and breathe. I certainly hope I can trust God for a wonderful afterlife and I want to believe in that, desperately I do, but it seems really disconnected from where I am right now.

- But God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life!

- Oh yeah? Then why does it seem like all the good, meaningful stuff in life is meant for someone else? Career satisfaction, finding love, having a wife and children, all of that is plainly intended for someone else. It’s like in the circles I run in, I’m reading someone else’s mail. And that mail says, “God intends all these wonderful things for YOU!” Only, I know it’s not my mail.

- Things could be so much worse! You have supportive parents, a good education, so many blessings….

- Oh, I don’t doubt things really could be worse. I could be born into incredible poverty in some preindustrial village in a developing country. I could be in 14th-century Europe dying of the Black Plague. I could be buried alive in the Mexico City earthquake of 1985. I can think of all kinds of situations that would be worse than where I am now, and I’m absolutely thankful I’m here and not there. So the sign that God loves me is that my meaningless life is less full of suffering than an alternative meaningless life might be?

- But your dissatisfaction with your life isn’t a reason to question God! The suffering you’re going through now is to prepare you for something great God’s going to do. Why, look at how much time Paul spent wandering around (Gal 1.17-18, 2.1)!

- Sure, maybe this is all preparation. And maybe from now until the day I die, until it’s all unquestionably finished for my earthly life, you can always use this as a catch-all answer. No matter what happens, who’s to say it’s not just preparation for something else? How would we test this hypothesis? Until I’m dead, we can’t! And even then, who’s to say I’m not a martyr, not like Jim Elliot dying some apparently pointless death only so that my murderers can come to faith years later? Your answers are too easy, because they’re not externally verifiable. If you have an answer for everything, then you have an answer to nothing.

And on and on I go. Even writing this out feels like philosophical masturbation because I’m not getting any closer to truth. Sometimes I feel guilty for questioning God who loves someone so unworthy as me. But, these are the dialogues I have in my head, so I suppose I’m not being unfaithful or somehow sinning to put them into words and post them where no one will see them.

(If you read this far, by no means do I intend my remark about “well-meaning comments” to dissuade you from posting feedback.)