Opening Week Speech, Fall 2015

Unless otherwise noted, these speeches and open letters were written for the Dean of Students of Biola University between 2011-2016.

---

Well…You made it!  

I want to begin with a ‘thank you.’ Once again, God has used our Admissions staff to bring amazing students to this place. Let’s thank them one more time.

So we are very glad you’re here. As Dean of Students, I want to welcome you to Biola University! I know it’s been a long day and we’re not done yet, so I will try to keep it short and simple.

Because what you’re here for isn’t all that complicated.

There are really only three questions you need to be able to answer by the time you graduate from Biola. So as you’re going through your years here, keep these 3 questions in mind:

• Who is God?

• Who am I?

• And based on my answers to those first two questions, How then shall I live?

The answers to those 3 questions are the core of a Christian college education. That’s the foundation of what you’re here to learn, so those are the 3 answers you need to walk away with.

And that third question, the “How then shall I live?” is the hardest… and it’s the hardest probably because of the way we treat the other two questions. 

Now, parents, cover your ears, because I’m going to give your students a hack, a way to shortcut the system. Okay, listen now: the easiest thing for you to do is to take your Bible classes, and your Theology classes, and you collect all the answers to that “Who is God?” question, and then you put all those answers in your “Who is God?” box, and you seal it up and put it on the shelf when you graduate and never look at it again.

And you do the same thing with the “Who am I?” question: You take all the answers you get from your Psych and Soc and History and Literature and Bio (and Bible) classes, and you put those answers in your “Who am I?” box, and then you seal that box up and put it on the shelf when you graduate and never look at it again.

Okay, I’ve given you the hack. That’s the easiest way to get through here.

But if you do it that way…if you do that…then how are you ever going to answer that 3rd question: “How then shall I live?”

What will you use to make those decisions? The alternatives are not promising.

• You could follow your appetites and desires and fleeting impulses and live the life of a hummingbird, flitting from this thing to the next.

• Or you can end up trying to listen to a thousand voices screaming from a thousand different directions, and spend your life trying to please people who neither know nor love you.

• Or you might end up immobilized, paralyzed, so afraid of making a bad choice that you make no choices at all.

• Or you could find someone to make all your choices for you, someone who says “I love you” but means “I want to control you,” and you will live the life of a slave.

That’s no way to live. God forbid.

We use the word “integrity,” and we think of it as another way of saying “honesty” or “trustworthiness.” 

But you know what “integrity” really means? The word “integrity” means that all your pieces fit together…what you know and what you believe and what you say and how you live—they all fit together without glaring contradictions. That’s “integrity.”

But integrity will never happen for you if you treat your classes and your chapels and your experiences here as just random facts that have nothing to do with each other and nothing to do with real life.

So, I gave you the hack, and some people do it that way. But do you want to know the right way to do Biola?

While you’re here, 

• you take the wisdom you gain from your Bible classes, 

• and the wisdom you get from your Art and Literature and Science and Psych and Soc and Business and all your other classes, 

• add the experience you gain here living in community with people you’ve just met, 

• and you work all those pieces together, and let them work on you.

And that’s how you get the answer to the 3rd question. Not easy… it’s work. But that’s how you learn how to live. That’s how you Abound. And then you begin to become the person God designed you to be. 

1.    Who is God?

2.    Who am I?

3.    How then shall I live?

Those are the three questions. And if you really want to, you will find the answers in this place.

Students— I look forward to seeing you again at Convocation on Wednesday. Now, I would like to introduce our Orientation Student Directors XXX and XXX who will be highlighting some important information connected to this weekend.