What would Jesus do on campus? He specifically told his  followers not to make a public display out of prayer—like this one. (Photo credit: FLICKRCC/SDDIRK)

Tikkun Magazine, September/October 2009

by Tony Campolo

Dear students of the 2010 school year,

As this school year begins, you will find your campus filled with students craving spiritual experiences, but it is likely that all they will be offered is religion. You know that there is a difference between the two!

There will be plenty of displays of religion on your campus, no matter where you turn. It will be hard for you to escape them. You will see football players in the middle of the gridiron huddling to pray to a Jesus who said, "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in Heaven" (Matthew 6:1).

You will see track stars pointing up to God after trouncing their racing rivals, indicating that God made them victorious, much to the dismay of the losers, who, by implication, were declared not to be in God's favor.

Undoubtedly, you will be accosted by well-meaning religionists who, sometimes with genuine sincerity, will smile at you with beatific radiance as they invite you to share in this or that special gathering wherein their paths to ultimate fulfillment will be explained.

On almost all the billboards there will be posted notices of ministries ranging from Hillel to the Newman Club, along with announcements for every imaginable guru promoting various Eastern nirvanas.

Some of your fellow students will find help and hope in such religious activities. But for many, these types of religiosity only remind them of what is absent in their lives while leaving them all the more thirsty for those fruits of ecstatic spirituality that the Apostle Paul listed as "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23).

Given these realities, it is not surprising that Rabbi Jesus offered a proposal that deserves serious consideration. He told his disciples:

And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Matthew 6:5-6)

 

The seventeenth-century intellectual and spiritual giant Blaise Pascal took the advice of Jesus and did just that. On Monday, November 23, 1654, he sat alone in a darkened room and waited in silence to be invaded by a sacred presence. After sitting for hours, Pascal yielded to what the theologian Paul Tillich called "the Ground of all Being" and entered what the Celtic Christians called "the thin place"-that holy place wherein the walls between the self and the Sacred become so penetrable that that which transcends religious forms can break through and envelop those who "wait patiently for God" (Psalm 40:1). In that moment he wrote, "From about half-past ten at night to about an hour after midnight ... the world forgotten, everything except God ... Joy, Joy, Joy, tears of Joy."

Martin Buber found a special spiritual ecstasy within the communal experiences of Hasidic Judaism. He then was able to translate the experiences derived from this Hasidic fellowship into his poetic masterpiece, I-Thou. According to Buber, there is an attitudinal disposition that any of us can assume in which ecstatic spiritual aliveness can be experienced through personal encounters. There are moments, he contended, wherein one person can miraculously become connected with another person in a way that enables the one to "know" the other even though little, if anything, is known about the other. There are, in such encounters, declared Buber, disclosures of the sacred. When the I-Thou happens, there is, simultaneously, a discovery not only of the sacredness of the other, but also of one's own sacred self. It is this transition from the mundane to the sacred that is recorded in 1 Corinthians 13:12: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known."

It would be good for you to read I-Thou so that you can learn of such encounters, and then practice them; otherwise, your academic life might only be cluttered with the accumulation of innumerable facts devoid of wisdom.

Still another way to experience spiritual aliveness is through gracious ministry to someone in need. But for this service to be truly spiritual, it is best done in secret. Ideally, not even the recipient should know that you have rendered the blessing. Jesus taught:

So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Matthew 6:2-4).

It does not diminish the spiritual gift you receive through such ministry if you are inadvertently discovered, but such discovery should never be sought. Consider the truth in this story commonly circulated among the Jews of another generation:

In a certain Russian synagogue, there was a rabbi who was such a holy man that those who studied Torah with him would say in jest that after services on Shabbat he ascended into heaven to commune with God. Some children overheard what was said about him and believed it to be literally true.

 The following Shabbat, the children followed the rabbi to see if what they had heard was really true. What they witnessed was their rabbi going to the homes of old and infirm non-Jewish widows, cleaning their homes and cooking meals for them to eat.

When the elders of the synagogue heard that the children had taken what they had said literally, they laughingly asked the children, "Well? When you followed our rabbi, did he actually ascend into heaven?"

"Oh, no!" answered the children, "He went much higher!"

Then none of the elders laughed.

If religion's rituals are vehicles that put you in touch with transcendent realities, then it is a good thing. But religious practice can become a hindrance to spirituality when it becomes an end in itself, a set of practices meant to impress others with the claim that you are spiritual.

More than sixty years ago, I learned a gospel hymn that connected mystical communion with God with reaching out through people like you and me to change the world that is into the world that ought to be. Now that I am old, its words still challenge me. It goes like this:

Lord, speak to me, that I may speak
In living echoes of Thy tone;
As Thou has sought, so let me seek
Thy erring children lost and lone.

O lead me, Lord, that I may lead
The wandering and the wavering feet;
O feed me, Lord, that I may feed
The hungering ones with manna sweet!

That hymn tells me that spirituality without secret works of loving-kindness and sacrifice for others is dead.

Finally, that test as to the validity of your spirituality is whether what you believe to be spirituality transforms you into an advocate for social justice. Otherwise what is masked as spirituality might just be an excursion into narcissistic religiosity.

Becoming saturated with the presence of the Ultimate Thou is to have your heart broken by the things that break the heart of God. Racism, sexism, homophobia, militarism, ageism, environmental degradation, poverty, political oppression of the weak, and all other social evils become intolerable to those who truly are possessed by God.

This academic year will be little more than a grind for you unless something more than knowledge is sought. In the words of Scripture, "Redeem the time, because the days are filled with evil." Take the risks that go with loving and acting for justice. Carpe diem! Become a spiritual activist. Become an agent of tikkun!

Rev. Tony Campolo, Ph.D., professor emeritus at Eastern University, founded the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education. His most recent books are The God of Intimacy and Action and Red Letter Christians. He is a regular columnist for Tikkun.