The Academy

One week down, one left to go. Its better this year than last.

For those of you that don't know, the Academy is (presently) a summer conference that I have had the joy of working for two summers now. Presently its geared towards high school students headed towards college who will be faced with the challenge of maintaining their faith in the midst of a secular world that awaits, even in Christian Universities like Biola. An alarming number of Christian teens fall into apthay or leave the faith altogether upon leaving home, and we feel it has a great to do with the fact that they have never learned to think hard. For more info you should really visit the Academy site which is on the right of your screen even as you read this. Or follow this link. Now you can't even use the excuse of being too lazy to find my link.

So, I spent a week with amazing kids and very good friends and incredible professors talking about living a virtuous life, seeking truth, and finding courage.

My take away question, which I did ask the kids but have been thinking about myself is this: can there be courage in heaven? I think its not far off to suggest that courage requires the presence of fear...and it seems unlikely that there would be fear in heaven, so is there courage in heaven? If not...that too seems wrong, since courage is a virtue and it seems unlikely that it should pass away.

My theory? I think that there is courage in Heaven. Lets say that often sin lies in chosing one lesser good thing over a better good that has been shown to us to replace the lesser good. We become attached to the thing itself instead of simply wanting whatever good God offers us. This is because we know and love what we have and cannot be sure that the new good will actually be better for us...we doubt God or believe another good is better than what He is offering, and that is sinful and wrong. Well, in heaven, we will forever be seeing a newer and greater good, eternally replacing our previous ideal with the new that God has revealed in Himself. I believe this because, as Lewis says, there will forever be further up and further in for us to travel, always finding more and more of our great Lord.

Well, we remain ourselves--creatures of free-choice--and so while we are perfected and WILL choose the greater good rather than the lesser good, the choice remains ours, and everytime we trust that the unknown will be better than the known, that God will not disappoint us and in Christ there is ever more for us to know and love, everytime we forsake the old for the new that God reveals we are being courageous.

That's my theory. Courage in Heaven. I am very excited about one more week of this.