Campus Crusade for Christ has a Web site called CruPress Green. It is home to all of the resources the Campus Ministry uses to disciple, lead, and train students. It’s pretty organized, easy to navigate, and free to download. 🙂 Thought we’d share it with you. Enjoy!
Anyway, while perusing through the Blog section of the site today, I came across a post that grabbed my attention and shook me up. I’ll be processing and chewing on the thought for a few days — probably longer.
Thought I’d bring you guys along for the ride.
Your Religion is What You Do With Your Solitude
By Tim Casteel
Usually I’m really good at skimming over great spiritual truths. But for some reason when I read that sentence from Tim Keller’s Counterfeit Gods, it stopped me in my tracks.
MY IMMEDIATE THOUGHT: MY RELIGION IS MINISTRY AND THE INTERNET.
That’s what I do and think about it in my spare quiet moments. If I have a gap in my day, I check email then Twitter.
At night, while I ‘relax’ I’m reading ministry blogs and thinking through our ministry.
Tim Keller unpacks the idea a little more in Counterfeit Gods (read an excerpt of the book here):
There’s a quote by Archbishop William Temple:
“Your religion is what you do with your solitude.”
I had to think about that for about three years before I figured it out.
What does he mean? He says, “When you don’t have to think of anything, when your mind isn’t being taken to think by the environment…” (in other words you’re not at work, there’s nothing that’s taking hold of your mind… when you’re standing on a street corner waiting for someone or you’re in a place where you don’t have anything to think about)
“…where does your mind go? What does your mind habitually go to? What do you most like to think about? What do you most enjoy daydreaming about? What gives you the most comfort to fantasize about?”
And he says, “That’s your God. Your religion is what you do with your solitude.” It’s a profound statement.
I haven’t quite diagnosed what this means practically for me.
Am I replacing the common male idol of “career” with “ministry”? Seeking to find life and recognition in ministry success?
And what am I looking for on email and Twitter? Not sure what this thirst for “the new” means. Obviously it shows a discontent with the eternal.
How about you?
E + C 