"Vocation in the Kingdom of God"

This chapter discusses everything from our role within the Kingdom of God to the difference between secular post-secondary education opposed to a Christian one. We as Christians are called to become prime citizens of God's Kingdom. A prime citizen meaning someone that "passionately yearns for the Kingdom. A prime citizen has been redeemed far down in her spirit, way downtown in her heart, so that she deeply loves God and the things of God". Plantinga also discusses the fact that unbelievers are leading the redemption of creation in some respects such as the environment, even though their motives for doing so are obviously much different than that of Christians. This shows us that God is using everyone, not only Christians to redeem our fallen world - and should tell us, that all people are good people. I feel that far too often, Christians are filled with pride in this area, and they think they are better than people who are not Christians. Could it be possible that God is allowing non-Christians to be leaders as well so that we can learn to work together as a global community? Just as the pilgrims learned from the natives and vice-versa. Similarly, we can for example teach the secular world about God, and they can teach us how to be better stewards, so that we can take care of the environment. This is why Calvin's ideology is so great, because it teaches that we should be engaging with every aspect of God's creation instead of separating secular and Christian ideas.

Plantinga touches on this topic as well when he is discussing secular and Christian education. He says that one of the dangers of Christian students being enrolled in secular education. He says that "a number of these students will live with a wall between their sacred faith and their secular learning" which keeps us from sifting through all the information we receive to determine what is truth and what is not. With this being said, Plantinga also warns us that a Christian education will not mean that discerning information will be unnecessary, but in order to grow into a mature Christian, it is indeed necessary. "[J]ust as it would be a huge mistake simply to go with the flow on a secular campus, it's a huge mistake to suppose you can get truly educated by floating downstream in a Christian college". This reminds me of "Our English Syllabus" when Lewis explains that it is important for us as students to take control of our own education and learn on our own instead of vulnerable to the idea of simply being educated and not using our minds to decipher what it right and what is wrong. I agree that it is necessary for Calvin to challenge us in this sense because "you can't "rise with Christ" unless you've died with him first, and that means enduring some dark nights of the soul". This is a beautiful quote, and it is so true that we cannot even grow properly if we are not deeply challenged.

The fact that Plantinga spends time talking about the difference between secular and Christian education, really intrigued me and interested me because before I came to Calvin, I was very close to making a decision on going to a secular university in Canada. If I had made this decision, I would have never been introduced to this Calvin Theology that now makes so much sense to me. Just like Plantinga says, I would not have been able to live out my Christian faith in the right way at a secular university because it is just to easy to "go with the flow" and without the encouragement to discern I would "be busy with a hundred other things and [wouldn't] take the time to spend the effort to sort out the good and evil in what [I would have] encounter[ed] on campus to construct a thoughtful Christian philosophy of life" . For this reason, I thank God that I discovered Calvin, and that I will now be able to do what I would not have been able to do on my own. I look forward to becoming (along with all of you), a prime citizen of God's Kingdom.