So, How's Seminary?: A Lenten Reflection

Having been on spring break for the past two weeks, I spent a lot of time catching up with my friends and family. It felt good to sleep, and have a social life again. Inevitably, once the small talk died down, they all asked the same question: So, how's seminary going? The best answer I can come up with is that seminary has given me a whole new appreciation for Lent.

Let me explain. In Matthew 4: 1-11, we get the story of Jesus' temptation before he begins his ministry. Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, 'if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.' But he answered, 'It is written, "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." 

It is significant that Jesus began his ministry with a time of prayer and fasting, just as it is significant when a person responds to their call to ministry by attending seminary. People pray and fast not just to become closer to God, but to remove all the distractions that they use to to disguise everything they hate about ourselves.

When Jesus says that man does not live by bread alone, what I think he means is that bread becomes an idol not when it satisfyies our hunger, but when it makes us forget what it's like to be hungry. That is why this Lent I decided to give up Netflix. Now I don't think watching TV is a bad thing, but this fast is teaching me that I was using Netflix to numb the lonliness that creeps in an hour before bedtime. Lonliness sucks, but I can think of no better way to learn how to completely depend on God.

Like Jesus' wilderness wanderings, seminary is a time of prayer, fasting, discernment, and temptation. Unlike other graduate programs that are physically and mentally exhausting, seminary is physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausting. Everyday you're forced to confront painful questions such as how can I continue to believe God is just if he allowed millions of Catholics and Protestants to die during the French Revolution? Or, if I translate this Greek preposition "eis" as "in" instead of "before" how does that change my understanding of justification by faith? These questions keep us all us at night, and explain why every seminarian I respect has a caffeine addiction.

Seminary is also a time of temptation. I had a professor once tell me that the kind of seminarian I choose to be will determine the type of pastor I will become. It's not as if the temptations to lie, cheat, flirt, or take the easy way out, doesn't exist everywhere, but it didn't feel like they held the same eternal consequences. Just as the season of Lent is uncomfortable because it forces you to see the real you, the greatest temptation in seminary is to try to fix the real you instead of letting God use the real you to bring about his kingdom.

But as I celebrate Lent, and prepare to head back to campus tomorrow, I was struck by a new reading of this timeless passage, i.e what a privilege it is to take this time to prepare myself for ministry. In a small way, seminary gives me the opportunity to participate in Jesus' wilderness wanderings for three whole years. I get to spend my days reading theology, translating Scripture, and trying to figure out how to make sense of the messy church history I will inherit. Yes I'm tempted, and yes it's uncomfortable to be poor and a little bit lonely, but I am confident that I will come out on the other end with a better sense of how the gifts and talents God gave me will serve his kingdom.