“What is a Wiccan Club?” asked my mother. She’d joined me for orientation day at my new school, one of the most progressive seminaries in the country, and she’d noticed a flyer in the hallway. We discovered others for the LGBTQ+ Alliance and the Atheists Society. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?” she questioned.
I tried to suppress my concerns, but soon they were unavoidable. My New Testament professor was an avowed atheist. My systematic theology professor rejected the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Greek and Hebrew weren’t required classes, but “Religious Pluralism” and “Social Justice” were.
I don’t recommend the seminary I attended to others. But while it failed to teach me all it should have, here are five important lessons I did learn during those formative years.
1. Interest in Jesus can’t save you.
Though my seminary was the most diverse community I’d ever been part of, everyone shared one thing in common: We were all captivated by the Christian faith academically. I suspect there was as much intellectual curiosity and talk about Jesus, the Bible, and the church as you’d find at any religious institution. But interest in Jesus isn’t the same as devotion to him. Studying the Bible isn’t the same as believing and practicing it.
Jesus didn’t come to make us religious; he came to make us God’s children by freeing us from bondage to sin.
The most religious people in Jesus’s day, the Pharisees, were some of the most lost. Jesus didn’t come to make us religious; he came to make us God’s children by freeing us from bondage to sin. The gospel is “the power of God for salvation [only] to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). Liberal and conservative, scholar and skeptic—we must all repent and trust in Christ for salvation.
2. Common grace touches everyone.
While my seminary was in many ways a spiritually dark place, I nevertheless met and grew to love many people whom God is using to accomplish his purposes. Thanks to God’s common grace to all, even unregenerate sinners can “by nature do what the law requires . . . [and] show that the work of the law is written on their hearts” (2:14–15).
Alongside the unorthodox student life groups I mentioned, the seminary housed organizations devoted to caring for immigrants, the environment, the homeless, the disabled, and other “least of these” populations. I’ve kept in touch with seminary friends with whom I disagree theologically but whose work nevertheless encourages me to show God’s mercy and compassion.
3. Our faith needs to be challenged . . . and supported.
My three years in seminary challenged my faith more than any other time in my life. There’s good biblical precedent for questioning our faith (e.g., Ps. 10:1)—arguably even a biblical mandate to do so (e.g., 2 Cor. 13:5)—and we know God wants to use such tests of our faith to refine us (Isa. 48:10) and produce “steadfastness” (James 1:3) so that “the tested genuineness of [our] faith . . . may be found to result in praise . . . of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:7).
But stretch faith too much and it snaps. It’s one thing to scrutinize and another thing to subvert. We Christians face enough attacks from the Enemy (5:8); we need not help him out. What we need is the loving support of fellow believers who can handle our tough questions and answer them with God’s truth. I often wonder how different those seminary years might have been for me had I discovered The Gospel Coalition and its resources sooner—or, better yet, joined a gospel-preaching church.
4. We need compassion for those deconstructing.
Seminary didn’t just challenge my faith; it eventually shipwrecked it. Within a week of graduating, I told my new bride I was done with God and Christianity altogether. The memory still haunts me. I’ve never felt more alone in my entire life. Or more afraid.
I’m glad I can still remember that feeling so vividly because it compels me to reach others who are in that same scary place today. Deconstructing may be trendy, but it’s not fun. Yet the data indicates there are more “exvangelicals” today than ever before in history. We need to see them the way Jesus does: not as our enemies but as lost, hurting “sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). More than evidence and arguments, they need love and empathy.
5. God works all things for good.
Praise God that even when I was ready to give up on him, he refused to give up on me (2 Tim. 2:13). Two years later, God used a friend’s faithful evangelism to bring me to true repentance and saving faith.
Even when I was ready to give up on God, he refused to give up on me.
Looking back, I now know my seminary choice was the wrong one. Yet I’m not sure I’d be where I am today without it. I don’t know if I’d be as passionate for the gospel, as charitable to nonevangelicals, as strong in my convictions, as aware of my need for the church, or as compassionate toward those suffering the spiritual devastation of deconstruction.
And I’m not sure I’d be as awe-inspired by God’s power of redemption—that he could take a story (and a seminary experience) as rough as mine and use it for my good and his glory. Of course, we need look no further than the cross for the ultimate proof that we worship a God in the business of redeeming bad choices.
On Sundays, a visitor sometimes asks, “So, where did you go to seminary?” I used to laugh and reply, “You don’t want to know!” But today I no longer hide it. I want others to marvel too at God’s power and faithfulness to take even the worst of our decisions in life—what the Enemy “meant for evil against [us]”—and use them for good (Gen. 50:20).
The Gospel Coalition