Commencement Address

I was privileged to be asked to give the commencement speech to the Classical Conversations graduating class of 2024 in our local community.

Good evening,

My name is Tim Constant. Is the timer ready? Judges? Opposing team? Let’s begin. Today, I will be presentating on the graduating class of 2024. 

I am honored to have been asked to give the commencement address to you all tonight. Though I confess, I have never given a commencement speech before. But then again, you have never received one, so it takes the pressure off. I think you just sit there and listen.

You did it. It’s done. You are surrounded by friends, family, siblings, tutors, and probably some very exhausted guardian angels, who are here in celebration of the end of the beginning of your journey.

Over a decade of your lives, you have spent in various churches all over northern Colorado, debating, reciting, mastering memory, and getting really annoying songs lodged in your head, and, of course, memorizing the timeline. I bet we could all sing it now and just take up the rest of my time.

Each of your individual timelines, for a brief moment, has intersected and run parallel. While together, you learned to see God in everything, the chief end of all your education. Through the faithfulness of your tutors and the LONGSUFFERING of your parents, the three infinity stones of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty have been placed into your gauntlet with which you grasp the world.

Just for curiosity’s sake, I typed into OpenAI, “Write a commencement speech for graduating homeschoolers”, just to see what would happen. I think I broke it because it actually responded with “Wait, homeschoolers actually graduate? I do not understand, please clarify.” Instantly this fake brain spat out what had to be the most banal drivel I have ever read. It was mid, as the kids say. Do I have your permission to use your generation’s vernacular? Bet.

However, there was one interesting line in the speech, and that was the sentence, “You are finally moving out into the Real World”. The irony of artificial intelligence using the phrase “real world”, I trust, is not lost.

But apart from the irony, the phrase is peculiar. REAL world. It made me wonder what about the world that you are moving out into is “REAL”? What is the nature of this “REAL World”? What are the characteristics? So I sat and pondered using the five common topics, which is a technical term, you wouldn’t have heard of it.

This “real” world is a world of FICTION. It’s made up. Its a world, as Roger Scruton said, people are busy “immortalizing the ephemera of life.”

Its also a world where, if there is any truth, it is drowned in a glut of information. Poet Edna Millay said:

“Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric”

There is no unifying principle to take these individual strands to make any sense of it.

It is a world whose timeline of history is one accident after another, beginning with a great big accident. If you were to write a history book of the world you could title it “Stuff Happened: Sentient Something Lumps and their Programmed Responses.” 

It is a world that has no idea of itself. All distinctions have been removed, because distinction means difference and difference implies things like hierarchy, order, and categories, three worlds that are harmful.

It is a world of contradiction. It spends billions annually attempting to discover life in the universe and the same amount killing it in the womb. 

It is a world where beauty has been reduced to appetite. Any weird fetish has just as much claim to being beautiful as any other.

It is a world where goodness has been removed as a guiding principle which is the equivalent of removing the breaks on a cargo train. There is no stopping mechanism.

A world shot through with envy. It cannot be joyful, because it cannot be thankful, because there is no one to give thanks to. Because it cannot be joyful, it can never be content, the only thing to do is monetize discontent.

It is a world where humans are an earth virus. We have experts who have convinced an entire generation that they are actively breathing out a toxin that is killing Mother Earth. If you want to save the planet, stop eating meat and start eating bugs… perky ticktock influencers sharing their favorite recipe for spicy cricket dip.

And perhaps most disheartening of all, it is a world where many Christians have abandoned the fight, jumped the cultural ship, and scurried to bunkers, beans, and bullets. The end is near, the orcs have stormed Helm’s Deep; the inner door is splintering. 

Cultural institutions that Christianity built, have been abandoned, often without a fight or so much as an eviction notice.

Even many Christian leaders have flaked, dutifully lining up to receive their nonessential designation.

This is the “REAL WORLD” into which you will journey.

Well, goodnight, congratulations!

Just so you know, I cut this way back. I went on for 90 minutes.

Of course, there is such a thing as the real world, and that is the world God made, everything in his creation talks about him and points back to him.

Jesus tells us that “God is spirit.” If God is spirit then the spiritual is, by definition, REAL. When God created the universe he wrapped the physical around the Spiritual, like one of those delicious bacon-wrapped dates. The REALEST things in the world are those things that emanate from his character: truth, beauty, goodness, love, identity, joy, relationship, peace, order, etc.

Let’s compare and contrast, shall we? What is the nature of the REAL?

The REAL is lifeward. It sees humans, not as a scourge, but as created beings in the image of God. We are meant to steward the earth and fill it up with families.

It is a world where identity and dignity are real: Humans are images; which means you are based on an original, and to find out what you are like or supposed to be, just seek out the original. 

Thanksgiving is REAL because there exists someone to be thankful to, and because Thanksgiving is possible, joy is possible. Contentment is a viable option.

It is a world where we can create works of art because there is actually something called Beauty that is transcendent and not just personal opinion. 

It is a world of order, hierarchy, and boundaries, which give us life, equality, and identity.

It is a world that is logical because it was made through Logos. 

It is a world where there is a unifying principle, the Creator from whom and to whom and through things all have been made. 

He is the loom that weaves all into fabric.

This REAL world is a world where there is a timeline, one that is not accidental, but all done on purpose, even in its meanderings.

That is the REAL world.

It is in these things that you have been taught and trained, You have learned to see God in everything. You have been taught to behold this ultimate reality through what has been made. 

You have studied the individual strands of creation, and seen how the loom weaves its beautiful patterned fabric

What does this mean? This means you are not going out into a “real” world, but rather bringing the REAL out into the world. You are bringing weight into a ghostly world.

 Into this world’s supreme fiction, you are reading, writing, and rehearsing the REAL story. 

And what is this great story?

Author John Bright said, “If we were to give the Bible a name, we may with justice call it the story of the coming Kingdom of God”. And if this is the story of the Bible, then it is the story of all history. So all of history, all of your timeline, is the grand story of the coming of God’s Kingdom.

The timeline of the world that began with the creation and the fall, the flood and the tower of Babel…mesopotamia and…no stop! The timeline that has been tumbling through history is the story of this great Story. Right into the middle of this story the Lord Jesus Christ invaded, disarmed the enemy, and planted the mustard seed Kingdom of Heaven. It is a kingdom that did not originate from the world, it is alien but is very, very much in it. Its toes are dug into the soil of earth.

When you live out the REAL you are living out the qualities of the kingdom. What does this mean for you, how do you live out the REAL?

Be men and women. Glory in true masculinity and femininity. 

Get married, build families, those little bricks of civilization. 

Let your joy overflow in celebration and feasting. 

Be like truffle pigs sniffing out the mushrooms of God’s wonder. Okay…

Be endlessly curious about the world God made. And don’t avoid the bad ideas, wrestle them down, strip them, and parade their naked silliness through the streets.

Take risks. Make beautiful things. Become an expert in something; be the best. 

Practice hospitality and when the refugees of the fake world come in and see the abundance and gravity of real lives, they will want to fill their bellies with real food.

Scoff at the world of fiction when it comes to hand you a citation for breaking one of its made-up rules that it just wrote two days ago.

And if you want to get really crazy, build your life thinking about your great great great grandkids that you will never meet.

Let your faith come out of your fingertips, as has been said before. Don’t apologize when the kingdom grows onto your neighbor’s yard and casts a shadow on his begonias. That’s what the Kingdom does. Don’t apologize to the world that Jesus is King.

BUT if you do this, if you live out the REAL, you must be warned.

A Warning

I was told by Miss Kate that there was a quote from The Odyssey that was meaningful to you all.

“But you be brave and adept from this day on … there’s hope that you will reach your goal … the journey that stirs you now is not far off.”

Your journey that stirs you indeed is not far off. You will need to be brave. You will need cunning. Testing your mettle against the world is risky. You may fail. You may die. You will bleed. 

And if you choose to live from the REAL, you will be attacked. Gravity always attracts. It attracts both the good and bad.

That you will fight ought not to surprise you, after all, that is what debate is for. We antagonize you all against each other for a reason. “Raif, Abigail to me to tell you that she thinks governments should set limits on the sale of energy drinks to minors. What do you think about that?” Amazingly, you are all still friends.

We trained you to fight and fight you will because everywhere this kingdom grows, the fake world is not going to like it. They think you are on their turf.

But you know who else will not like it, some fellow believers, who may agree that you have wandered onto the fake world’s turf. “Tone it down, back it off. You know, you’re not being very winsome. Your kingdom of God is growing onto the floor of Congress, and you really ought to trim that back.” 

You will find many Christians are uncomfortable with the growth of the REAL kingdom and the attention it attracts.

It is in a similar spirit of safety and caution, that in the middle of the 19th century, the wine of the Lord’s Supper was swapped for grape juice. This was not some principled, thoroughly exegeted decision, but one of fear. Wine was too dangerous, a bad witness to the world. It may cause some to stumble. And besides, Jesus didn’t drink wine anyway since it’s inherently sinful, he always drank grape juice that somehow stayed unfermented for months at a time, in a world without refrigeration. Better be safe than sorry. 

Of course, the danger of wine was one of the very reasons Jesus used it, as wine symbolizes fulminating sin and wrath and curse, as well as redemption and blessing. He created wine with shoulders broad enough to carry the weight of the symbolism through history. Juice is sterile, joy and pain are boiled out. It is safe, it is nice, it is winsome. Jesus raised his cup and drank a toast to the world he came to save, and we removed the meaning and stuck a straw in it.

Don’t do that. Don’t live a grape-juice life. Let the world feel the weight of the Kingdom you live in. The life of heaven is sharp. Your temptation will be to shave off the edges. Yes, be gentle and kind, but don’t hedge towards niceness, or prize winsomeness over the weight of God’s story. Do not blend into the world or to cold, anemic Christianity that has retired from the timeline of the kingdom.

But if you do dare to live bravely, consider yourself warned.

Last Blessing

Class of 2024, the Road runs down from the door of your childhood home, down from the door where it began, and is going off to join some larger way. Today marks the day you step your little hobbit feet out onto it. 

Your timeline song, hopefully, is lodged in your head forever. Though you may forget what comes after the Some Guy in Africa, NEVER forget the last line. 

“This is my timeline. I am part of my timeline.”

The timeline of the world is the story of the coming Kingdom, you have been invited up into it.

THIS is your timeline.

You are part of your timeline. 

You are a strand in the great loom. 

Now the journey stirs. 

Now is your time.

And now, to the CC graduating class of 2024, May God bless you, may He make his face shine on you, may He make your hands brave for war, may He set a table before you in the presence of your enemies, and may He fill your days with love, fellowship, truth, goodness, beauty, and belly laughs. Well done.