Wheaton president challenges graduates to live 'deep'

Duane Litfin, president of Wheaton College, challenged Union University graduates to demonstrate the quality of their education through lives that reflect a Christian worldview. Litfin spoke at Union's May 22 commencement ceremony.

The university granted approximately 400 degrees at the end of the spring semester, 70 of which were given during commencement activities on Union's Germantown campus, May 29. Union offers a bachelor of science in nursing and master's programs in business and education at the suburban Memphis campus, which has been open since fall 1997. Tom Rosebrough, dean of the School of Education and Human Studies at Union, delivered the Germantown commencement address.

At the Jackson ceremony, Litfin asserted that the ultimate criterion for excellence in Christian higher education is not the campus, the library, or even the faculty. Rather, it is demonstrated in the ability of its graduates "to think Christianly about all of life."

Litfin noted that there are places in the Arctic Sea where pieces of ice right next to each other are flowing in different directions. The floe ice, which is shallow, is moved by the wind and surface currents, whereas the icebergs have 80 percent of their mass below the surface. These are moved "by the deep and steady currents of the sea."

"Christian higher education is really designed to turn out icebergs for Christ," said Litfin. "Not people who live by the fads and surface currents and winds of the world, but people who move to the deep, constant current of God's Word. People who understand their world and are willing to live faithfully for Jesus Christ in the midst of it. What is commencing today is a test, to see whether you— from a Christian point of view — are an iceberg or an ice cube."

Litfin told graduates that just as the measure of a flight school is whether it can turn out pilots who can fly, "You are about to be a test of Union University, whether or not this institution belongs among the nation's premier institutions of Christian higher education. That will be measured by the product, and that's you . . . Does this institution turn out graduates who are able and willing to act and think Christianly, to understand the whole world and their own lives through a biblical grid? Does this university graduate students who know what it means for every facet of their lives to say Jesus Christ is Lord?"

He challenged the graduates: "Are you merely an ice cube, floating along with the cultural floes? Or are you an iceberg, driven often against the surface winds of your culture, driven by the deep profound currents of biblical truth, in obedience to the lordship of Jesus Christ? Have you come to understand what the lordship of Jesus Christ means for history and the future, for the arts and the business world, for the public square and for your personal life?"

Along with Litfin's address, senior class president Suzanne Frost also spoke, expressing thanks to Union for providing a "Christ-centered atmosphere that is intertwined in every aspect of our campus." She encouraged her fellow graduates to maintain the Christian values that have been nurtured at Union. Frost, from Bolivar, Tenn., majored in social work.