Daily Lesson for December 19, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson comes from 2 Peter chapter 2 verse 19:

"They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved."

Some years ago, Will Willimon the chaplain of Duke Chapel  commented on the crisis of the party culture at Duke University and the need for faculty and administrators to play a stronger role in shaping and guiding the lives of the university's students.  "Leaving them to themselves," Willimon said, "they become the willing victims of the most totalitarian form of government ever devised, namely, submission to their peers, obeisance to people who are just like them."

There is a crisis on a lot of our college campuses. College is a time of freedom from the authority and rule of parents.  But Godly freedom never means license. As Augustine put it, true freedom is the "freedom to choose the good."

The so-called freedom a lot of young people are exercising will end up shackling them later in life -- if it doesn't kill them first.  They need and deserve teachers, administrators, mentors, clergy and other adults who care enough to teach them what real freedom is all about.  That takes time, energy, and the guts to tell these young people the truth.

I say they and their lives are worth it.