What’s roiling our college campuses? Does this tortured turmoil signal the cutting edge of a new kind of education? Are these events the early signs of reframing a new broader culture? Something big is happening. We better pay attention. This outstanding article from The New Yorker by Nathan Heller called “The Big Uneasy: What’s roiling the liberal arts campus?” is a must read for all of us who care about the state of the university.

No one I know is old. We are all just growing a bit older, as we like to say. Here is a wise book that can inspire us through this sometimes arduous process. Cicero is one of the great writers of classical antiquity, highly regarded for both rhetoric and insight. And so with wit and wisdom he tackles here this knotty subject.

I was taken aback by a piece . . . in the Spectator, the student newspaper of Columbia University. I can’t shake it, though believe me I’ve tried. I won’t name the four undergraduate authors, because 30 years from now their children will be on Google, and because everyone in their 20s has the right to be an idiot.

New York Times columnist David Brooks has been talking a lot (in speeches, columns, and his marvelous new book The Road To Character) about the formation of character. He has asked his readers to talk on his book website about their purpose in life and to reflect on where they may have first begun to discover that purpose.

Are you ever suddenly surprised that there is something instead of nothing? Or that there is everything? Or anything at all? These things often strike me with an overwhelming sense of wonder. We are often just amazed over the smallest of ordinary experiences? Perhaps something from beyond the edge is suddenly present, peeking in, as it were, making silent announcement of something more than can ever be contained by the physical experience alone.

Sharon and I went to see Woody Allen’s delightful movie last night called “Magic in the Moonlight.” I highly recommend the movie, just perfect for a late summer evening.

I want to return to that amazing article I quoted from a few days ago by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker. I was characterizing Gopnik as one of the new-atheists of our day, secularist to the core, philosophically materialist in his assumptions, condescending in tone toward believers. Believers form a crowd that is rapidly dwindling, Gopnik believes, and that surely is a good thing for him. One must only conclude, the writer wants us to believe, this is not an easy time to be a believer.

I am one who is rarely dispassionate about the secularization of our culture. I have been writing and speaking for some time now about what seems to be an accurate conclusion: The centuries-in-the-making secularization project is now complete. The secularists won. Christians have lost the culture. Christians are exiled to the sidelines of thought and influence. Belief is problematic in our time, so the story goes. People are leaving the church in droves. And here is a stunning realization: The final curtain dropped, over the last few years, with breathtaking speed. It’s over. Get over it, we are told.

Lots of pictures this morning of our valiant U. S. soccer players, sprawled out over the field in sheer exhaustion, defeated once again on the world stage of World Cup competition. We are not ready for the big time, we are told, and that seems true. But think of it this way. This scrappy bunch of guys gave us a glimpse of something that runs pretty deep—the underdogs, the dreamers, the hard workers, those who exceed beyond expectations—this kind of thing is buried in the DNA of the American character. Maybe that’s why we cheered with such national enthusiasm.

I write just several days after inexplicable, unexpected violence struck at the heart of my beloved Seattle Pacific University. This is a community I love, full of people I love, full of students who still feel like “my” students. I felt such protectiveness for these precious young lives. I fully understand there is no nightmare worse for a college president than one like this. As the whole thing broke, I rushed to get to the scene to offer my support to President Dan Martin, to his team, to the faculty and staff, to the students. What unfolded over the hours and days ahead told me this is a remarkable community. I am so proud of SPU.

We are a society of studies. We’ve got studies for everything. A study out of Harvard Medical School, for example, tells us the American economy loses $63 billion a year because we don’t get enough sleep. Another study showed recently that people standing alone on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City were using phones more often than people in groups. “Duh?” you might think, but apparently this study runs contrary to a prevalent notion that we are increasingly isolated by our use of phones. And then there are the relentless studies at this time of year telling us why we haven’t kept our new year’s resolutions.

I don’t walk around thinking about enemies. That’s not a word that slips easily off my tongue. To think about enemies implies that people are out to get me, hurt me, discredit my reputation, betray me, deceive me, treat me unfairly. Are there really people out there wanting to do those things? I like to think I don’t have enemies.

At the annual conference for presidents of the Council Of Independent Colleges, David Brooks delivered what I regard as a brilliant speech on higher education. Brooks launches into all the woes of higher education these days—rising costs, perception of declining value, politically correct agendas, loss of the importance of the humanities, blurring of institutional distinctiveness, too much emphasis on data, measuring students’ futures by financial metrics alone–it’s all there. But his real concern is the loss of moral formationon our campuses.

David Brooks has written an extraordinary reflection about the difficulty of religious belief up against the sheer hostility of the secular age in which we are now caught . This topic seems to intrigue Brooks along the way, though we are never quite sure where his deeper sympathies of faith lie. We get a glimpse here of some of those sympathies.

I decided to impose a momentary pause on my blog. The reason? My site was hacked into. The connection? I wrote an op-ed for The Seattle Times that some folks clearly did not like. But the problem was not that we disagreed on what was in the article. Rather, surprisingly, I received a barrage of internet thuggery on the blogsite itself, on my email and Twitter accounts, in the newspaper’s online comments. While I know this kind of thing is happening everywhere, I brushed up against something a little frightening. I got a taste of this accountability-free zone of the internet that threatens genuine conversation about things that matter.

I thought I would share for my blog readers an Op-Ed I wrote for this morning’s Seattle Times. It seems to have created quite a stir, hopefully for the good.

Over last weekend I had the privilege of preaching at the historic Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, California. This church is now guided by the terrific leadership and great preaching of my dear friend Greg Waybright. I talked about becoming radiant people. I think these wonderful folks at Lake Avenue are indeed a radiant congregation. What a wonderful time.

I am delighted to be preaching at all services this weekend, October 12-13, 2013, at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena. This important, historic church is now under the strong leadership of my dear friend Greg Waybright. What a vibrant place it is. I want to invite friends and SPU alums in the area to join us for one of these services. It would be great to see you.

Some of my best friends are brain scientists. Well, actually, there is only one, my dear friend John Medina, among the brightest, most affable, generous people I know. I have learned more about the brain from John than I deserve to know, given my bent of curiosity toward culture, text, literature, theology, the biblical imagination, and such.

“I have no idea what’s going on”—that’s the way Henry Allen begins a brilliant, if discouraging, article recently in the WSJ (8/1/2013). I think he’s on to something, and his point is not generational. “I like to think,” he says, “I was especially good on the feeling-tone of the world around me.” In other words he has been a culture-watcher. I am one of those too. In some ways we all thought we had a “certain clairvoyance” to see “changes in what it feels like to be alive at any given time.” But that time has passed: “Now I have no idea what’s going on,” he repeats.