What’s the point of your degree? If you surveyed students at your university, you could anticipate some common answers to that question. To get the job you want after graduation, perhaps. Or to learn more about a subject you’re really interested in. Or, for some of us, it’s a good excuse to spend three years having fun and making the most of the student lifestyle.
There are lots of reasons to be at university. But as Christians, the question we should be asking first and foremost is ‘what’s God’s purpose for my studies?’
What are humans for?
Ideally, our university studies prepare us for what we’re going to do with the rest of our lives. But what am I meant to do with the rest of my life? What are humans like us for?
The earliest chapters of the Bible are very theologically rich when it comes to helping us understand where humans came from, who we are, and what we’re meant to do.
In just four Hebrew words, Genesis 1:27 gives us maybe the most significant statement ever written for understanding human identity: ‘God created mankind in his own image’.
This short sentence tells us two important things. First, we are created by God. Second, we’re made in God’s image. In that most fundamental of distinctions, between Creator and creature, we are firmly on the side of the creatures. And yet, as God’s image-bearers, humans occupy a unique place in the cosmos, privileged above the rest of creation.
Psalm 8 puts it like this:
‘You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honour.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands.’
Psalm 8:5-6
To be human is to inhabit a space under God, with responsibility over the rest of creation. But what are we meant to do with this responsibility?
Beginning with the early chapters of Genesis, we can identify three distinct but interconnected tasks that God gives to human beings made in his image. Grasping these will help us understand the purpose of our university studies, and equip us to live out God’s purposes during our degrees.
Working for the wellbeing of creation
Helpfully, God is very explicit about why he’s made people in the first place. Here’s how he puts it in Genesis 1:26:
'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'
God made people in his image to rule over the rest of creation. Adam and Eve were instructed to take what was good in God’s creation, to look after it and make it fruitful. Sometimes this idea of ‘ruling’ has been used to justify a cruel exploitation of nature. But humans are instructed to rule in God’s likeness, with the same love that he shows for his creation.
This command is the root of all the different academic disciplines that are studied in our universities today. Working for the wellbeing of creation includes doing science: working to understand the natural world so that we might make best use of its resources. It includes the social sciences too: figuring out how human societies flourish. It’s also a call to pursue the arts, making beautiful things out of the colours and sounds and materials that God put into his creation for us to use.
Today, in a post-fall world, we don’t merely steward and develop a creation that is already good – we also work for the wellbeing of a creation that has been hurt by the effects of sin. God is going to make this broken world new, and as we wait, we image his new creation work by fighting against the effects of the curse – whether that’s by healing human bodies, or working for a more just economy. Our hope for a new heavens and a new earth can motivate us to work hard for the good of creation in the here and now.
Worshipping the God we work for
When God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he didn’t just give them a job and leave them alone to get on with it. We learn in Genesis 3:18 that God himself walked regularly in the garden alongside them. Imagine working in your studio or lab with the Creator of the universe right beside you! What might the conversation be like as you worked?
As well as a creation-focused dimension, there is also a God-focused, relational dimension to our work as image-bearers.
Psalm 19 tells us that ‘the heavens declare the glory of God’. Romans 1:20 tells us that God’s ‘eternal power and divine nature’ are visible in the things God has made. As we study and work in God’s creation, whether our object of study is subatomic particles or Spanish syntax, we will discover that creation is full of pointers to God’s character and glory. The more we study, the more we will find ourselves led to worship.
In some disciplines, it’s obvious how your studies provide fuel for worship. Seeing images of vast galaxies or hearing a Beethoven symphony fills us with a sense of wonder that automatically leads us to praise. In other fields, we might have to look behind the scenes to see God’s creative hand at work: in the power of stories to move us, perhaps, or the properties of silicon that enable computing. Just think – before the world was created, God imagined the microprocessor and made it possible!
Alternatively, yours could be a discipline that functions like the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, displaying the hopelessness of life without God and giving us reason to turn and cry out to him. History shows again and again the futility of humanity’s attempts to save ourselves – but also God’s grace in preserving us through the centuries. Law displays the depth of human evil and corruption – and gives us reason to rejoice in God’s perfect justice.
Your degree subject is full of pointers to God’s character that can lead you to worship. Not only that, but Christians have the immense privilege that as we work and study, God is present with us by his Holy Spirit. How might each essay, performance or problem sheet be a way of expressing your worship to him?
Witnessing to the world
God’s intention was always that this human project – working for creation’s wellbeing and joining creation in worship – would be an expanding one. Humanity is called in Genesis not just to rule the earth, but to fill it. The vision was that one day, the earth would be ‘filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ (Habakkuk 2:14).
Jesus takes up this theme in the famous ‘Great Commission’, his parting call to ‘go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.’ (Matthew 28:19-20). As a Christian on your course, God’s desire is that you would take the saving news of the gospel to your fellow students, using that privileged position as God’s image-bearer to be an ambassador of good news to a world that is alienated from its Creator.
How are we to do that? Well, all those reasons to worship that flow out of our disciplines are also pointers to the truth of the gospel that we can share with those around us who don’t yet know Christ. If it blows your mind that God created the rock formations of the Andes, you can share that wonder with a coursemate. Where a piece of literature displays the darkness of the human heart, there’s an opportunity to share your hope that sin is defeated in Jesus.
As you study your particular subject at your particular university, you are God’s witness in that environment to the truth of the gospel. And when you graduate, your degree will open doors into workplaces that desperately need the light of Jesus.
What's the point of your degree?
In your few years at university, God is preparing you for a lifetime working alongside him for the good of his creation. He’s giving you more and more reasons to worship him as you discover more about the world he's made. And he’s using you as a witness to the truth about Jesus in your department.
Aren’t those good reasons to be invested in your studies? Whether you go on to be a leading voice in your field, or you’re giving it up as soon as you graduate, God has a purpose for your degree. The secret to really making the most of your time at uni? Make it all about Him.