Summary: This is a transcript of Joe Rigney’s graduation address delivered at NSA’s 2017 commencement ceremony on May 11. You can listen to the full address at the bottom or by visiting NSA’s podcast on iTunes or Google Play<br> <br> <br> Graduates, family and friends, as an alumni and friend of this institution, I want to offer my deepest congratulations on finishing this portion of the course of life. Making it this far is no small feat, and your presence here is a testament both to the grace of God and your hard work, and, for some of you, to the kindness and generosity of your professors.<br> As I understand it, it is customary at such events for the speaker to offer an exhortation. A natural choice this evening would be to extol the value of a liberal arts education for life. But you’ve been studying here, in the Mecca of Christian Liberal Arts. I know your professors. I count many of them as my friends (I’ll let you guess which ones I’m excluding). You’ve read Shakespeare with Grieser, studied Augustine with Appel, learned Latin with Griffith. You’ve been “Quid est-ed?” and “Quid agit-ed?” until you dream in Latin stick figures. Dr. McIntosh has introduced you to some of the greatest thinkers in history. Men like Anselm, and Anselm, and Anselm, and Aquinas, but really Anselm. Before you came here you did not know that it was possible for anyone to be as excited about Herodotus, Thucydides, and medieval progymnasmata as Dr. Schlect is. Some of you men have tried to get a girlfriend by using those Anglo-Saxon pickup lines that Dr. Merkle taught you (“Hey girl, do you ofermeod? Wyrd.”) You’ve sung psalms with Erb, read the gospels with Edwards, and seen the glories of mathematics with Stokes (though the first time you walked into class, you did wonder if he was going to teach physics by bench-pressing you). You learned mimetic desire from a Wilson, creative writing from a Wilson, and the mating habits of the western rattlesnake from a Wilson. Wilson, Wilson, and Wilson—it sounds like a law firm. Or, in case any of our Truly Reformed brethren are listening in, it’s really a Law and Gospel firm.<br> No, if, after spending four (or more years) here in Moscow, you still don’t know the value of a liberal arts education, then, as the sage Rooster Cogburn once said, “I can do nothin’ for ya, son.” Which, incidentally, is also what Professor Escalante told some of you after your Rhetoric final. (Imagine him with an eyepatch and the stache? The freshmen wouldn’t know where to look.)<br> So though extolling the Christian liberal arts would have some value, for this address, I’ve chosen to offer an exhortation, not from the Great Books, but from the Greatest Book. That’s how we talk at my institution. We study the Great Books in the light of the Greatest Book. Indeed, in light of the Person at the center of the Greatest Book.<br> <br> Do the Word<br> To that end, my exhortation if very simple: Do the word. Or as James says “Be a doer of the word.” Here’s the full passage from James 1:<br> <br> But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. (James 1:22-25)<br> <br> James contrasts doing the word with being a mere hearer. Hearing without doing is like looking at your face in a mirror and then walking away and forgetting what you look like. Hearing = looking in the mirror. Not doing = walking away and forgetting. Simply hearing the word is not the same as obeying the word. If all you do is hear, with no doing, you’re kidding yourself. You’re self-deceived. There must be something more.<br> What’s the more?
