Go Forth and Conquer

A Commencement Speech

I have the incredible privilege of seeing my oldest son graduate this Thursday as the first (and this year’s only) graduate of Caritas Academy. Titus gets to pave the way for others and I get to celebrate him both as a father and as the Dean of our newly formed “upper school” at Caritas. This is a big deal for him as it always is for every graduate. It’s a big deal for our school as he is the first to graduate from Caritas. It’s also a big deal for my family as a whole because this is the firstfruits of an adventure into classical Christian education that we began years ago. The following is the speech I will be delivering tomorrow at the ceremony.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was still a very new father, in my early 20’s, I was working for a community college in Kansas as a High School recruiter. The school I worked for had a “wind energy” program which they were very excited about. It was my job to make sure I told all of the young, up and coming, high school graduates about the program and I was to compel them to come in from the highways and the hedges to take advantage. As part of my routine duties for the college I would schedule high school visits, take my display board, and set up a table where students could come and hear my spiel.

I went to many schools all across Kansas (wind is, after all, Kansas’ number one natural resource). One day, as I was looking at my list of upcoming schools to visit, I saw an oddly named school. It was called “Cair Paravel Latin School” which is in Topeka, KS (about an hour from where I was living at the time).

Now, I need you to understand something. I was a public school kid myself. Though I had started taking college classes by this time from Moody Bible Institute and also from Luther Rice University, which were Christian schools, I had never read The Chronicles of Narnia. I had never read anything that C. S. Lewis had written. In fact, at that point in my life I believed that fiction was a waste of time. I thought that theology and philosophy were the only things worth taking the time to read. Grown up stuff, you know? Stories were for kids and I had moved past R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps back in 7th grade.

So when I read “Cair Paravel Latin School” I remember in my ignorance thinking, and even saying to someone else, “What is a ‘Cair Paravel’?” I thought I had the “Latin School” part worked out…the school must be composed primarily by Latino families. Well, needless to say, that was an incorrect assessment.

When the time came for the visit I walked into that school and I was instantly struck by the fact that something was qualitatively different. This school was very different from the schools I had attended as a child. It was different from every other school I had visited as a recruiter. The very atmosphere of the place was otherly. I saw great works of art everywhere. I saw incredible student projects in the hallway. I saw sharp, smiling, happy looking, well dressed, orderly and well behaved kids. When it came time to actually talk to one of the students I was overwhelmed with the impression that she was far too brilliant to waste her time coming to my community college.

Far from selling her on my education, she had sold me on hers.

As I packed up my things and headed for the door I stopped in at the office and asked, “Do you have some information about your school that I could take home with me?” I couldn’t wait to tell my wife about this place. I hardly knew what I had walked into but I had found something good, something very good, and I knew that I had to make sure I gave it to my family no matter what. I had to give it to my son.

My oldest son, Titus, whose graduation we are now celebrating, was still in preschool at this point. My wife and I had been starting to think about what we should do for his education and we had some vague idea of Christian schools being better than public schools but that was all. After my visit to Cair Paravel I came home and I unfolded this treasure-packet of information before my wife and I said, “We are going to do this!” She said, “What is this?” And I said, “I have no idea, but it’s awesome!”

And that is how our family’s journey into classical Christian education began. It changed everything for us and about us. At the time we were more than an hour away from the closest classical Christian school so we eventually decided to start homeschooling. Since the weight of homeschooling fell largely on my bride, and we wanted to do it right, we decided to help equip her for the job. Susan went back to school and she earned an M.A. in Philosophy in a Great Books program. Susan literally rocked my children to sleep reading Dostoevsky and Hesiod. She wrote her Masters thesis on a comparison between Achilles in Homer’s Iliad and Alyosha in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamzov (She’s kind of a big deal and I am kind of proud of her).

After I finished my masters degree in Biblical studies I entered into a Ph.D. Program in Great Books at Faulkner University so I could gain the classical Christian education that had eluded me for years. I finally read The Chronicles of Narnia and I learned what a “Cair Paravel” is. (If you still don’t know, read The Chronicles of Narnia!) As I pursued my own classical Christian education I fell in love with the power of story and I learned from Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich that there are some truths which only a story can really tell us.

It was because of one random trip (and by random trip I mean a providential trip,) to some strange school in the capital city of windy Kansas, that my family was changed forever. Our family already loved Jesus and the gospel, but we had not known the fullness of Christ’s reach into all of human knowledge and experience. We have come to recognize during our adventure that all which is true, good, and beautiful belongs to God, flows from him, and points back to him. Whether that truth, goodness, and beauty is found in a story, or a beautiful painting, a courageous deed in history, or a mathematical equation, it all tells us the same thing. Jesus is Lord of everything!

Because of God’s good providence in our lives we went down this road of classical Christian education and it was our oldest son, Titus, who helped our family blaze this trail. It was Titus who Susan first started teaching years ago at our kitchen table, reading to him classic children’s literature like Arnold Lobel’s Owl at Home and Kipling’s Just So Stories. It was Titus who first got to experiment with Latin and learn to conjugate verbs alongside his mom. And now, years later, here before us he comes as the very first graduate of our fledgling school, Caritas Christian Classical Academy, the lone senior! Already he has read more Great Books than I ever even knew existed when I was his age. He has been given the tools of learning and is now quite capable of doing anything he sets his mind to. Most importantly, though, Titus knows and loves Jesus.

Son, I am proud of you. I respect the man that you have become and are continuing to grow into. You have a phenomenal talent in word craft. From a very young age you have distinguished yourself as a talented storyteller and no matter what you do professionally as you get older, I exhort you to continue to fan the flame of storytelling that God has gifted you with. There are few things so powerful as a good story.

In Plutarch’s Lives we are told that Alexander the Great was given the best tutor money could buy. His father Philip paid a great sum of money so that his son might be tutored by Aristotle himself. Under Aristotle’s teaching Alexander became a lover of learning and story. Plutarch tells us,

He was also by nature a lover of learning and a lover of reading. And since he thought and called the Iliad a viaticum of the military art, he took with him Aristotle's recension of the poem, called the Iliad of the Casket, and always kept it lying with his dagger under his pillow, as Onesicritus informs us; and when he could find no other books in the interior of Asia, he ordered Harpalus to send him some. So Harpalus sent him the books of Philistus, a great many of the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, and the dithyrambic poems of Telestes and Philoxenus.

Titus, your mother and I have sometimes felt the same desperation as Alexander who “could find no other books…in Asia” as you and your siblings have drained library after library of all that is worth reading. We have spent more money than I care to total at Half Price Books, Book-a-Holic, Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, library sales, and Amazon to keep you well stocked with literature. Truly, it has been a blessing to your mother and to me to try to keep pace with your voracious reading over the years. You sir are twice, nay three times, the man I was at your age in your understanding and in your talent and you have the world before you.

Alexander’s father bought him Aristotle for a tutor. Your mother and I have done our best to do the same. And to Aristotle we have sought to add Homer, and Augustine, and Boethius, and Dante, and Shakespeare, and Austen, and Lewis, and Tolkien, and all the other greats of the Western literary canon. We have sought to model a love for Jesus Christ and his word above all else, believing that “the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom”, and I see that all of this has taken deep root in your heart and soul and your mother and I are proud of you!

Alexander was one of the greatest conquerors in world history and he slept with a copy of Homer’s Iliad and a dagger under his pillow. He did this because he was a dangerous man. He was dangerous in mind (because he could outthink his opponents) and he was dangerous in battle (because of his skill with a blade). We would bid you to be dangerous as well! Not dangerous in a worldly way, but dangerous for Christ’s sake. We bid you to go forth and conquer your neighbors with the love of Christ, being bold to share your faith when opportunity arises. We exhort you to march forward with the wisdom of God’s word and its counsel, speaking truth in an age of lies. We bid you to not fear those who can only kill the body, but fear him who can destroy both body and soul in Hell. We implore you to never back down from what is true and good and right. Never.

This is what classical Christian education is all about, teaching students that as Christians “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

At Caritas we want to send out all of our students with the kind of holy confidence that comes from knowing to whom they belong. May all the students who graduate from this school be like Paul who, after being dragged outside the city of Lystra and stoned for preaching the gospel, got up and walked back into the city to preach some more. May all the students who graduate from this school be like Elijah who stood alone before the prophets of Baal and boldly mocked the foolishness of idolatry and who placed his entire confidence in the one true God. May all the students who graduate from this school be like Leonidas who, upon hearing that the Persian arrows were blotting out the sun, proclaimed good news to his comrades because now they would be able to fight in the shade. May all the students who graduate from this school wrestle down and rip the arms off of all the Grendels of the world just like Beowulf did. May all the students who graduate from this school go forth, get married, raise kids, and model Jesus for them. May they be bold and courageous and let their light shine before men so that men might see their good works and give glory to their Father in heaven.

Titus, may you be only the very first of a great many to boldly go forth from Caritas to love and serve the Lord with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. On behalf of Caritas I now present you with three things for the journey onward, your diploma, a copy of Homer’s Iliad, and a dagger. Go forth and conquer.