I had the opportunity on Friday, April 4, 2025 to speak at Headington Hill in Springfield, MO. This is the transcript of that talk for their fundraising event.

Conquering Chaos: The Re-Enchantment of a Purposeful Life

III

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.

~T. S. Eliot, Section III of “Burnt Norton,” in Four Quartets

Good evening. It is an honor to be here and to have received the gracious invitation to share with you on tonight’s theme—”Conquering Chaos: The Re-Enchantment of a Purposeful Life.” If you have not felt at least a measure of chaos in the past year, I applaud you. The world we live in today seems designed for chaos, and as we will explore briefly tonight, it takes a great deal of focus and effort to re-enchant our lives to rediscover and live into purposeful lives, rather than being tossed about by the waves of chaos. First, we will begin by exploring chaos. Second, we will consider (or reconsider) the purposeful life. And third, we will look at how classical Christian education re-enchants our world, specifically through practices that form students in the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.

1. CHAOS

As we begin, I submit to you that chaos comes in many forms and pursues us from a variety of directions. Chaos in our world is not hard to discover. A quick glance at the evening news will be sufficient to observe division, anger, and violence, but it comes to us in these forms much more personally as well. Broken relationships, a lack of forgiveness for wrongs done, and violence (both physical and verbal) likely enter at least some of our daily human encounters—whether at work, in our commute or daily errands, or, sadly, in our family and close friends. Such external chaos is easily observable, identifiable, and painful. But chaos is not merely external; we suffer from internal chaos as well, and this is perhaps the far more damaging chaos because we take it with us when we are alone, as we sleep—it seeps into our soul and shakes our very being. Restlessness and anxiety are two common symptoms. Neither symptom is new to human experience, despite the challenging times in which we live. In the fourth century, the great theologian St. Augustine of Hippo began his fantastic work Confessions with a paragraph that ends with these words, as insightful and prophetic today as they were 1600 years ago: “you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”[1]

And yet, though I suspect most of the audience tonight are committed followers of Christ, I similarly suspect that you resonate with some (or much) of the chaos I have briefly described. Why, as followers of Christ, if we have found the One in whom our hearts and souls are to rest, do we still feel restless? This is a difficult question, but it is one I hope to answer tonight.

In 2005, David Foster Wallace gave a commencement address at Kenyon College that has become one of the most well-known commencement addresses—perhaps not too difficult, as I suspect most of us do not remember what was said at our commencement, or perhaps even who spoke. But in this case, Wallace’s speech was memorable, and it began with a story. Two fish are swimming through the ocean one morning, when they come upon a third, older fish. As this older fish swims by he says, “Hi boys, how’s the water?” A few moments later, one of the young fish turns to the other and says, “What the heck is water?” Wallace goes on to explain this short parable, pointing out how the most obvious things are the hardest to talk about. So, let’s point out the obvious yet hard to talk about reality of our day, then I propose we ought to talk about it. We’ve been swimming in a sea of chaos for a while now, but we call it by another name: busyness. I would guess that most of us, in the past week at least, if not today, have had a human interaction where someone asked us how we were and we said, “Fine, just busy.” I am guilty of saying this phrase at least 20,000 times in my life, but I have been intentionally seeking for several months now to avoid using the word busy. Because what I have found, at least in my life, is that I thought being busy was an acceptable answer. It allowed me to answer the question honestly, without getting too personal, and I thought it made me look respectable in conversation.

But I don’t believe that anymore. When I read the gospels, Jesus wasn’t busy. Neither was Jesus hurried, another word I gave up this year. Jesus, I am confident in asserting, had the single most important human vocation in all of human history, yet He accomplished this immensely important human life and vocation without being hurried and without being busy. When I tell people I’m busy, it’s because I’m measuring my life by the gospel of productivity, not by Jesus’ standard of loving God and loving my neighbor. The gospel of productivity says my life purpose is to get things done; “salvation” in this gospel is the praise I receive from others for getting a lot of work done. The gospel of productivity is the water we too often swim in, busyness is its spiritual discipline, and chaos in our soul is the price we pay for worshiping this god. I think this is why Eugene Peterson, in his fabulous book The Contemplative Pastor, says “the word busy is the symptom not of commitment but of betrayal.”[2]

Let’s return quickly to David Foster Wallace. In his parable, the older fish names the obvious—water—which prompts the younger fish to place their attention, perhaps for the first time, upon what this thing is that they are swimming in. Now imagine two young ladies walking past an older woman at church. The older woman politely asks, “How are you two ladies doing?” Leaving the problem unnamed, the young women name it for her: “Fine, just busy.” They continue walking, but unlike the fish, their attention is not drawn to the reality all around them. They continue in their busyness, they continue in their ignorance of the chaotic air they are breathing, and they later wonder why their souls are weary and troubled.

Our world is indeed filled with the chaos of division, anger, and violence. Some of this we could perhaps help alleviate, but most of it we cannot. But the more dangerous chaos, the chaos that resides in our souls, the chaos that manifests itself in restlessness, anxiety, and indeed often in division, anger, and violence, too, is a chaos often of our own making. We handcuff our hearts by fixating on lesser desires; we anchor our ambition in the gospel of productivity instead of in the heavenly places; we stultify our souls with worthless pursuits; and, worst of all, we normalize a false gospel every time we embrace busyness as an acceptable state of our soul.

But let’s take care here, because the cure for busyness is not inactivity. I am not saying our lives should not be full. I am not saying it is a sin to have a lot of responsibility. But when we settle for “busy,” we allow productivity and other external factors to lead us rather than the Holy Spirit. So, the cure for busyness is not inactivity; it is attention. In his famous commencement address, David Foster Wallace says that a liberal arts education (the kind of education that classical Christian education aims at) is often summarized as an education in how to think, not what to think. Though true in some ways, Wallace claims that doesn’t go far enough. It’s not just how to think; rather, it frees us (hence, liberal or liberating arts) and gives us a choice of what to think about. The reason the most obvious things are the hardest to talk about is that they do not require our awareness or consciousness to be shaped by them. Busyness, particularly in the gospel of productivity, is silently shaping our souls into the mold of the world; if we want to be set free from the chains of chaos, we need to become free in our choice of what to think about. We need to refocus and re-enchant our attention.

In his astounding work The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis addresses the issue of moral relativism through reason and philosophy, rather than through his Christian theology. Lewis begins this treatise, however, from a discussion about a textbook on language. He argues that the authors’ discussions of language carry with it certain assumptions that, if followed, would lead to moral relativism—to men without chests that would lead to the abolition of man. That the implications of a grammar textbook could lead to the abolition of mankind seems a bit of a stretch at first glance, but Lewis’ greater point (among many in the book) is that our education can unconsciously lead us astray by directing us away from Lewis calls the Tao, but we would more commonly call Natural Law or Moral Truth. What is required is a greater attention to the things we learn, the ways we learn, and, most importantly, to the end (telos) at which our education aims.

If all this talk of chaos, busyness, and 80-year old works of philosophy on moral truth seem out of place at a fundraiser for a classical Christian school, here’s the moment to check back in (attention, after all). Classical Christian education is an important antidote to the sickness of busyness and chaos because it teaches us that the goal of education is not merely knowing, or even doing, but ultimately being. Classical Christian education, rightly ordered, aims at being the kind of humans that God created us to be and Christ modeled for us to be. Classical Christian education knows the proper aim/end/telos of the human person and how he or she should be educated. Classical Christian education frees us not only to be able to think, but to have the choice of what to think about—namely, the good, the true, and the beautiful. And classical Christian education forms students in the intellectual virtues to help them pay attention in an age of distraction. In one of my favorite poems, Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot (which I read from at the beginning), Eliot speaks of being “distracted from distraction by distraction,”[3] and he didn’t yet have to live in a world of smart phones and social media. In an age of distraction, cultivating the virtue of attention is invaluable.

2. PURPOSE

We live in a world saturated with stories of self-discovery. The dominant cultural narrative is that we define our own purpose, we make our own destiny, and we ought to pursue this purpose by any means necessary. But Scripture (and the Christian tradition) tells a very different story. I am a contingent being. I am not self-existent. I depend upon something or someone else for my existence. Ultimately, Scripture tells us that humanity exists because God desired to create a creature in His own image and after His own likeness with whom He would be in communion. Since God is our creator, He defines what we are and what we are for. Our purpose as created, contingent beings, cannot be defined by ourselves; it must be defined by the transcendent, eternal God. And God has been abundantly clear throughout Scripture as to our purpose. For example, God declares in Isaiah 43:7 that humanity, which He has formed and made, is created for His glory. Similarly, Jesus makes clear our purpose in His Great Commandment. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matt 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31). Additionally, the Great Commission makes clear that we are to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Triune God, and teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded (Matt 28:17-20). We are to glorify God, love God, love our neighbor, and make disciples. There is more, but nearly everything else about humanity’s purpose in Scripture speaks to one of these goals. This is why the Westminster Shorter Catechism says that “man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Since God created humanity, God defines humanity and what its purpose should be. Consequently, the only way to a purposeful life is to direct our lives towards the One who gives it purpose. We don’t find purpose by achieving status, power, prestige, wealth, or any other earthly measure. We achieve a purposeful life by living our lives to the glory of God. And as we have already seen, a life consumed by busyness, distraction, and chaos is a betrayal of the gospel. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, remember, not the Prince of Productivity.

3. RE-ENCHANTMENT

We’ve discussed chaos. Then we considered a purposeful life. Now we must explore how we can re-enchant our lives and bring purpose out of chaos. Returning to Lewis’ Abolition of Man, one of his most quoted lines from this book comes from a discussion about how students respond to certain lessons. The danger some propose is that the child might have an excess of sensibility, but Lewis claims that “For every one pupil who needs to be guarded against a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.”[4] The task for modern educators in Lewis’ day is only exponentially more difficult in an age of distraction. When AI promises to do the work so a student doesn’t have to, when education is so often viewed as merely a necessary step toward the pragmatic end of a job, most students are certainly not struggling from a “weak excess of sensibility.” Rather, their minds have been numbed to a state at least as damaging as a “slumber of cold vulgarity.”[5] The task of irrigating deserts is the necessary yet nearly impossible task of awakening wonder to the goodness, truth, and beauty in the world and education’s role in helping us become more human. Awakening wonder comes not through techniques and programs, it comes through a teacher who can re-enchant the world for the student.

I propose that classical Christian education provides the kind of education we need to re-enchant the world, and it does so in three primary ways:

1. Classical Christian education promotes a spirit of wonder (linked to Hope);
2. Classical Christian education forms, reforms, and transforms the imagination (linked to Faith); and,
3. Classical Christian education retrains the attention (linked to Love).

First, classical Christian education promotes a spirit of wonder akin to hope. Classical Christian education trains students to wonder at the created world. The spirit of inquisitiveness, the practice of observation, the art of asking questions and following those questions to conclusions, and more help evoke wonder at the created world and the God who created it. We wonder at that which we do not fully know, perhaps cannot fully know, but seek to understand nonetheless. As philosopher Josef Pieper says, “the innermost meaning of wonder is fulfilled in a deepened sense of mystery,”[6] and classical Christian education helps train students to embrace the difficult balance between knowledge and ignorance, between what can be known and what perhaps cannot be fully understood, through training wonder. Pieper continues, asserting that “wonder reveals itself as having the same structure as hope, the same architecture of hope.”[7] Thus, wonder is akin to hope, for we do not hope in what we see (i.e., fully know) but in what we do not see yet wait for with patience (Rom 8:24). Wonder and hope are attitudes of patient expectation in humble incompleteness.

Second, classical Christian education forms, reforms, and transforms the imagination. It encourages students to enter into history and discover human motivations by reimagining diverse historical circumstances. The student of history, poetry, and fiction, particularly the lives and emotions depicted in them, help form students by incarnating for them a picture of virtue. The imagination, however, is not merely a means of seeing the fantastic and the “imaginary;” it is a way of training in seeing the world through the eyes of God. The imagination, according to Kevin Vanhoozer, is a way of “seeing everything that was, is and is to come as related to what God the Father has done in his Son through the Spirit.”[8] James K. A. Smith agrees in his book, You Are What You Love, in which he argues for the importance of forming our imagination. He then adds, “to be human is to inhabit some narrative enchantment of the world.”[9] One of our primary means of re-enchanting the world is to learn to see it as God sees it, not as how man sees it—to see what the world was designed to be and could and will be again. In this way, the imagination is akin to faith, for we confidently believe in what the world can be because we believe in the God who has promised to put it to rights in the end.

Third, classical Christian education retrains the attention. Here we land on perhaps the most significant of the three ways of re-enchanting the world and discovering purposeful lives. In a world consumed by busyness, perhaps nothing becomes harder than focusing our attention. To quote T. S. Eliot again, we are “distracted from distraction by distraction.”[10] We are an easily distracted people, and an easily distracted people struggle to pray and to love. Not only does classical Christian education train our attention, but Simone Weil goes so far as to say that the key to any “Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention.”[11] She argues that thirty minutes of attention to a geometry problem, even if the students gets the incorrect answer, is of immeasurable value because it is training the attention. In fact, it is most often the disciplines of study that we find most difficult, least natural, and require the most effort that we benefit from the most in our education, for such disciplines of study train our attention, and attention is necessary for prayer. The very means by which we commune with God—prayer—is formed and shaped by the habit of attention, which is itself formed by the difficult disciplines learned in our studies. Moreover, attention is linked biblically to love. In Psalm 8, a beautiful psalm about the majesty of God and the creation and purpose of man, the psalmist writes: “What is man that you are mindful of him…” (v. 4a). The psalmist expresses amazement that the God who created the universe would set His attention upon mankind. What, indeed, are we humans that God would gives us His attention? The psalmist follows, then, with this line: “and the son of man that you care for him” (v. 4b). For the psalmist, and for the rest of the Scriptures, attention is linked to care, that is, to love. We demonstrate love to someone by giving them our attention. Consider Jesus’ famous parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10. In the context of the command to love one’s neighbor, a lawyer asks Jesus “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus’ answer in this parable is clear—the man who did not ignore the one in need, but rather gave him his attention and showed him mercy, is the one who loved his neighbor. To love is to give attention; to give attention is to love.

Thus, to wonder is to hope, to imagine is to have faith, and to give attention is to love. The three—faith, hope, and love—are the three great theological virtues, and classical Christian education seeks to form students in these theological virtues by means of an education that trains students in wonder, imagination, and attention.

Conclusion

Classical Christian education is uniquely designed to disciple our students in peace rather than chaos. I don’t have time tonight to elaborate on them all, but let me leave you with ten theses, claims about the value of classical Christian education that can be abundantly defended from Scripture, tradition, and experience.

1. It teaches students to wonder, that they may have hope.
2. It teaches students to imagine, that they may exhibit faith.
3. It trains students in attention, that they may better love their neighbor.
4. It teaches students the liberating arts, that they may be free.
5. It is an education the prioritizes formation over information, that they may become like Christ.
6. It is an education designed for leisure, that they may not hurry.
7. It is an education that harmonizes truth, goodness, and beauty from all disciplines of study, that they may have peace in their heart, soul, and mind.
8. It engages in liturgies, purposeful, counter-cultural formational practices, that the student may be re-enchanted to live a life of purpose rather than chaos.
9. It trains students to love what ought to be loved and in the order it ought to be loved, that they may bring glory to God and good to their neighbor.  
10. And finally, classical Christian education shapes the whole person—mind, soul, and body—that students may learn to re-habituate practices towards those things that bring glory to God and life to our souls.  And we re-habituate our lives by practicing the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.

You have an opportunity tonight to invest in an education that humanizes the children it serves, an education that will disciple the next generation of students to be Christ-centered followers to whom a chaotic world looks for answers about how to find peace, hope, and joy. I can’t think of a much more purposeful life than joining in that cause. Thank you.

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[1]Augustine, Confessions, Oxford World’s Classics, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 3.

[2]Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 17.

[3]T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (Boston: Mariner Books, 1971), 17.

[4]C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (HarperOne: New York, 2001), 13-14.

[5]Ibid., 13.

[6]Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 115.

[7]Ibid., 117.

[8]Kevin Vanhoozer, Pictures at a Theological Exhibition: Scenes of the Church’s Worship, Witness and Wisdom (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016), 27.

[9]James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016), 94.

[10]Eliot, Four Quartets, 17.

[11]Simone Weil, Love in the Void: Where God Finds Us (Walden, New York: Plough Publishing House, 2018), 2.