What I learned from 4 years of doing a Master Of Divinity
For the next little while, I will be writing and publishing some posts about my time spent in school, as I take some time to integrate my master’s program in my being. I just completed a Master of Divinity at Tyndale University in Toronto and will have my convocation in May.
A Masters of Divinity is the degree typically completed by people who intend to be clergy or “full-time ministers.” While I do not intend nor feel called to be a traditional pastor by any means, I do believe that we are all called to be full-time ministers to bring healing, restoration, peace, compassion and love to a hurting world.
While I was studying for the past four years, I didn’t get to share much of the journey, as I was too busy writing academic papers and completing assigned readings. But now that it is complete, I will be taking a few weeks to write about it, to integrate and digest all just happened to me!
1. The deep waters of Christianity run much deeper than I could even digest in a lifetime, let alone four years.
If I spent the next twenty years of my life just digging into Christian theology or Christian history or into any one of the single topics contained in one of my courses, I’d still be scratching the surface. As I studied over the last four years of my program and pried open the dusty theology books on my dad’s shelf, I realized that it would be impossible to get all of my questions about Christianity answered.
After my Mdiv, it’s not that I don’t have any more questions. I do, but now I know how to find the answers I need. I have enough questions of my own answered that I feel calmed and settled in my soul. I feel okay about leaving some questions unanswered, trusting that when I really want to know those answers, they will come, or I can seek out the answers at that time. It might take me a month to get one question answered, and now I am aware of that, so if I choose to leave a question hanging in my mind, it’s a conscious choice.
2. Christianity is not one thing, it is a thousand things, and it is ok to roll with what I know for now.
Christianity is full of characters, storylines, practices, beliefs, and alternate perspectives.
It is not something we can easily put into a box, or summarize into one sentence and say: THIS is it. For example, Christianity is not just Jesus saving us from our sins. It’s not just a book called the Bible. It’s not just the modern church nor is it a ancient kingdom. It is all this and so much more. It is a prism into a different universe, one that is reigned by love, goodness and grace. Perhaps on this side of reality, everyone has it wrong and everyone has it partially right. None of us see the whole picture.
For example, I could take two different traditions of Christianity, say Eastern Orthodox and Western Evangelicalism, and if I put the extreme versions of them up against each other, they wouldn’t even look like the same religion. I have come to accept the dizzying diversity in Christianity and I can now embrace it as it is. The diversity means that I can practice my Christian faith in all kinds of ways — as a monk, a businessperson, a hermit, an artist, a caretaker, a gardener — and they would all be valid ways of living my life with God and for God.
It also means that I can (and probably will) spend my whole lifetime absorbing and learning the intricate gifts that each strand of Christianity can offer me. It means I can travel the whole world and find something God. Sometimes the Christian faith is how I articulate my hope. Sometimes it is my refuge. Sometimes it is my source of courage.
Now I am ok to let my faith and my relationship with God morph and evolve, trusting that he is guiding me.
I’ve written about this before too and now I really have peace to live out my faith as I am called to.
Here are some other blogs on this:
https://www.homeandthehills.com/blog/black-box-christianity
https://www.homeandthehills.com/blog/christianity-kaleidoscope
3. It’s ok to know what I know and not know what I don’t know.
After all that studying, I realize now that for every question I ever wanted to ask about Christian beliefs, there are enough books written in an attempt to answer that question to fill a whole section of the library. Am I called to spend the rest of my life answering those questions? No, I don’t believe so. Some people are called to be academics and scholars and intellectuals for life, but not me.
Why is there evil and suffering in the world? I could attempt to read ALL the books written on this topic, and then attempt to write my own, but is that what I’m called to?
I am entering a chapter of my life where my spiritual quest is just as present, but it’s not explicit in my work. I’m not called to be a theology professor, or a traditional church pastor and it’s ok for me to live the life God has presented Infront of me. Similar to the creative process, there are times where you are called to go deep, and times where it’s ok to rest in the space between.
4. God is guiding my life. the confidence I now have that God is truly working out something beautiful with my life is worth much more than the degree.
When I started this degree, it really felt like:
Unfinished business. I had lingering issues with God that I wanted to get to the bottom of.
An Invitation to a grand adventure. It wasn’t quite as grand as being put on a 5-day safari in Kenya, but it was a massive intellectual and spiritual adventure in the deep end of an ancient faith. And I’m always up for a good adventure!
An act of obedience and submission. I couldn’t deny the feeling that this was something I am supposed to do. Based on what happened to me in Montenegro, I knew that nothing good would come out of ignoring that feeling so I relented and obeyed.
Yet I could never have guessed where my Mdiv would lead me to — living in a beautiful place, helping to launch a company that seems to fit perfectly with how I’m made. I’ll explain more in a few weeks, but it is truly a miracle upon miracle. I cannot help but believe in fate and destiny.
When I look at my life now, I feel like I’m looking at the more intricate, stunning piece of art. Not art that I made, but art that the Grand Designer is creating before me.
These days, my life is permeated with a sense of purpose, destiny and meaning.
I feel like I am exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, at the exact right age I’m supposed to be, having become the exact right person for this role and becoming more and more the person God created me to be.
It’s the most beautiful and precious thing I have ever experienced.
What Was All Of That For?
Having said this, I still don’t know exactly why I did a Master of Divinity. I am doing work right now that is undergirded by my belief in a good and redeeming God, but because it’s not like I’m preaching the gospel (or am I? ;)
So was my master just an awfully long, expensive and arduous way to get some of my spiritual questions answered? No. That is my rational mind trying to put a value on the Mdiv. The truth is that I have changed so much during the last 4 years and my Mdiv is a crucial part of that change.
All my doubts about why I did this degree are alleviated when I think about the miracle of where I’ve ended up today.
I’m positive God will surprise me one day and put me in a situation where I can say, “Oh, THAT is why I did an Mdiv.”
Nonetheless, as odd as it seems to become a director of a travel company, it’s so clear to me that this is exactly where God would have me be.
I wouldn’t be where I am now without having gone through the process of doing this master's degree.
So as I reflect on the lessons learned and things gained from my degree, I’m so glad that I listened to that sense that I should do the program, even when it didn’t make any rational sense. It made enough intuitive and spiritual sense to me at the time, and that was enough!
Infinite Love,
Anita
I also share more about my spiritual journey and process in Heavenly Minded Earth Good, Season 1. You can listen to the whole series of 11 episodes here: https://hmeg.tyndalepodcasts.ca/
