William H. Willimon - "The Transformed Mind" (August 22, 1993)

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Male Speaker	This week this campus is transformed.	0:09
	One morning we realize that overloaded Broncos	0:16
	and BMWs and Toyotas have been again clustering on campus,	0:20
	sweating fathers are seen dragging trunks	0:26
	up the steps of Pegram,	0:30
	and some prehistoric professor is heard remark,	0:33
	"Oh, they're back again."	0:36
	School has begun and Duke's world is transmogrified.	0:40
	And why do they gather here?	0:46
	What would cause them to desert their parents	0:49
	and come live among us strangers?	0:51
	Well they're here,	0:57
	as St. Paul might put it,	0:58
	for intellectual transformation,	1:00
	the renewal of your minds.	1:04
	That's what Paul tells the Christian freshmen at Rome,	1:06
	here in our text,	1:11
	"Do not be conformed to this world,	1:13
	but be transformed by the renewal of your mind."	1:17
	How are minds renewed?	1:25
	How are minds transformed?	1:28
	That's what I want to discuss with you today.	1:33
	How are minds transformed?	1:37
	Here is the modern university's answer.	1:39
	Intellectual transformation involves freedom.	1:42
	Detachment from conformity.	1:48
	Freedom from conformity,	1:51
	that sounds sort of like today's text from Paul.	1:53
	The wise person is that one who by his or her senior year	1:56
	is able to stand alone,	2:01
	intellectually speaking.	2:03
	To think for herself.	2:05
	Doesn't Paul say,	2:06
	"Do not be conformed?"	2:07
	Here's how the president of Yale welcomed freshmen	2:11
	to that institution a few years ago.	2:14
	He said,	2:17
	"Yale's faculty can guide you,	2:19
	we can take you to the frontiers of knowledge,	2:21
	but we cannot supply you with a philosophy of education	2:24
	any more than we can supply you with a philosophy of life.	2:27
	This has to come from your own active learning.	2:31
	Yale expects you to take yourself seriously."	2:35
	Translated this means the university hasn't a clue	2:40
	about what you're doing here.	2:43
	(crowd laughing)	2:45
	But after all that's okay.	2:47
	Because the purpose of the university	2:48
	is enable you to be on your own,	2:51
	intellectually speaking,	2:53
	to think for yourself.	2:54
	Oh we've got this curriculum,	2:56
	we've got this smorgasbord of professors,	2:57
	but it's really up to you to think for yourself,	3:00
	to liberate yourself from parental expectations	3:02
	and thereby transform your mind,	3:05
	and I'm sure the students loved it.	3:09
	Because this is always a message that they love.	3:11
	Don't be conformed,	3:14
	cut yourself loose.	3:15
	And so a popular Duke professor always begins	3:17
	his semester of classes by writing on the blackboard,	3:20
	"Question everything."	3:24
	That's what we do here,	3:28
	we detach you from Mama,	3:29
	make you abandon your hometown,	3:31
	your church,	3:33
	your tradition,	3:33
	your neighborhood,	3:34
	give you over to strangers,	3:35
	and once we get you completely detached	3:36
	from everything they told you in high school,	3:39
	we give you a degree,	3:41
	a funny hat,	3:42
	and we call you educated.	3:43
	Your mind has been transformed,	3:45
	American-style.	3:47
	Do not be conformed!	3:52
	I remember the story back in the 60's	3:55
	of a college president who was confronted	3:57
	by a group of angry students outside	3:59
	his administration building.	4:01
	He went out to speak to them,	4:02
	and they had a list of demands.	4:04
	They wanted this,	4:05
	they wanted that.	4:06
	And he said that he thought some of this	4:07
	could be worked out,	4:09
	and then they talked a little bit,	4:10
	and then he said,	4:12
	"Alright,	4:13
	don't just stand around here like a bunch of sheep,	4:14
	get on with whatever you got to do."	4:15
	Well with that,	4:18
	don't just stand here like a bunch of sheep,	4:19
	they dismantled that administration building	4:23
	brick by brick,	4:26
	they drove the president off campus,	4:27
	everything was cut loose.	4:29
	That was the worst thing you could say,	4:32
	"Don't be like a bunch of conformist sheep.	4:34
	Be on your own,	4:38
	think for yourself."	4:40
	Now why is that our path,	4:42
	the conventional American path	4:46
	to intellectual transformation?	4:48
	Why do we always think of growing up	4:51
	in terms of detachment and separation,	4:53
	and independent nonconformity,	4:57
	freedom?	5:00
	Well IBM needs mobile workers.	5:03
	The modern corporation can't use people	5:06
	who've got a neighborhood or a family	5:08
	and refuse to leave it.	5:10
	Friends,	5:12
	home.	5:13
	The modern industrial state has learned	5:15
	that one of the best ways to make	5:18
	modern people malleable and manageable	5:21
	is to transform them into individuals.	5:24
	Individuals who are alone and detached and ruthless.	5:29
	Because the modern state has found that individuals	5:34
	standing alone are much easier for the bureaucratic state	5:38
	to manage than people who've got a tribe,	5:42
	or a family,	5:46
	or a home,	5:47
	and refuse to leave.	5:48
	And yet there really isn't any such thing as the free,	5:53
	free thinking,	5:58
	standing alone individual.	5:59
	Because everybody thinks from some point of view.	6:02
	Everybody is standing somewhere when he thinks.	6:06
	Each of us thinks from a world,	6:10
	and a worldview.	6:13
	The president of Yale,	6:15
	in telling young Yalies to "take themselves seriously,"	6:16
	to locate all truth within the range	6:20
	of their personal experience,	6:23
	is not thereby making them free.	6:25
	'Cause nobody's free that way.	6:29
	He's merely urged them to exchange	6:33
	one form of conformity for another.	6:35
	He's urged them to abandon conformity	6:40
	to their parents or their neighborhood	6:42
	or to Plato or to Jesus,	6:44
	somebody who's been here before,	6:46
	for another form of conformity,	6:48
	namely conformity to what has personally happened to them.	6:50
	They thus become the willing victims of a mode of education	6:55
	which urges students always to seek the normative answer	6:59
	solely within their own experience.	7:03
	That professor who declares first day of class,	7:07
	"Question everything,"	7:10
	hasn't thereby freed students from cowering conformity.	7:13
	He's deceived them into thinking	7:18
	that by questioning tradition and community	7:20
	and the wisdom of the ages,	7:23
	they're free.	7:24
	My point,	7:27
	they're not free.	7:29
	They've merely exchanged one set of masters for another.	7:31
	Now their God is what seems personally right to me.	7:37
	And I can think of no more socially conformist,	7:44
	parochially American idea than "question everything,"	7:47
	or "take yourself seriously."	7:53
	We are not liberated,	7:59
	thereby,	8:01
	but rather we have enslaved our students	8:03
	to the most conventional of modern conformity.	8:05
	Slavery to the self.	8:09
	And that message all of us believe.	8:13
	We all believe that,	8:17
	even before we come here to the university.	8:18
	We all believe,	8:21
	I am the center of the world.	8:22
	Truth is a matter of personal opinion.	8:25
	Ethics is what seems personally right to me.	8:28
	You don't need to pay high Duke tuition for that,	8:32
	'cause you already believe that	8:35
	just by being born in Bunnlevel,	8:37
	or Boston.	8:38
	Everybody believes that.	8:40
	And so that could hardly have been what Paul had in mind	8:44
	when he said "don't be conformed."	8:49
	No,	8:55
	the more honest question is to who's view of the world	8:56
	has my mind been conformed?	9:03
	Paul says,	9:08
	"I appeal to you,	9:10
	do not be conformed to this world,	9:12
	but be transformed by the renewal of your mind."	9:15
	Don't be conformed to this world,	9:22
	this world,	9:24
	a world no larger than what is personally happened to me.	9:25
	This world,	9:30
	where the longest journey I ever take	9:32
	is a short trip deeper,	9:34
	deeper into my own ego.	9:36
	Don't be conformed to this world,	9:39
	Paul says,	9:42
	which suggests to me that the only way to be transformed,	9:45
	the only way to get a new mind	9:51
	is to be in some other world.	9:53
	This is how we think.	9:58
	We all think on the basis of the world in which we live.	10:01
	My mind is never any bigger than my world.	10:07
	For instance when I walk out of here today	10:13
	I'm not going to think about Toyotas flying off into space,	10:15
	or birds beating up on squirrels,	10:19
	or trees growing with their roots up in the air.	10:21
	That's not my world.	10:24
	I wasn't born yesterday.	10:26
	I've learned a few things about this world,	10:28
	the way this world works.	10:31
	That's the way I think.	10:32
	In this world there's some things that happen,	10:34
	there're other things that don't happen.	10:36
	Therefore there's some things I think about	10:39
	and there're other things that never cross my mind.	10:41
	This is the world to which my mind is conformed.	10:45
	My thought fits this world and its parameters.	10:50
	If it didn't call me crazy.	10:54
	So there is not much way for my mind to be utterly renewed,	10:57
	tremendously transformed while I'm still in this world.	11:05
	Let's say now,	11:11
	move me to say,	11:12
	the moon,	11:13
	or somewhere where gravity is not	11:15
	or barbecue is unavailable,	11:17
	and I might think things through all over again.	11:18
	My logic would not work.	11:21
	My logic would have to be transformed because	11:24
	what was permissible and possible here	11:26
	would not be so in that world.	11:29
	Do not be conformed to this world,	11:33
	but be transformed by the renewal of your mind	11:34
	so that you may discern what is the will of God.	11:37
	Don't be conformed to this world,	11:43
	Paul says,	11:45
	be transformed.	11:46
	And the Greek word here is metamorphical.	11:48
	Metamorphical.	11:53
	Transformed.	11:54
	Metamorphasis.	11:56
	Be metamorphasized.	11:58
	That's what Paul is talking about.	12:01
	When a butterfly emerges from a cocoon	12:06
	we say that that little caterpillar has gone through	12:09
	metamorphasis.	12:13
	Imagine what happens to the mind of a	12:16
	creepy-crawling caterpillar who crawls out on some limb,	12:18
	hangs upside down,	12:22
	zips up his sleeping bag over his head,	12:23
	hangs there for a fortnight,	12:25
	and then emerges as a butterfly.	12:28
	I suppose the brain of a butterfly,	12:30
	I presume,	12:33
	is similar to that of a caterpillar.	12:34
	I don't know,	12:36
	I didn't take zoology,	12:37
	but I know this.	12:38
	The mind of a butterfly couldn't be at all	12:39
	like a caterpillar because now	12:41
	on the day he comes out of the cocoon	12:44
	he's not looking at the world from the bottom up anymore.	12:47
	He's been metamorphosized.	12:51
	Don't be conformed to this world,	12:55
	be metamorphosized,	12:57
	Paul says,	12:58
	by the renewal of your mind.	13:00
	Be metamorphosized.	13:03
	And Paul had lived that which he urged.	13:05
	Paul,	13:09
	faithful Jew,	13:09
	been brought up to believe that God's promises	13:11
	are only for Israel and not for the gentiles.	13:14
	But here in Romans Paul has been spending his entire letter	13:20
	arguing that even the gentiles	13:24
	have a place in God's promises.	13:26
	Now how did Paul get to that point?	13:30
	How was his mind metamorphosized?	13:34
	Paul explains in Second Corinthians,	13:39
	"If anyone is in Christ,	13:43
	he is a new creation."	13:46
	New creation,	13:49
	fresh.	13:50
	Just like the first day of the world.	13:51
	Recreated.	13:54
	Metamorphosized.	13:56
	Christ had not just led Paul to a change of mind,	13:59
	anybody can do that.	14:02
	It was more.	14:05
	Christ had moved Paul to a whole new world.	14:06
	After he met Christ,	14:10
	Paul got up the next morning,	14:12
	looked out the window,	14:14
	it wasn't the same world.	14:15
	Now the old distinctions which he had learned	14:17
	from childhood,	14:19
	Jew,	14:20
	Greek,	14:21
	righteous,	14:22
	unrighteous,	14:22
	saved,	14:23
	damned,	14:24
	those labels just didn't work anymore.	14:25
	The old divisions didn't apply.	14:27
	He had a new mind.	14:30
	He'd been metamorphosized.	14:31
	Any of you ever been metamorphosized?	14:37
	Renovated in the brain?	14:41
	I bet that metamorphosis,	14:47
	that renewal,	14:49
	was occasioned by a move from one world to another.	14:51
	When she got out of the hospital,	15:03
	after successful cancer surgery,	15:05
	she said that on the way back home	15:10
	she noticed grass growing.	15:12
	"Look!"	15:16
	she said.	15:17
	"There're trees.	15:18
	Tall trees blowing in the wind."	15:19
	They had never been there before,	15:24
	for her.	15:26
	And when she looked into the faces of her grandchildren,	15:29
	she was moved to tears at the miracle.	15:34
	See,	15:40
	she didn't just go back home.	15:41
	She couldn't go back home.	15:44
	'Cause you can't go back home	15:47
	after you've been where she's been.	15:49
	She had been moved.	15:52
	Now,	15:55
	metamorphosized,	15:56
	she had to go back and think everything over again.	15:58
	It was like fresh,	16:02
	it was just like she was present	16:03
	on the very first day of creation,	16:05
	it was a new world.	16:07
	'Cause a new world makes a new mind.	16:11
	Don't be conformed to this world,	16:16
	Paul says.	16:19
	Let God blow your mind,	16:20
	change your citizenship,	16:22
	move you somewhere else.	16:23
	My world,	16:29
	growing up,	16:30
	was South Carolina.	16:31
	White patrons sit from the front,	16:35
	colored patrons sit from the rear.	16:39
	That was the sign on every city bus in Greenville.	16:42
	And I never heard anybody question those signs.	16:47
	They were law.	16:51
	This was the way the world was meant to be,	16:54
	it was all fixed at Creation.	16:56
	I never heard anybody say,	16:59
	now why,	17:01
	or no one ever said,	17:02
	hey,	17:03
	we need to think about this.	17:04
	When I looked out the window of	17:06
	those city buses with those signs,	17:07
	the world looked alright to me.	17:10
	It looked all white to me.	17:12
	My freshman year of college I went to a student conference	17:17
	sponsored by the church.	17:21
	My roommate was a guy from another college	17:24
	and he was black.	17:29
	And the second night we were there,	17:32
	he sat down and explained to me	17:33
	what it was like to grow up in his world.	17:35
	And that night,	17:42
	my citizenship got transferred.	17:44
	I was moved to a new world.	17:47
	I noticed on the next morning when I went to breakfast	17:51
	I couldn't find my way,	17:53
	I was living in a different world.	17:55
	I never could think of black-white again,	18:00
	I had been metamorphosized.	18:03
	How does that happen?	18:11
	In Second Corinthians Paul says,	18:14
	"All of us with unveiled faces seeing the glory of God	18:16
	are being metamorphosized."	18:23
	It's the same Greek word.	18:26
	Being metamorphosized into God's image.	18:28
	It's an astounding claim.	18:34
	It's a huge intellectual move.	18:37
	And it's not something we do,	18:40
	it is not some intellectual achievement,	18:42
	it's something God does,	18:45
	it's a byproduct of being encountered	18:47
	by the face of the living God.	18:49
	By being moved to a new country,	18:53
	new citizenship.	18:55
	Don't be conformed to this world	18:57
	when you could be in Christ enjoying	19:00
	a world metamorphosized.	19:02
	Thursday,	19:11
	we're gonna gather here in this chapel	19:13
	and we're going to welcome the Duke first-year students.	19:14
	It's our freshmen orientation convocation.	19:18
	And I like sitting up here	19:21
	after I've given the opening prayer	19:23
	and I like to look at them.	19:24
	And they look fresh and eager and expectant,	19:27
	and most of them won't ask that much out of us here,	19:33
	they'll ask for a B average	19:37
	and perhaps admission to law school.	19:39
	And the thing that impresses me is that	19:45
	when I sit up here and look at them	19:46
	when they come in here for baccalaureate four years later,	19:48
	most of them look the same.	19:52
	Senior class photographs look a lot like	19:55
	the first-year student photos in the directory.	19:58
	Oh their parents may be worried about them,	20:02
	what we'll do to them here.	20:04
	I say to their parents,	20:06
	relax.	20:06
	After four years here they're gonna look a lot like you.	20:08
	Don't worry.	20:11
	And yet,	20:16
	Paul promises.	20:18
	Some,	20:21
	some,	20:22
	might make a larger move.	20:24
	Meeting Christ,	20:28
	their mind might get blown.	20:29
	Their world might be transformed.	20:32
	Their mind metamorphosized into new creation.	20:35

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "The Transformed Mind" (August 22, 1993)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4m32nr3m

Date:

August 22, 1993

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Description:

The preacher argues that no mind is truly free from the world it lives in. The point is to decide which world has claimed one’s mind. The Kingdom of God, brought by the salvific work of Christ, offers a brand new world that transforms Christians’ minds. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0662
ref9297_2l6
uachapelsermaud
duke:320714
dcrau001442
ark:/87924/r4m32nr3m
fcfee29d-3165-4f7d-9c15-41548b22ab09

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Duke Chapel Recordings

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Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

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English

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Ordinary Time

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The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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