I am still finding out.
by WILL FRAZIER
Many people often ask me if I was “prepared” for college and the “real world” after Westminster, and it may make the administration shudder to hear me say absolutely not! What I was after Westminster was set on a trajectory for a lifelong pursuit of that which is worth loving in a world that places a great deal of worth and love on that which is not. Would I end up loving much of the wrong things along the way? Yes, I have, and I still do. I wasn’t “prepared” for the obstacles I’ve faced and yet to face. I would say, rather, that I was “equipped.”
Lest we get lost in a semantic game, I’ll resort to a travel analogy for how I was equipped rather than prepared. Many schools and educational philosophies today take their best stab at “preparing” kids for life’s journey by giving them a map, teaching them all about it, quizzing them on it, and practically requiring they memorize the whole thing. This is neither the classical nor the Christian way. Rather, Westminster gave me a compass and taught me how to use it. So when I wander off the map, as I have and will likely continue to do, I am not lost forever. Westminster, for me, wasn’t about learning a map to find the most efficient routes and become a master of how to succeed by the world’s standards, but about learning to find your way “home” no matter where you
end up, learning how to think rightly no matter the context.
This is frankly why the concept of “value” is almost counterintuitive here. Westminster would rather produce the kinds of students who quietly and humbly pursue God than students with impressive resumes. Only when I draw my final breath can the “value” of my Westminster education be assessed.
Westminster is not producing sanctified kids by the 12th grade, but begins the process of reorienting young minds and hearts, through the reconciling work of Christ on the cross, towards that which is worth loving and for which they were created—worship to the glory of God. Westminster did not teach me to harness my intellectual capabilities for self-gain, but to return their efforts back to the One from whom they came.
Neither was I taught to master the world, or to get the heavens into my head, but, as Chesterton says, to simply get my head into the heavens. I learned to pair my childish sense of wonder with an acutely critical thought process, whereby we at once enjoy the world as if it were wildly unfathomable and yet pursue an understanding of it as if it were imminently discoverable.
It is as if God’s creation is a massive connect-the-dots puzzle. As we labor to connect them all, we find moments
of conclusion. In these moments we get to peer into the grand and unending narrative, not because we com- prehend the universe or the nature of God, but because we see how truly incomprehensible it is! We are left in awe and wonder when we step back, review our discovery, and find we’ve connected but a handful of dots in this infinite chain. Yet we press forward with all the joy of the most unassuming child and all the acuity of the most critical scholar, knowing that the more dots we connect, the more we realize how grand this puzzle is.
For assessing Westminster’s success in my life, it’s not what I’ve learned, or who I’ve become, but who I am becoming, and for better or for worse, you can’t put a price tag on that. The dividends Westminster is paying in my life are in a completely different currency than the U.S. dollars my parents forked over to get me there, and the ultimate value is not something received on pa- per or spoken from the mouths of men, but only in hearing the words from Him who alone is valuable and can give val- ue—“Well done my good and faithful servant.” The IRS has a definition of value, as does the world; the question is, what do you value?
WILL FRAZIER graduated from ACCS Ac- credited school Westminster Academy, Memphis, TN, in 2004. He is the founder and Vice President of Research at Memphis Research Group, an investment research services, portfolio management, and consulting firm.
