Do Not Be True to Yourself E-Book

Kevin DeYoung

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Countercultural Yet Biblical Advice for High School and College Students, Ideal for Graduation and Birthday Gifts Most speeches addressed to high school and college students follow a similar theme: march to the beat of your own drum. This may sound encouraging on the surface, but Scripture exhorts believers to submit their lives to the will of God, not their own desires. Christian students need gospel-centered truth to guide them on their journey toward independence. In this collection of inspiring sermons and graduation speeches, Kevin DeYoung delivers a motivational, biblical call to young people: serve God faithfully—and if necessary, counter-culturally—in the next season of your life. Do Not Be True to Yourself includes practical advice for cultivating a Christ-centered worldview in every area of adult life, including relationships, work, church participation, and spiritual growth, making it a transformational resource for mentoring students.  - Written by Kevin DeYoung: Pastor and bestselling author shares relevant wisdom from past commencement speeches and sermons - Concise, Engaging Chapters of Counter-Cultural Advice: Christ-centered guidance that includes developing spiritual habits, prioritizing church attendance, fighting sexual sin, and temptation, and making godly decisions.  - Includes Reading Guide: DeYoung suggests 12 classic Christian books every person should read, from writers including John Calvin, G. K. Chesterton, and R. C. Sproul  - Perfect for graduation gifts, birthdays, or small group discussion

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“Kevin DeYoung writes with inspiring clarity and pastoral love as he summons a generation of Christians to courage and nerve. As he puts it, ‘The choice that matters most is actually a lifetime of choices.’ This will be the book to give to your graduating high school and college students. But please don’t pigeonhole this book. Do Not Be True to Yourself is a brilliant and succinct call to all Christians to reject the spirit of the age in favor of the courageous Christian faith.”

Rosaria Butterfield, Former Professor of English, Syracuse University; author, The Gospel Comes with a House Key

“Kevin DeYoung’s Do Not Be True to Yourself is a helpful antidote to a culture of self-obsession. If we’re learning anything about human nature in the age in which we live, it is that outsized focus on oneself produces disabling anxiety, disorienting ‘identities,’ and dizzying confusion about man’s ultimate end. It turns out, secular man’s chief end of glorifying himself is producing the very opposite of joy. This book shows why and shows a better, godward way forward.”

Andrew T. Walker, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Do Not Be True to Yourself

Do Not Be True to Yourself

Countercultural Advice for the Rest of Your Life

Kevin DeYoung

Do Not Be True to Yourself: Countercultural Advice for the Rest of Your Life

Copyright © 2023 by Kevin DeYoung

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates, Inc.

Cover design: Jordan Singer

First printing 2023

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-9005-4 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-9008-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-9006-1 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-9007-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: DeYoung, Kevin, author.

Title: Do not be true to yourself : countercultural advice for the rest of

your life / Kevin DeYoung.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2023. | Includes bibliographical

references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022041416 (print) | LCCN 2022041417 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433590054 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433590061 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433590085 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Christian life. | Virtues. | Philosophy of mind. | Theology, Practical.

Classification: LCC BV4501.3 .D496 2023 (print) | LCC BV4501.3 (ebook) | DDC 248.4--dc23/eng/20230112

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022041416

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022041417

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

To Ian,

our firstborn and the first to leave for college,

we love you and miss you.

Contents

Introduction

1  Don’t Be True to Yourself

2  Choose for Yourselves

3  The First Day of the Next Chapter of Your Life

4  Two Ways to Live

5  Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, and the Kingdom of God

Appendix: Twelve Old(ish) Books to Read When You Are Young

Notes

Scripture Index

Introduction

In May 2022, I had the privilege of giving the commencement address at Geneva College (Beaver Falls, PA). I didn’t want to recycle the usual commencement fare: “Follow your dreams! Be all that you can be! Go out and change the world!” Instead, I decided to give the opposite sort of advice, as you’ll see when you read the first chapter of this book. A few weeks later, I gave the same basic message at the baccalaureate service for Covenant Day School (the school associated with my church). I then posted the Geneva commencement address online.

To my pleasant surprise, the message seemed to resonate with a lot of people. Besides getting a good following online, I heard from pastors and friends and Christians in various places who appreciated the countercultural sentiment. About a month later, Justin Taylor from Crossway asked if I would consider publishing that talk in a little booklet. The plan for a little booklet then morphed into this little book.

Over the years I’ve preached at a number of baccalaureate services and commencement services. I’ve also preached targeted sermons to high school or college students just beginning or just ending their studies. I’ve collected some of those messages here, retaining much of the spoken style so you can “hear” the message as well as read it. If there is a theme that holds the chapters together it is the simple exhortation to serve God faithfully and counterculturally in the next season of your life. Obviously, if you have just finished high school or college or some other milestone as a young adult, these messages will speak to your situation. This book is especially for you. But insofar as the counsel in these pages is biblical, I think Christians (and maybe even non-Christians) of all ages can read the book with profit.

May God help us to live by his Spirit, according to his word, and for his glory—as young people, as middle-agers like me, and every stage of Christian discipleship.

1

Don’t Be True to Yourself

Twenty years ago, Anna Quindlen—a writer for the New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a recipient of prestigious honorary degrees—gave this advice to a group of graduating seniors:

Each of you is as different as your fingertips. Why should you march to any lockstep? Our love of lockstep is our greatest curse, the source of all that bedevils us. It is the source of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, terrorism, bigotry of every variety and hue because it tells us that there is one right way to do things, to look, to behave, to feel, when the only right way is to feel your heart hammering inside you and to listen to what its timpani is saying.1

That’s fairly typical commencement counsel: “Follow your dreams. March to the beat of your own drummer. Be true to yourself.”2

I’d like to offer different advice: “Do not follow your dreams. Do not march to the beat of your own drummer. And whatever you do, do not be true to yourself.”

If you think I’m being a little hyperbolic, you’re right. I’ll provide some nuance to this advice at the end. But I believe it’s important to state the matter provocatively because our world screams at us in thousands of commercials, movies, and songs that the best way to live, the only authentic way to live, is for you to be you, for you to live out your truth, for you to find your true self and then have the courage to live accordingly.

Deceived by Desires

The Bible, on the other hand, tells us, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Prov. 14:12). Think of the story of Esau who sold his birthright for a pot of stew. “Let me eat some of that red stew,” he said, “for I am exhausted. I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?” (Gen. 25:30, 32). Esau was consumed with his desires.

Esau was defined by his desires, and they deceived him. Esau is depicted as an animal. You can see this more clearly in the original Hebrew. All he can think of is the red stuff, the red stuff (ha-adom, ha-adom