 Ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to be part of the Tetzel College commencement exercises today. I first congratulate all the graduates for their hard-earned degrees. I must also congratulate the Tetzel College community for making itself visible through its participation in the public square. Often I am encouraged by your writings in the Moron Express. I hope Padkayans will also be inspired and challenged to do the same and more. In fact, it's time Padkaya Christian College and Tetzel College start working together in areas academic, spiritual, and social. Principal Dr. Loren should take the initiative. Every speaker on such an occasion is likely to say something about quality education. Recently I read in local papers that close to 50% of our college graduates nationwide are unemployable. I certainly hope Tetzel College graduates will never be part of that unemployable flag. In Nagaland we often hear about a very high percentage of educated unemployed, educated unemployed who need to be more accurate to say that quality education in our land is still on paper only for the most part. And that many of the so-called educated unemployed in our land have only degrees that are, which are nothing but paper certificates. They are like many of us, Baptists, I hope Baptists, fellow Baptists will forgive me. By the way, I'm ordained Baptist Minister too. They are like many of us Baptists whom I call paper tigers. They excel in passing resolutions, but miserably fail in execution. I believe in confession. I trust the Roman Catholic Church more than the Baptists when it comes to education. The former means business. I've always believed that higher academic education is not for everybody, though higher vocational education should be open to all. The reason often given for the unemployability of college graduates are, one, proficiency required a language, here of course it's English, students are not learning grammar or the art of communication. Through cognitive skills or ability, cognition has to do with the act or process of knowing, including awareness and judgment. Without analytical and critical minds, our graduates don't have much to contribute and will remain unemployable. This reminds me of Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and theologian who says, and I call, man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. Man is obviously made for thinking, wherein lies his dignity and his merit. And his whole duty is to think as he ought. Dorothy Sayers, a playwright and scholar, laments, and I quote, although we often succeed in teaching our pupils subjects, we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think. They learn everything except the art of learning. No wonder why one of my gurus, John Henry Cardinal Newman, in his classic book, The Idea of a University, talks about cultivation of mind and intellect as being part and parcel of liberal education, which is the primary business of higher education. He was convinced that, and I quote, one who has learned to think and to reason and to compare and to discriminate and to analyze will not indeed at once be a lawyer or a statement or a position, but he will be placed in that state of intellect in which he can take up any of the sciences and callings with an ease, a grace, a versatility, and success. The Lord Jesus commands, delivers Christians to love God with all their minds, as well as their heart, soul, and strength. What does it mean to love God with the mind? The mind is indispensable in understanding anything, including God. The Bible says, but it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty that gives understanding. Developing the mind is thus crucial for the maturing Christian. Educating the mind is essential in man is to play its role in the world as long as he inhabits this planet. The mind is critical to our human identity, our identity in the image of God. With our mind, we discern the good, the acceptable, and the perfect will of God. Hence, educating the mind, renewing the mind is our Christian vocation. The real battlefield in the next millennium is going to be the mind. Both the devil and the God of creation are out to win the mind of man. The battle for the mind is already taking place in the halls of all the academic institutions the world over. Tetsuo College and Pankai Christian College are no exception. As an institution of higher learning, Tetsuo and Pankai must be prepared to accept this challenge, or else they are not worth existing. According to Charles Mullick, former president of the United Nations, responsible Christians faced two tasks, that of saving the soul and that of saving the mind. He said, and I told, if you win the whole world and lose the mind of the world, you will soon discover you have not won the world. Indeed, it may turn out that you have actually lost the world. Some serious questions Mullick has put before us Christians are, and I call, in order to create and excel intellectually, must you sacrifice or neglect Jesus? Is your self-giving to scholarship and learning essentially incompatible with your self-giving to Jesus Christ? These are the ultimate questions and I beg you to be aware of thinking that they admit glit answers. I warn you, the right answer could be most disturbing. Hence, the challenge of excellence. Are we committed to the proposition that Christian work should present a standard of performance that is superior to anything secular, that we are never to be satisfied with mediocrity? To Tetsuo College students and students everywhere, let me say that the God of mediocrity, the God of the average is everywhere in our land today. You have the capacity to do first-class work, and you are, or at least I will say, many of you are doing third-class work. In dedication to Christ, a commitment to your endeavor comes first. Therefore, if you are in an educational institution, your first responsibility in according to my friend, the late U.S. Senator Mark Hatfield, and I call to perform to the highest degree of your intellectual ability, that excellent performance will become a witness to the Lord you serve. No words, no speechmaking, no meeting, no sessions, no baby religious can substitute in the thinking of the believer for a performance of mediocrity. Tetsuo College students, fellow Christians, let us do our work in such a superb manner that the non-Christian world will never equate mediocrity. With the things of Jesus Christ. God bless you all, and God bless Tetsuo College.