the real world

It's been only a week since graduation ceremonies and a previous period of talk among seniors about being thrust into the real world, weddings, jobs – out of the bubble and into the field. I think a lot, as you know, about what constitutes the real world – how similar and separate we can be. I wonder constantly about what our students expect when they step out there. I think about what we teach and how we teach it, about preparing someone to live in the Kingdom, in the world. But all that is from the perspective of a student moving from a Christian education into a secular society.
Across the board, "into the real world" constitutes more of a get a real job, greater responsibility, fend for one's self situation. So our perspective of "real world" is secular and unbubblefied.
Let's say someone else is educated outside the bubble and embarks upon the next phase of their journey within our environment. Of course their perspective of "real world" is a new job and responsibility. From their perspective they are moving into the real world. From our perspective, they are moving out of the real world. I did it - from college, through a portal of public school teaching and into the bubble. I recently ran across the blog of another who is doing the same thing. If this real world inductee happens across this blog and would give permission, I'll point you to an already interesting blogumentation of this move.
I wonder if our students, always feeling bubbled, would be surprised that their bubble is the real world for many of us. At least for the moment. I am not talking about a naïve erroneous idea that we're living in the real world. I am talking about a fully informed, God ordained calling into the real life preparation of called-out, committed believers who don't yet know the extent of what they can actually obtain within their "bubble" for their ministry outside the bubble.
Perhaps our definition of "real world" is always formed within our own perspective. "Real world" is the other thing – the one I'm not yet a part of. Perhaps what really defines "the real world" is that move into a life in which our primary purpose becomes giving. Of course we'll still need to receive, but the primary purpose of our receiving will be to give. Some or our students have been in the real world throughout their stay in the bubble. Others will go out and still not find the real world. Some of them will come out of the bubble only to move right back in and find that it has become the real world.
Of course at some point we're bound to find that all the world is God's. It's all real. Surely it's our place in the world that makes it real for us – or not. When we follow His lead and find our place, it's real.