COLLEGE IS, IN A SENSE, life as it was meant to be lived. In college, days are ordered but not regimented; amusements are daring but not (typically) deadly. In college, lives are organized around the possible rather than the practical.

If that sounds sentimental, it's because it is. College isn't all sweetness and light, and there are certainly good times and good deeds still to come in our future. And yet there's something distinct about the college experience that, while preparing you for real life, leaves you totally unprepared for "real life."

"Real life" is like high school. Schedules are fixed and regimented, relationships are organized not so much around being (hey-we live in the same dorm) as around doing(hey-we both got the same memo). Whereas the unstated goal of college is to set your life's course, the unstated goal of "real life" is something akin to settling down, or more to the point, settling in.

Adults are tempted toward all kinds of settling in: work, finances, relationships and even spiritual life. It’s a natural temptation: From our earliest age we imagine what we'll be when we grow up; we dress up in our parents' clothes; we play with toy cars and toy cell phones and toy laptop computers and even toy babies. We learn how to obey street signs and drive and vote and fill out W2 forms. In college we envision ourselves in a career and perhaps even with a life-partner. And then, suddenly, we graduate and we've arrived at our life's destination: "real life." I don’t know about you, but I could use a nap.

It is this nap that we need to guard against. The nap-that idea that we've arrived at our destination and can sit back, relax and enjoy our accomplishments-has caught countless otherwise faithful people in its snares: from Terah, Abraham's father; to Lot, Abraham's nephew; from Saul, the first king of Israel; to Rehoboam, the last king of its united twelve tribes. The nap has threatened countless people of faith throughout human history. Twentieth century monk Thomas Merton reflected on the nap in The Seven Storey Mountain:

For a moment, in the storms and confusion of adolescence, I had been humbled by my own interior sufferings, and having a certain amount of faith and religion, I had subjected myself more or less willingly and even gladly to the authority of others, and to the ways and customs of those around me.

But . . . I was rapidly building up a hard core of resistance against everything that displeased me: whether it was the opinions or desires of others, or their commands, or their very persons. I would think what I wanted and do what I wanted, and go my own way. If those who tried to prevent me had authority to prevent me, I would have to be at least externally polite in my resistance: but my resistance would be no less determined, and I would do my own will, have my own way.

Some people never escape the self-absorption that settles in when they achieve "real life." Their lives actually become characterized by immaturity: a sense of entitlement, a persecution complex when things go wrong, an inability to love people well, a self-centeredness even in the face of great need. This immaturity is not unsophisticated.

It has even developed its own approach to religion. We start to see Jesus as there for us, making our lives easier and preparing a place for us when we die, rather than calling us, as theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, to "come and die."

Jesus is there for us, but he's not interested in leaving us asleep. The story of the rich young ruler reveals a Jesus who loves us enough to wake us up-to confront what's keeping us from him and the life God is calling us to.

In three Gospels, the story of the rich young ruler is prefaced by Jesus indulging little children and then followed by Peter soliciting Jesus' favor. The theme that runs through the encounter is maturity in the face of transition: now that I've reached this point, what happens next? Jesus commands the rich young ruler, Peter and by extension each of us-to stop being rich, stop being young and stop being a ruler.

The ruler presumably has just seen Jesus showing uncommon affection to the children of his community, and he suspects that this teacher might be able to address his aching sense that, despite his powerful position in the community, despite his religious fastidiousness, despite his enormous assets, all is not yet well for him. He is looking for Jesus to tell him what's left to accomplish: "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" More likely he’s looking for Jesus to say something like, "Are you kidding? You're fine-in fact, I wish these guys who keep following me around were more like you."

Such is the problem facing college graduates today. We're cajoled from birth with the notion that we are special. At the induction ceremony for an honor society, my wife's adviser commended all the inductees and, really, all students everywhere: "You are the elite. The world will look to you for answers." This induction was only the latest in a series of assertions that these students were children of promise, people who would make decisions on behalf of everyone else and be rewarded handsomely for it. They were rich young rulers, the whole lot of them. They should have been enormously pleased with themselves.

And yet, nobody really is pleased with themselves-or, more accurately, our self-satisfaction is regularly met with frustration. Our boss doesn't recognize our brilliance, girls don't swoon when we walk by, boys don't write us songs or bring us flowers. There's something we still lack.

Jesus recognizes this lack in the rich young ruler and begins to deconstruct his life. First off, his faulty theology: "Why do you call me good? Only God is good." Of course we know, because we have the whole story, that Jesus is in fact good, because Jesus is in fact God. But if it's a teacher this kid wants, it's a teacher he’ll get. "You know the commandments. . . . Do this and you shall live." Jesus is guiding the rich young ruler into an important moment of self-discovery: all that I am (and I'm a lot) and all that I've done (and I've done a lot) is not enough for all that I need.

It's important to note that this kid-who has it all together-is no less loved by Jesus than the little children he's just taken into his arms and blessed, no less loved by him than the disciples who have already left their comfortable lives behind. So Jesus gives him a gift: "Go, sell everything you have and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

This is, by the way, not so much a command to divest as it is a command to deconstruct. A person can't help being rich; if you're college-educated, living in the United States, you're among the wealthiest people who ever lived anywhere. But the notion that wealth is something we've accomplished rather than something accidental to our birth gets in the way of our ability to see the grace of God as a gift rather than an inherent right.

When you take away wealth, however, what comes next? Nothing binds adults to where we are except the nap. We get addicted to the status quo. The rich young ruler needs to be kicked out of the nest, but he's too busy trying to crawl into Jesus' lap for a blessing.

Jesus instead invites him into a very adult activity: leaving behind all he has come to trust, and going wherever Jesus goes, which will include a trial, a cross and a grave. Jesus is telling this kid that it's time to grow up. He is now an adult, and God wants to be his rabbi.

Jesus still loves this kid; he just wants more for him. But to attach yourself to a rabbi is to admit that you have more to learn, that you're unable to teach yourself. Jesus is inviting him not just to grow up and redefine himself but to humble himself. The implicit promise from Jesus is that he will lift up this humbled young disciple to where he's not been before. A great adventure awaits.

The rich young ruler wasn't ready, so he and Jesus parted ways. We don't know what happened next for him. We do know what happens next for those who follow Jesus, because Peter asks and Jesus answers: "No one who has left"—and he lists all the attachments that tempt us to nap rather than pursue our calling—"will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age"—and he includes in this list persecutions and the challenges that are a part of any journey—"and in the age to come, eternal life."

At points of transition, like graduation or marriage or parenthood or a cross-country move or even the transition from sleeping to waking, we each face the rich young ruler's dilemma. Jesus will treat us as adults, whether we're ready to be treated as such or not. He'll present us with the choices available to us: to stick with the status quo and remain in our immaturity, to follow the path of self advancement which is essentially the same thing, or to put our youth and our wealth and our power behind us to follow him. On our less mature days we go away sad, but on our best days we go where Jesus leads us.