NOTE (1/12/18): We’re all learning and growing.  Some of the stuff I’ve written in these old posts may no longer be exactly what I believe or think, or at least may not be articulated the way I’d do it nowadays.  I preserve them in an attempt it to be transparent about my journey, and in the hopes that readers may still glean some insight from the core ideas found here.  Thanks for journeying with me!

Ever wondered if you are completely wrong about everything?  University has this thing where it tries to get you to think that.  It seems to want to get you to question everything in the hopes that you will turn into a depressed egocentric intellectual who finds pleasure in calling less “educated” people’s hopes naive, and finding comfort in the idea that there is no point to anything.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes people are completely wrong about everything.  And that is good to know.  The funny thing is, I haven’t felt that university seems to offer much in the way of what’s actually right.  Kris Vallotton put it like this:

“When children hit puberty they begin to ask “who am I?” The problem with our society is we don’t have an answer to this question, so we send them off to college to make them do something. But you can’t educate someone into their identity. Proper identity comes from God speaking through people over us.”

(…And sometimes God just speaks to us Himself.  It happens.  I met a guy once who met the Lord ten years before he ever had a Bible, and he said when he first read the Bible nothing surprised him because he said God had already told him what was in it.  Word.)

I’m not writing to rebuke university ideology though.  I found the year fascinating, because I actually got out of my bubble and got to hear, up close and personal, what some of the rest of the world has been up to.  It was very helpful to me – I now have a list of questions for myself to hash through this summer, stuff that I never would have thought of had I not gone outside the bubble.

And that brings me to my point.  If I could ask one question after my first year of university, it’s this: where the heck is everybody else that said they’re the light of the world?

See, it feels like people can either talk about how they’re all going to go out there and change the world, or they actually go out there into the world and turn into spineless jellyfish.  For all of us who have surrounded ourselves with people who think like we do all the time, we gotta ask ourselves: is that what Jesus did? Did he spend all his time with people who were like him?  And I’m not just talking about spending time with people who smoke pipes, or listen to bands with weird names like like As I Lay Dying, or – heaven forbid – are from a different denomination.  I’m talking about, as my shirt says, “pagans, drunks and sinners”.  For church folks, this means basically people who have no grid for anything that you do in life.  Bill Johnson said, “A gospel that doesn’t work in the marketplace, doesn’t work.”

I feel like I actually finally stepped out, more or less, into that marketplace this year.  Got to play my music at a coffee house.  Got to stand in front of my theater department, wearin’ my Jesus shirt and tell everyone that they are beautiful and I love them.  Got to have one-on-one conversations with real people about life and God and whatever else is actually relevant.  Man, I have so much to learn.  But hey, seeking after Truth, out there in the dark – that seems to be more courageous, and sounds a lot more like Jesus, than hiding in the basement watching Veggie Tales your whole life.  This thing has got to go to all creation, doesn’t it?

I don’t want to make it sound like I’m the first one to do this, or the best by far.  Lol.  There are plenty who have gone out there into the world and kept their spine.  And really, it can only make you stronger out there.  Once you know an enemy, there’s nothing left to fear (and that’s not referring to university people, just to clarify).  And hey, even if nobody trailblazed anywhere before, it still wouldn’t negate our responsibility.  “Let God be true, and every man a liar!” (Romans 3:4).  How would we ever get anywhere if we’re always waiting for someone else to go first?

I’ve got questions for myself to answer this summer, sure, but I’m not worried about it.  If we’ve got love, no matter how cliche it is, that’s still what the world needs.  And if I’m wrong about everything else, I pray I would just remain humble enough to accept the Truth and continue to share it.  Putting Truth above all else is what’s supposed to take us to Jesus in the first place, right?  Love you all.  See ya on the road.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_NJy8H7t4Q]