How do you Respond?

If any of you are Christians, it is likely that you well remember the period in your life when you had to readjust to the world around you as an entirely new worldview and perspective settled into place. Or perhaps you were like me, and you developed a worldview in relatively safe, conducive environments, then spent years coming to grips with the real world and testing this worldview therein. It can be quite challenging to confront what most of the world believes, teaches like fact, and insists you cheerfully accept, while trying to find the common ground between these two wholly opposed ways of looking at reality. It is especially tricky if you’re trying to do so in college, where the institution itself is truly designed to convince you that in every subject, from every angle, the Christian worldview is egregiously erroneous, if not dangerous, and the progressive view is by far the more enlightened, the more compassionate, the more effective, and the more scientific one.

Certainly, this institution succeeded in making me ask every question I could of the Bible, to challenge every accepted doctrine and foregone conclusion, and work through all of it with the upmost care. However, it did not succeed in weakening my faith, but rather helped me to forge a foundation of iron which will, I suspect, serve me well all eternity.

One of the greatest reasons I did not find myself swayed by the logic and pressure of the college environment is because they made the simple mistake of surrounding me with peers. These peers, by and large, wholly accepted the doctrines of atheism, postmodernism, and progressivism. From an early age these doctrines were taught, then continuously reinforced till they reached college, where the efforts to convince, of faculty and curriculum alike, redoubled. Indeed, they put my self-righteous attitude to shame, displaying in defense of these doctrines the kind of religious fervor and aggression that I had only rarely seen in Christians. I learned to conduct myself like a soldier moving through a minefield, my slightest move carefully considered and exceedingly guarded, least I step on yet another of these sensitive beliefs and I be attacked, then my reputation ruined for yet another class and semester. And much as it pains me to state, I do not describe isolated incidents. The majority were like this. They did not all jump down my throat over ever transgression, but they all had the handful of doctrines which they held so dear that they would verbally murder anyone who questioned them. I looked at their lives, and saw lives like the one I lead before I genuinely believed all that I claimed to. I ran from that life because my life depended on it, and I decided to run from any belief of theirs that produced similar results.

But I couldn’t say this to them. Besides the fact that I don’t intentionally walk on landmines if I can help it, I was very afraid of people in general, to be honest. Even if I was likely the only Christian these people would ever meet, I preferred to keep my distance and cop the attitude, “live and let live”. This explanation satisfied the people to whom I answered, but it didn’t fool me. I knew that it physically hurt me to see people destroying themselves, to see them ignoring truth and rejecting justice, to see them embrace evil and call it good while dealing daily with the masked despair of those who don’t believe in a hear after, or even in a peaceful future.

Slowly but surely, I’m trying to learn what can I say, how to act, what to confront and what to let go, that I may gently encourage people to see and accept the truth without making them feel attacked. But before I began to find the words, I wrote this poem as a wish, as a question, and as a release of the pain inspired by being constantly surrounded by hopelessness.

Is There Nothing

Is there nothing
You won’t destroy
For the sake of your pride?

Is there nothing
You hold sacred
In the corners of your mind?

Is there nothing holy in your life?

Are you hurting
In your weak soul?
Are you seeking relief, is that why?

You break all things
That you can touch
As if that will make you right

Is there nothing holy in your life?

Is there nothing
That will stop you
That will give reason to try?

Is there nothing
That will heal you
That will make your soul alive?

Is there nothing holy in your life?