The boys and I have been in Chicago for a week now, waist-deep in preparations for the wedding of one of my best friends from high school days. It’s wonderful and exhausting. We are all a little tired and a little out of our routine; there is not much time for writing.
So in honor of college classes starting this week, I’m reposting this open letter I wrote to students attending Christian College. It’s that time of year, after all. School supplies and just the hint of something brisk on the air and new jeans and anticipation. For the one headed off in your first car, laundry basket and mini-fridge in the back…(and for the one who still feels like a little like she’s eighteen even though she’s not)…this one’s for you.
The first thing I want to tell you is this: it is not what you are expecting it to be.
I know about the glossy ads: campus lawns meticulously maintained so that they almost look like the “green pastures” of the 23rd Psalm, like you could lie down here and rest. A few feet away, unshaven college boys throw Frisbees lazily back and forth in the afternoon sun. I know.
Perhaps that four years of high school was a little unkind to you, and you are just looking for a place where you can belong. Or maybe you are filled to the top of your soul, high off all the leaving, looking forward, full of hope.
You are thinking “Christian College” and it looks like two thousand students lit like candles from the inside, glowing in the darkness. Instant friendship and up-all-night conversations over coffee and Krispy Kremes. It looks like safety. It seems like it would be so simple.
Here is the truth. Here is the paradox:
Where Christians gather there is love, wild and full of grace. And. Where Christians gather, there is pettiness. Gossip. Pain. Hate.
They are, after all, just people in the end. Young, like you, on their own for the first time. Making all their big mistakes, trying to figure out who they are. It will look like hypocrisy at times. It will make you double back. There will be a moment when it makes you rethink this whole Jesus thing.
At some point, the scripture-themed hall decorations will start to feel gaudy and cliché, the Bible you carry for class will begin to feel heavy against your back. There’s a good chance that someone will write a judgmental Bible verse on your whiteboard or use a spiritual phrase to insult you. This is part of it.
There will be pressure to find “the one” and envy and mockery if you do. The rules you agreed to when you sent in your paperwork will tighten around your neck; you’ll tire of all this theological discussion. (Premillenialism, predestination, a verse for everything, a test on Friday.)
This is what it means to grow up: to jump bravely into your imagined future and come down hard on the unyielding ground. You will find yourself a little broken, a little sad, a little lonely. And that’s just part of it.
The second thing I want to tell you is this: don’t give up.
You will feel yourself at a fork in the road at your Christian college: perform or disappear. Prove that your faith is strong, or despair. Choose neither of these. Choose stillness. Chose love.
Don’t be afraid of darkness. It will come, even in this place that promises Light. Question. Doubt. Discuss. Do not accept easy answers here or give into the party lines. Push toward the hard edges of your pain. Be as honest as you know how to be.
Eat cold pizza and stay out past curfew and venture downtown. Make friends from outside this place; find them at hole-in-the-wall coffee shops with live music. Listen to their stories. I mean really listen.
Find a few people from your hall or your English class that get you. Just a few. Don’t worry if it’s not your roommates, if you don’t like your roommates, if your roommates don’t like you.
Breathe deep breaths in the cold night air. Jump into the lake in the middle of winter. Feel your skin burst into flame as it touches the water. Know that God is here, and you, you are alive.
Ahhh… bringing back memories of my first year at Biola, a quintessential Christian college though we did not have curfews even when I was there forever ago.
What I loved most about my years at Biola, was the safety I felt to really consider my faith, to struggle in the dark place, and to be able to question without worrying about causing others to stumble or never know God. It was at Biola that I learned that doubt is part of faith and that there is no one way to God, or one way to live that pleases God. He is not a God of the group, He is a God of the individual, of me.
So glad that your experience was positive. At it’s best, I think this is exactly what Christian college should be. (The problem is, it’s usually not at it’s best.)
Addie -
I have just been introduced to your blog. This is honest and refreshing. I would imagine if truth told, you would have have some difficult responses from “evangelical Christians”. It is hard not to feel jaded in the life of a evangelical Christian when life turns out to be most difficult, particularly when the “pat phrases and answers” one would give don’t turn out to be true. I have had a few drinks over that one in my time. I continue to struggle to find my way to what I hope would be a more honest, authentic life living in a small town ultra conservative evangelical faith with a conservative christian college that my husband happens to be the theology professor. When I make that statement I try not to laugh. Not laughing at him, but at what we are doing here. I have tried to convince myself that we are missionaries in a foreign, what feels like communist land. I hope I don’t sound too jaded but if I do, suck it up. Ok, I may be a little angry. One day I will tell my story, one of pain, isolation, judgmentalism and rejection. But for now, I struggle with who I am in the midst of this life that has been difficult at best. My journey is one of discovering God is a way that I could not have imagined before. My husband is an amazing man, who is a quiet soul, but when he speaks, it moves, and stretches ones mind and emotion in a way that makes one want to run in the opposite direction if one has been raised in the evangelical culture. At least that is my own interpretation. Well, I have said enough. Hope no one I know reads this, I could be in trouble. As if I have not been in trouble before, which I now can laugh about. So, thank you for providing a place that I can connect, I appreciate it.
Addie -
I have just been introduced to your blog. This is honest and refreshing. I would imagine if truth told, you would have have some difficult responses from “evangelical Christians”. It is hard not to feel jaded in the life of a evangelical Christian when life turns out to be most difficult, particularly when the “pat phrases and answers” one would give don’t turn out to be not true. I have had a few drinks over that one in my time. I continue to struggle to find my way to what I hope would be a more honest, authentic life living in a small town ultra conservative evangelical faith with a conservative christian college that my husband happens to be the theology professor. When I make that statement I try not to laugh. Not laughing at him, but at what we are doing here. I have tried to convince myself that we are missionaries in a foreign, what feels like communist land. I hope I don’t sound too jaded but if I do, suck it up. Ok, I may be a little angry. One day I will tell my story, one of pain, isolation, judgmentalism and rejection. But for now, I struggle with who I am in the midst of this life that has been difficult at best. My journey is one of discovering God in a way that I could not have imagined before. My husband is an amazing man, who is a quiet soul, but when he speaks, it moves, and stretches ones mind and emotion in a way that makes one want to run in the opposite direction if one has been raised in the evangelical culture. At least that is my own interpretation. Well, I have said enough. Hope no one I know reads this, I could be in trouble. As if I have not been in trouble before, which I now can laugh about. So, thank you for providing a place that I can connect, I appreciate it.
So glad you’re here Diane…and so sorry that you’ve felt so isolated in a place that (in a perfect world) should be a kind of spiritual haven. One of the sweetest things for me about writing here is finding that there are so many people who struggle with the same feelings and fears and hurts that I do. So I can’t make it easier, what you’re going through, but I can tell you you’re not alone. Thanks so much for sharing.
You will feel yourself at a fork in the road at your Christian college: perform or disappear.
These words are such a devastating indictment of the idolatry that creeps in to Christian subculture: the god of performance, success, appearance, conformity. They have the appearance of the gospel but deny its weakness – and therefore its power.
Fabulous insight, as ever…
“They have the appearance of the gospel but deny its weakness” — yes.
Of course, there IS the fact that if you attend the Christian college that I chose to attend and then choose to stay out past curfew, you will need to find a new Christian college. Oh, and if you take that mini-fridge down there? Uh, you’ll have to UPS it right back home or else sell it to someone over 28 or someone who lives off-campus, because, yeah, it’s a fire hazard in the student halls, and you’re not responsible enough to be trusted to have anything like that in your room. And that unshaven guy on the brochure? Yeah, he REALLY has to shave every day, or he’ll eventually be asked to leave and not return – that photo was taken under special circumstances which are not duplicated in normal student life and was not intended to be representative of our typical student experience.
Oh, yeah, I can throw you some Christian college bones, yep, been there, done that, did NOT buy the T-shirt. Well, maybe one, because in the name of espirit de corp, or some crap like that, it was a punishable offense to wear any article of clothing which referenced any other educational institution… Oh, wait, nothing we could wear could say ANYTHING, even the ones that did say something about our alma mater…
And that person you’re talking to at the coffee shop? Yeah, they darn well BETTER be of the same sex as you, or else you’re going to need a new college even sooner, regardless of whether you stay out past curfew…
Wow. OK, my Christian college wasn’t that intense. You win the Crazy College Contest.
Great post! Hopefully your new life is falling into place back in the U.S.
I had one year of traditional Bible college as a single, then 4 years later attended a very non-traditional Christian Training Center as a married girl and loved it. As a couple we had the joy many years later of re-creating that non-traditional bible school and taught there for 10 years!
Yes, my husband attended a nontraditional Bible school in Australia for a year, and he loved it. (Though, for the record, my little brother attended the same one years later and didn’t have the same experience.) So much depends on the people and on the grace we extend to one another…or don’t.
Such wise words here, Addie. So good.
Thanks lovely.
I love this, I lived in Christian college and seminary and often felt like the bad girl or the outcast. Or I felt like the good girl and the prude. Never just right, always the pressure to conform, to find, to discover to impress.
Thank you, seriously sharing this right now.
I know what you mean. I felt that way most days too. It seems like it wouldn’t be hard to find your people at a place like that, but I had such a tough time finding my people.
Just found your blog today. I’ve enjoyed reading, and this post specifically stood out. It certainly resonates with my experience at a Christian college. I made it through with a lot of positive stories, a lot of affirming experiences, and a lot of heartaches and life-lessons. I wish I would’ve heard this 6 years ago, and I wish more commencement addresses sounded like this. Thanks for writing and keep it up.
So glad you’re here Kevin. And thank you for the kind comment. It means a lot.
Oh my goodness. The perspective, the insight, the hope…
I’ve been saving this for a time when I might have a few free moments to comment, a time when I might be filled with thoughtful insight.
But those kids. Man, they just keep coming at me.
So I’ll just add my voice to the crescendo of “Bravo!” This is well said. I wish I could send it to every freshmen at my alma mater.
“But those kids. Man, they just keep coming at me.” SERIOUSLY. It never stops. Thanks for taking a few precious minutes to write a note here, friend!