Attending a Christian college is wonderful. The professors are involved, invested and care about you. The whole campus has a wonderful paradise-like feel to it. The education is top notch, and I feel more challenged here than I have ever been in my life. There is one problem with this, though. Although the campus is wonderful and everyone is friendly, there is a feeling that something is not right.
To help understand why I feel that something is not right, we must dive into my background a little, so bear with me. I attended a public high school, which resulted in me growing with some rough edges. I see things differently than most of my college peers. I grew up surrounded by non-believers and my mind was focused on their concerns, from crazy parties to street racing and from emancipation to moving in with friends so they did not have to go home to a drunk stepdad. My friends that I went to high school with are drastically different from the friends I have in college. They are not any worse and they are not any better because the two worlds are so different from each other. My own background is littered with not fitting in. In high school, I was the guy who did not drink and the guy who drove the modified sports car. I was in choir and on the robotics team. In college though, I am more involved with my outside world and my jobs than I am with on campus activities. I believe that this is where my feelings of discontentment are stemming from.
From my perspective, college is about change and improvement. From old to new, it is about the acquisition of knowledge and the improving of life skills to make you an effective and productive member of society. Essentially, it is paying someone to teach you new ways to approach challenges and obstacles. So where does my false sense of peace come from? What does this mean? I have deduced it to one thing: the bubble.
The problem with the bubble is that as much as we try to pop it or break out of it, we actually end up propagating it. The only way out of the bubble is to make relationships with people outside of the Christian bubble. To do this, schools require ministry hours. While this is a good way to create interaction with the outside world, it does not actually help break the bubble. This creates a great relationship with the others that are in the bubble and doing the outreach with you. However, it does not actually create long lasting relationships with people on the outside. While there is the possibility and this is not true of everyone it is, for the most part, standard. So how do we solve this and essentially combine our two worlds? We create a culture that honestly is saturated in Christ and is highly visible to the outside world. The outside world will see our light as we shine through the darkness.
People are waking up. They are seeing the bubble and they are expanding their reach. They are growing into others’ bubbles and making a change. I hope that this will catch on and spread like wildfire. I hope that we can all get out of our bubbles, experience the world and start to make a difference.
