This week marked the beginning of my last undergraduate semester at university. It still doesn’t feel like this season of my life, which only just started, will end soon. I love being on a campus and learning… probably a little bit too much. So on a cold walk today, I contemplated something that’s always bothered me; God’s place on the university campus.
Today, three out of my four professors spoke of Christianity/God in a questioning or negative manner… and today was only the first day of class. Justifiably, none of them did so in a belligerent manner, nor in an inappropriate way. Also, I’m not one to get offended by this because I do attend a secular University and I’m working toward degrees in liberal arts; questions about religion are inherent. Yet while not offended, I am always aware.
This time a year ago I took a literary criticism class where, for various reasons, God and religious texts were often discussed in a philosophical manner. One day, our professor asked if anyone knew the story of Esther. I, an attendee of Sunday school since childhood as well as a Veggie Tales connoisseur, have known the story for years. Nobody raised their hand to answer him, so I hesitated before putting my hand in the air. I explained the story and felt the need to end it with “or so the story goes according to Jewish and Christian traditions.”
Not thirty seconds after I spoke, I realized what I had said. For the sake of my own academic comfort, I felt the need to belittle my religion’s text with a “or so the story goes.” It might not seem like much to an outside observer, but to me that one phrase felt like a betrayal of what I hold dear.
If I’m being honest, this moment is the one that made me put the breaks on my graduate school plans. This time last year, my biggest dream in life was to be a PhD, but after catching myself speaking contrary to my beliefs, I became unsure. It made me realize there is a disconnect between who I am in the classroom and who I am outside of it; an academic self and a personal, religious, self. And while I don’t see a problem with wearing different hats in different circumstances, I do see a problem if one of those hats makes you belittle or reject what you hold most sacred when you have a different hat on.
Going on the World Race is part of my “time off” before I decided to go to graduate school or not because, at my core, I am an academic… but I’m also a Christian. Perhaps it is my youth or something I’m just not understanding yet, but I feel I need to figure out how to reconcile these two deep parts of myself before I move forward.
I like to meditate a lot on Solomon’s Ecclesiastes because I feel like this is the place where that reconciliation begins. In this short book of the bible, Solomon struggles with the workings of the flesh and mind. His final verses in the book challenge me:
“Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” Ecclesiastes 12:12-14
This verse is the best advice to someone like me. Yeah, there is SO MUCH to learn in the world, but I will NEVER learn it all. However, I CAN know hope in the fullness of Christ now, and that is perhaps the best knowledge I possess.
So, now that the semester is back in full swing, I ask for your prayers that I can keep my focus on Christ and keep working towards my financial, mental, and spiritual goals in my World Race endeavors, despite being up to my eyes in syllabi and already a little bit exhausted with it all.
