Some thoughts seem to come out of no where. You’re just driving down the eastern side of the mountain to pick up a Mediterranean pizza so you can have a nice stay-at-home date with the wife and watch some Hercule Poirot. Some thoughts are like that. Like this one…
Why was I able to keep my faith in college?
I’ve never even thought about this before. It’s never been asked of me. Never crossed my mind. Ever. And then boom, Mediterranean Pizza, and I’m thinking about it on the way back up the mountain.
Let me get two things out of the way before I attempt to answer the question.
First, I do not mean, “Why was I able to be moral in college?” That is an altogether different thing. I was never “wild” or anything like that. But I also do not look back and see a Puritan in the making. My question is in regards to keeping the faith in the face of all the intellectual challenges college threw my way.
Second, one answer is that God is responsible for me remaining a believer. God is sovereign, in control and powerful, so one might want to leave it at that. At the risk of being contrary, allow me to say how lazy that answer is. While true, it is incomplete. And while sounding spiritual, it is usually not. There are always earthly, human and “fleshly” means God uses to achieve such an end. Ignoring this is unspiritual.
OK, now that those are out of the way, the obvious answers need to be dealt with – Christian home, church attendance, church involvement, etc. All these I experienced and drank in deeply. My Father was an associate pastor for 25 years. My mom a SS teacher, my much older brothers were great examples of these things (come to think of it, my three brothers never rebelled against the faith). But here’s the thing making me ask the question above.
This was true for so many others.
So, humanly-speaking, what kept me believing in and following Jesus from the age of nine till now? Why did college with all it’s temptations, trials and challenges have no effect on me? Why did I never, ever veer out of the stream of believing?
I was never trained in apologetics. To be honest, besides a shallow interest in poetry, I had not read deeply at all. No classical education.
Actually I was the opposite of who you would expect to survive college with a faith intact. I was the son of a Baptist pastor. I went to public schools and was a terrible student, barely passing each year of school. My teachers, my parents, and I all wiped our brows that I made it through to the next grade. And I was a little nerdy. OK, maybe a lot nerdy. And heck, my parents threw away my copy of Kick by INXS (Jan 1, 1989…a day that will live in infamy). Just for that I should have rebelled. Add to all this a growing intellectual bent filled with lots of questions about the world we live in and you have a recipe for walking away from the faith according to the conventional wisdom.
But I didn’t. I kept believing.
Well, I have one idea. It is not one supported by science or any facts. It is mere theory. But one I think is worthy of more thinking.
Though I was a pastor’s kid immersed in church life to the nth degree, I was not secluded from the world.
When I got to college, I was pretty ready for the world. I was ready for all the challenges to what I believed, they were familiar to me. The rocky soil of a culture bent on unbelief was not all that uncomfortable under my feet. The shards of reasons for doubt were everywhere but they never really cut deep.
The world was familiar territory to me. But that is not all. If I left it there it would be too much like the above “God” answer. There is just too much more for me to leave it there.
My faith was forged in an environment of seeing the world filled with more reasons for wonder than fear. Sure, I knew there were reasons for fear. The monsters were real. But there was a lot of beauty out there too.
I grew up with all the usual, expected supports for faith you would expect in a Christian family.
But I also grew up in a home with Lionel Hampton in the cassette player, Merle and Willie singing “Pancho and Lefty.” I grew up with a Mom, who after years of collecting shells on the beach, still looked at each new one the way others look at Van Gogh. My parents took pictures of everything long before hipsters were on the scene. Back before my dad was struck with too many….far too many health problems, he built computers from scratch. And with each new innovation, you could see the awe and wonder.
I just didn’t grow up with a fear of the world. But I also didn’t fully trust it. I knew there was something bigger. Always. Something bigger than the sky above and more sure than the ground beneath me.
The theology escaped me. But the implications were present regardless. I had not yet worked out an understanding of God as the One, Who created all things good. The importance of this fact was not officially acknowledged. But it was enjoyed nonetheless.
Though I’m not sure this is why I kept on believing when others did not, I think it is one reason why I kept on believing. Others have reasons too, maybe far different than mine.
I’m not sure I want this to be advice. But this world is full of beautiful and terrible things. And I think it is important for young people to think deeply about the terrible things and to look on in wonder at the beautiful things. Criticism is far too often our only posture.
Maybe I’m thinking about this because my daughter is entering 4th grade. The shadow of all these things creeps closer to her life. And I’m tempted to do nothing but shelter. I mean, she can do whatever she wants when she is 35, right? I kid, I kid. But really, every reasonable parent veers into unreasonable thoughts of sheltering their kids. I’m afraid of sheltering too much and sheltering too little. I suppose this has been the dilemma for parents time out of mind. Maybe, just maybe, helping them see the terrible, gradually, for what it is AND making sure they see the beauty is the…a 10 and 2 keeping us on the road – betwixt the ditches – to where we want them to be.
And maybe I’m thinking about these things because I’m a former youth pastor whose been hearing from his students over the past week as a result of this. So I’ve been rehearsing my decisions and second-guessing. But this kind of thinking is why I think so many of my students were ready for college. We talked about the terrible things of the world. We talked about the fears and temptations. But we also listened to and talked about Josh Ritter and U2 and Bob Dylan and encountered a lot of beauty along the way.
There are a lot of reasons students walk away from the faith in college. And my guess is those reasons are as myriad and complex as the students themselves. But after 40 years of taking strides in my faith and watching myself fail, I’m pretty sure I would not have stayed on the trajectory I kept in college if I had grown up in home without a Mom, who listened to Neil Diamond and a Dad, who listened to Jazz while cleaning up the house on his day off during the week.
No, no, no…I’m not suggesting what parents should be doing, so much as saying we tend to see them as unspiritual parts of my upbringing. But, the more I think about it, I’m not convinced that kind of thinking doesn’t hold any kind of water. I’m more inclined to call those actions very spiritual.
OK, maybe I’m suggesting a least some Van Morrison.
There is a reason why unbelievers walk away from things like The Grand Canyon and U2 concerts and call them “spiritual.” They were. They have souls created by God to be moved by all he has created. How much more a believer?
When I was much younger, say about the age of ten, we had some relatives, who lived up in Gatlinburg, TN. They lived up on the side of one of the mountains just off that main strip. You turned left at The Goof Golf. Seriously.
Anyway, we went up there at least once a year. I loved it. You saw bears, bought cheap pocket knives and saw real Native Americans from the Cherokee tribe (I did not know I am 1/16th part of their tribe till many years later). I have lots of great/beautiful memories of those trips. And some are scary. I cut myself really bad with one of those knives and on the same trip, my older cousin david fell down into a ravine while hiking. No harm done but I was scared when it happened. I remember it was the same trip I got the pocket knife because I wondered if it would have hlped him to have my knife…with a picture of a bear on the side. All three inches.
One of those always stands out like the oldest of mountains high above the younger ones, all covered in mist.
We drove up to Cades Cove, a pioneer settlement, long deserted. If you have not been there, picture The Village and you have it. But the thing my Mom loved the most and would keep my Dad driving around the dirt roads on the top of that mountain were the deer. There were deer everywhere. So many even a non-hunting 10 year old could look at them in wonder. My Mom wanted to count everyone and she remarked at how many, many there were again and again. And I would bet there were tears on the edges of her eyes. You had to keep the windows up and the doors locked because of the black bears. But that fear never kept us from the beauty of seeing dozens upon dozens of deer wandering around, some with their heads just above the long winter grass. If I live to be a hundred, I could not forget all that, even if it is just me remembering the memory.
I’m not sure my parents had all the theology worked out. I know I didn’t. But I’m so thankful I was sent out into the world with the understanding that it was my Father’s world after all.
Echoes and Stars 