A Christian Vibe Check for the Incoming Student
2016 was a big year: records were set at the Summer Olympics in Rio, Hamilton had taken over Broadway and popular media, Pokémon Go was a thing. That was also the year that we seeked justice for Harambe, Beyoncé released Lemonade, and Hillary Clinton made history as the first woman to win a major party’s nomination. For me, and about 9,000 others, we had just committed to UC Berkeley and were going to the #1 public university in the world!
I wanted to do everything I could to ensure a smooth transition from high school to college so that by the time fall came around, I would feel mentally and emotionally prepared. I took virtual tours of campus through Google Maps, learned about Berkeley history, and went down many rabbit holes on College Confidential and I thought that’s really all it took to be ready for college. To no one’s surprise but my own, my first year really threw me off-guard.
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If you clicked on this post, you are probably an incoming student.
Or you’re one of my supportive friends. In which case, hi! Thanks for reading this. :)
For the former, I want to share my experience as a Christian in college. I grew up going to church and actually had a lot of questions about my faith, but never addressed them. When I got to college I was thrown off by how these questions demanded answers and were actually fundamental to how I choose to live daily life. In high school where no one really talks about religion, I was able to get away with compartmentalizing my life. But in college, I was confronted with these questions in a way I couldn’t seem to ignore anymore because the answers directly affected my conduct—the way I chose to think, present myself, and act—and people would call me out on my contradictions. By not answering these questions, I had one foot out the door, changing my worldview to match whatever situation I was in and revealing that I really didn’t know who I was or what I believed in. Thinking back to that time, I had so many questions, but for the sake of this post I narrowed them down to three core concerns. Below is a journey of how I found satisfying answers to these issues and I hope you will find this helpful in your own journey to understanding what your faith means.
Question #1: Does God exist?
Growing up, it felt inherently true that faith was purely emotional and could not be proven. I never explicitly questioned the existence of God, but rather compartmentalized my life into academic and spiritual matters. In school, I was indifferent towards the existence of God. The answer to the question of his existence didn’t seem to matter there. But at church, I knew God was real because I felt like he was.
Then, freshman year of college, on the first day of instruction, I went to lecture for a course called “Origins: from the Big Bang to the Emergence of Human”. Ten minutes after the hour, the professor welcomed us to the class and he opened by ridiculing the idea of the existence of God, since “creationism had been disproved by the Big Bang”. Everyone chuckled in agreement, as if the thought of believing in a God was mindless and infantile. And for the first time I felt the weight of disconnect between my knowledge and beliefs. I looked around and everyone seemed so intelligent; they looked like they just knew who they were and what they believed in. And to believe in God was unintelligent.
The question of God’s existence mattered here. And the answer was overwhelmingly “No. God does not exist.” But for all my life, I felt like he did. And I wondered if that meant anything.
Long story short, it does! You don’t have to experience insecurity and inner turmoil whenever your faith is challenged in an academic setting. There are actually a lot of resources you can look into to reconcile the debate between science and faith and to find satisfying intellectual evidence for God. Growing up, I thought being grounded in my emotional experiences of God was enough; however, God encompasses all aspects of our lives and has also revealed himself to us on an intellectual level. I think that a small part of me was too afraid to ask these questions because I thought doubting God was wrong, but God has made himself known to us and invites us to reason with him (see Isaiah 1:18). If this is a question that you’ve had on your mind for a while, I suggest you take the time to really search for answers. This is truly a fundamental question to life and I hope these resources can be the start of a journey for you!
Question #2: What can/can’t I do as a Christian in college?
The Bible seems to have a lot of rules and laws, some of them very specific. But there are a lot of things that aren’t explicitly mentioned, like navigating college culture. I found myself in many situations my freshman year where I’d ask myself, “Should I be here? Is it wrong for me to do this?” And I never found any answers because I thought there was no explicit rule about it in the Bible. This was my way of excusing my actions and justifying myself because, in my mind, the thought of not knowing better was better than knowing and still choosing to do wrong. By that logic, it was clear that I had an answer to these questions.
Nonetheless, one of the rationalizing thoughts I would often have is “If God really loves me, wouldn’t he want me to have fun? Doesn’t he want me to experience life?” And the answer is yes! It’s just that my definition of experiencing life was drastically different than God’s. Life is not about indulging ourselves and getting permission to do whatever we want, but rather it’s about receiving God’s love and purpose and living it out. God has already proved that he really loves me through the death of Jesus on the cross and rather than asking if God really loves me, I had to ask myself if I really loved God. Were my actions loving toward him? Towards those to whom I am a witness of Christ? When I honestly answered these questions, my motives became more clear.
I’ll be honest though, there are many times, even now, when I wish that God would just come down from heaven and tell me very explicitly what I need to do so I would just do it without having to think. But I’ve come to learn that not having that is by God’s grace and it’s actually the beauty of having a relationship with God. That it’s not just about what I have to do to appease him, but about what I choose to do out of love for him and what he has already done for me. There will, of course, be sacrifices; these choices aren’t easily made. Maybe you might miss out on some things, maybe you won’t get your first choice, but what we gain is far greater than what we lose out on. I’ve come to learn that no sacrifice that we give can be greater than the sacrifice that God has so graciously offered to us through Jesus.
Question #3: Can’t I be Christian without being involved in church?
My first weekend at Cal, I attended a bible study where I heard a message that I thought was so profound. It was on the Great Banquet in Luke 14:15-24 and I really resonated with the story. Those who turned down the great banquet weren’t pursuing bad things, but in the pursuit of the good things, they were missing out on the greatest thing which is God’s invitation. I felt so strongly that this was my experience and it really made a lot of sense that, as I was trying to achieve a life that the world saw as fulfilling and worthy, I was neglecting the promise of life that God offers. Even though this message made sense and I wanted to apply it to my life, I had no idea where to start.
After the message, the people in the fellowship invited me to stay and play some games. I thought it was weird that so many of them chose to spend their Friday nights this way so I politely declined. Actually for the first couple of months, I never really wanted to spend time with these people outside of church. I knew it wasn’t a “requirement” to be Christian so I just continued to go to the services to hear these in-depth messages about the Bible without making any deeper connections with anyone.
Turns out that I wasn’t making any deeper connections with these messages either. Months into college, my life still looked the same as it did when I first heard that message on Luke 14. Nothing had changed other than the fact that I kept hearing awesome messages every weekend. It was then when I heard a message on Matthew 7:21-23 that talked about the disconnect between our thoughts and our actions. Even though I wanted to change, I didn’t and as hard as I tried, I just couldn’t.
It is possible that my lack of willpower and discipline failed me; I definitely lack in those areas. But I also lacked the wisdom to guide myself. If you don’t open yourself up to receive guidance from anyone, the only wisdom you can receive is the wisdom you have, which for me, was none. These characteristics made it difficult for someone like me to rely on myself for growth and it was really the church (the people, not the building) that nurtured me. Looking back, it is clear that the reason for stunted growth was my unwillingness to open up and receive help. As I let my guard down and opened up to more people, I was able to experience deep relationships and growth through guidance and accountability.
So to answer the question of being a Christian without a church, I would say yes. However, if you have the opportunity to be otherwise, what’s holding you back? Christian life was not meant to be lived alone. The Bible calls us to live life with one another and to love one another. And doing so yields such a beautiful picture of fellowship (see Acts 2:42-47).
If you are like I was my freshman year, just looking for permission to be Christian without being invested in people, I would implore you to consider what it means to live out Christian life as well as what the purpose of a church is. Upon answering these questions, life started to be more joyful as I applied God’s word to my life and tried to love those around me. And since that Luke 14 message, I have grown to appreciate that one of the greatest things about accepting God’s invitation to the great banquet is that you will have many others to enjoy it with.
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Wherever you will be this fall I hope that you will hold onto your faith, be open to how God is trying to work in you, and personally accept his invitation to enter into this new life of fellowship.
Serena Kim (class of 2020, Berkeley A2F) is a newly graduated psych major who likes to play sad songs on the ukulele and wear baggy ripped jeans. Now that she is not a student, she spends her time building forts, blowing bubbles, and watching documentaries. Oh yeah and she’s also looking for a job.