Beware of the Brainwashings

One thing that I really like about Rob Bell is when he said that we shouldn’t make our children fear academia–that we should encourage kids to understand that it’s okay to find something “Good” that isn’t in the Bible. That finding something good that we haven’t talked about in church is good, because God is big and the more good, the more God. Something like that.

I am one of many who grew up in an environment that told me to be on my guard for when I went off to school. And I went to school in Ann Arbor–that’s like the laundromat of brainwashings. I’m not saying that all my professors were excited to hear that I believed what the Bible said about Jesus being the Christ, but I am thinking, in this period of getting ready to go back to school, that I wish I had been more encouraged to seek while I was getting my education. The word “seek” freaks lots of Christians out. Indeed, people think that Bono can’t be a Christian when he sings “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

The truth is, most of my professors didn’t really care whether I had faith. I had a good friend/grad student that occasionally would try to reason with me about why I should stop believing the Bible, but I know (like I knew then) he was just trying to tell me what he knew the most. He did it because he thought it was what was best for me. I could find love there, too.

Because I’ve found a loving God, I can keep seeking a loving God and I’m finding that this loving God wants me to recognize him so much, that he doesn’t really care where I look. He will show up if I am looking. So the danger isn’t that we’d go to school and look for truth (God) in the wrong place, but that we’d stop looking. To me, that is what losing faith really is. Faith is active. Faith is seeking God and moving towards him with every bit he gives us. Once we have decided that we’re done seeking, that’s where we go dead.

My friend’s words sent my brain spinning, that is for sure. I’d walk back to my apartment sometimes feeling like I didn’t know what hit me. But God is alive and didn’t abandon me. It’s very hard to change my mind about the existence of God and his relationship with me because, even if I tried to stop believing he was there (and I have), I just can’t do it. It would be the same to me as saying that my brother doesn’t exist. It’s just at this point where I don’t think God’s presence hinges on what I believe.

I wish this is the type of thing I knew before I went to undergrad. I wish someone had said to me that I should approach my classes with my ears perked, because God is talking anywhere I’m listening.