The following article is a part of the “Letters to…” series written by the 2023-2024 SOLA Writing Cohort, composed of college students and recent grads receiving mentorship to grow in their ability to express their faith through writing. The cohort members were given various prompts with the challenge to write an open letter to a specific recipient but one that would encourage and challenge a broader Christian audience. The prompt of this article is “Writing a Letter to Believers on College Campuses Today.”
If you’re anything like me, you were primed to view college as a battleground for Christians. I remember one man who pulled me aside at church before I left for college. He warned me I was headed for a godless place. It took a few years, but I understand now he was wrong. College, even with all its challenges for Christians, is anything but a godless place.
Finding Goodness in the Protests and Politics
If you attend a secular school, you’re no stranger to protests and politics on campus. Even those at Christian colleges still have peers with worldviews that could be very different from one’s own. Liberal politics and ideologies are a primary reason that many Christians hold colleges and universities in disregard.
Is this the attitude we should have towards our peers and our schools? How should we feel? Instead of turning to contempt, we should be full of understanding and compassion.
When you walk through my college campus, you see protests at every corner and flyers in every building. If you see these things on your college campuses, I encourage you to stop and listen. Pause and read. You will observe, like nowhere else, a desire for a world where justice reigns and all is made right.
It is apparent that people in our generation long for a redeemed world. Our politically impassioned peers have a deep love for our world and for the oppressed. They love the things God loves. That’s something for us to admire, even learn from. This is not an endorsement of their political beliefs, but it is an appeal to understand the people who hold them.
Where the norm is to cancel and scorn people with views different from your own, we can instead be gracious and humble. In humility there is a doorway to sharing the gospel. Our peers crave what we have, a lasting hope and true justice. We ought to share that with them.
A Better Way to go about College: Befriending Colleges and Universities
When you encounter the storm of different beliefs on campus, where do you turn? There may be a temptation to separate out from campus life, to spend all your time with other Christians. While there’s nothing wrong with this inherently, I don’t think we should isolate ourselves from our larger communities.
There’s a better way to navigate college, and it starts with a change of heart. Learning to love the places we live, work, and play is something Christians of our generation need to embrace. For Christians at college campuses today, learning to love our schools is a good place to start.
How do we do this? Begin by getting involved with the things college has to offer. Join clubs. Enter into friendships with classmates, especially classmates that are different from you. Be proud of the accomplishments of your school. Get excited about its sports teams. Pursue excellence in your studies. Love what makes your school unique. Be present for the good of your school’s community.
Bringing Hope to Our Places of Study
Our schools are diverse, full of different peoples and cultures. Loving people here often means loving people very different from you. It’s intimidating, but it’s also something to celebrate.
Once we are rooted in our school’s communities, we are enabled to bless our schools by modeling the hope we have in Christ. I once heard it from someone like this:
“We are to show our willingness to listen and understand. We are to be honest about the questions we are asking and the doubts we face.”
I’ll add a few more:
We are to seek out and care for our peers in need. We are to offer grace in a place often void of it, and offer it again and again. We are to love first as we are loved by our Father in Heaven.
When we are fueled by our Christian hope, we bring the love of God everywhere we go, and we breathe life into our college communities in a way that causes them to flourish.