Christian Life: Part 1

What makes it hard about being a Christian on this college campus?

Alright so I know that everyone answers this question with....parents no longer control my life, i do whatever i want in life now, everyone else isn't doing it. I don't want to take that route.

I think for me, as a young adult in college, its more than just 'my parents can't make me go anymore'. There was a few years at the beginning of my college life where I turned my back on God. Things went the wrong way for a while and I decided that I needed to escape from that part of life. I found reasons not to make it to services and not to participate in church activities, and to not even act as a Christian ought to in my everyday life. I found a new group of friends, who didn't necessarily claim not to be Christians, but didn't ever do anything to promote it. They all believed but did nothing about it. I found excuses to hang with them, party the night away, and lay around and do nothing during the day on the weekend. I am not putting down these people for what they do or do not do, because they are some of my closest and best friends. But I have realized that I do not have to be exactly the way the rest of my friends are. I can be myself around them and they still like me as I am. For me now that is trying harder to act as a Christian should in my everyday life.

Things on campus are not always 'Christian friendly'. There are several scheduling conflicts that take place. There are classes late at night that take place of activities with fellow Christians. Homework loads often promote studying and staying busy late at night. Professors do not care if we have a church trip that weekend, the project is still due on Monday. We as young adults naturally procrastinate everything, so we put everything off till the last minute, and for most, church activities are the first to go.

Then there is the fear that if we pull out our Bible in the union or library, or sit at the tent with the church sign on it, people will think of us as those weird, radical preaching kids. There is this underlying fear that everyone will make fun of us for showing our beliefs. Its just not the 'cool' thing everyone is doing. This is just something that you have to realize is not the common census, in a lot of circumstances it is quite the opposite.

So to wrap it up, being a Christian on a college campus doesn't always seem to be the easiest or most convenient thing to do. We just tend to put it on the back burner and go for the things that everyone else thinks is fun.