Loneliness, Meaning, and Hope

The Los Angeles times recently published an article by Varun Soni, who is dean of religious life at USC, highlights some of the changes that he’s seen among students during the eleven years he’s been in that role. In the beginning, the conversations he had with students centered on “quests for meaning and purpose. [Students] were striving to translate values into action, cultivate joy and gratitude, live extraordinary lives.”

However, more recently the conversation has shifted more often from “how should I live?” to “why should I live?” As Soni, notes that students today are more likely to “grapple with hopelessness and meaninglessness. Every year, it seems, I encounter more stress, anxiety, and depression, and more students in crisis on campus.” He goes on to present the research that has also noticed this shift on campus.

Soni notes that students are often overwhelmed and lonely, and they find it difficult to know how to make friends, a trend that Jean M. Twenge, who has done a significant amount of research on the generation entering college, has also noticed.

Soni further notes that, while we sometimes consider this generation to be coddled,

the reality is they face unprecedented challenges and circumstances. They are entering a world in which many of the career paths of their parents’ generation no longer exist or have changed drastically. They face escalating tuition costs with little sense of whether their future opportunities justify the outlay. They have participated in active shooter trainings and campus lockdown drills for most of their lives.”

In this challenging context, Campus Edge and other religious communities strive to provide community and support for people who are struggling, as well as speaking hope into people’s lives. Please pray that we might do that well, as well as praying for all those who are struggling.

originally published at the Campus Edge blog

God's presence is already on campus

While some might understand a campus ministry as being primarily about being God to the university campus, I’m part of a tradition that believes God is already present on campus. The task of campus ministry is then about recognizing and proclaiming how God is at work, and then coming alongside the good that God is already doing.

Paul Verhoef, a fellow Christian Reformed campus minister at the University of Calgary, ruminates what this looks like in his context. Most importantly, he “has always worked with the goal of trying to achieve mutual understanding among people, he added, because this is an important part of what it means to love.”

On top of this, Verhoef highlights how important it is that the campus ministry love the university. This includes a calling “to serve, to support, and to live in a mutually supportive relationship with the university,” but it also goes further:

“Can we appreciate its work, its research and teaching focus? Can we sympathetically understand its habits and concerns – and if we at times call it to task, can this be done as someone who supports the university, who is seen by the university as a person who loves it, a person who is part of the university?”

Not only ought we to love the campus, but we also need to recognize that God is already there. As Verhoef has noted, he “has seen how God is always at work — that the Spirit of God is always moving, breathing, creating life, reconciling God’s world back to God, and doing this on the campus in Alberta.” And we, as campus ministers, ought to be looking for how and where “the Spirit of God doing good and beautiful things.” And then, as Verhoef himself notes, we can ask how we might be able to “come alongside of those places and lend support, put my shoulder behind the work being done, and work side-by-side with other staff, faculty, and students to make something beautiful happen.”

originally published at the Campus Edge blog

God in unexpected places

Ethan Vanderleek, a Christian Reformed campus minister in British Columbia, recently wrote an article in Christian Courier about how God shows up in unexpected places. In the article he describes working together with another faith group in order to serve others - and how God, not surprisingly, is present in that action.

He closes the article by speaking about one of the things that is fundamental to my understanding of campus ministry from a (Christian) Reformed perspective. My calling as a campus pastor is not to bring God to the university. Instead, God is already present there. I simply have the task (and joy!) of highlighting how God is at work. Or as Ethan puts it:

"Since God in his goodness is at work in quiet and persistent ways, we ourselves should be willing to see God’s faithfulness at work in unfamiliar places – not in the places where we normally look. We should be willing to confess that we don’t always know where to look for God. We didn’t know to look for God in the suffering man on the cross, nor do we look for God often enough in the poor and lonely people of the world, nor perhaps in faith communities which seem so different from our own. But if goodness is an often shrouded and hidden thing, as the crucified Christ helps us to see, then these strange places are perhaps precisely where we ought to look for God and for goodness."

I'd rather not be known as nice

When I was in Seminary, a professor asked us to describe God. When someone said that God was nice, the professor almost lost it. God was a lot of things, but NOT nice.

I'd probably not go that far, but I would prefer not to be known as nice. I do want to be gracious and kind, a non-anxious presence, and generally pleasant to be around - but I'd still rather not be known primarily as being nice. For me, 'niceness' is too close to making other people comfortable, not speaking up for others (including oneself), and even not living or following God passionately.

A recent Christianity Today article explains well how niceness can be problematic. Sharon Hodde Miller notes that

"“Niceness” is a form of superficial kindness that’s used as a means to a selfish end. . . . My devotion to it has won me a lot of acceptance and praise, but it has also inhibited my courage, fed my self-righteousness, encouraged my inauthenticity, and produced in me a flimsy sweetness that easily gives way to disdain."

She goes on further to point out how this superficial kindness that we consider to be 'niceness' is antithetical to what it means to be a Christian:

"I cannot follow Jesus and be nice. Not equally. Because following Jesus means following someone who spoke hard and confusing truths, who was honest with his disciples—even when it hurt—who condemned the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and turned over tables in the temple."

I pray that I might not be tempted by my own tendencies towards niceness built of a desire to be loved and appreciated by others, as well as fitting in with those around me. Instead, I pray that my dislike for the word might push me to have courage to be full of truth, while still acting and speaking with grace.

The injustice of silencing women

At The Resistance Prays, Rev. Posey Krakowsky illustrates well how Scripture continues to speak to us today. Sadly enough, the Scripture speaks into the brokenness of the world then and now: it is disturbing how real the story of Tamar is today. Not only is she sexually assaulted, but many, including those who ought to love her, do not listen to her voice, do not come to her aid, and do not act for justice on her behalf. 

Krakowsky notes how the story

"shows us the layers upon layers of enabling behavior by other men that result in the systemic violation of girls and women. Jonadab helps Amnon plan the rape. David sends Tamar to her brother without asking any questions about why Amnon wanted so badly to eat food “from her hand.” The story tells us that there were many servants nearby — Amnon sends them out so that he may be alone with Tamar. None of them question these actions. Tamar speaks boldly to defend herself from his attack: none of the servants, who surely were still within earshot, come to her defense. Later, after the rape, Amnon’s male servant throws Tamar out, barring the door to her. Her father, King David, never speaks of the rape, nor does he defend his daughter. His concern is only for his two sons. Even Absalom, her full brother who avenges her by murdering Amnon, silences Tamar. He does so that he may seek justice behind the scenes, proving that he is well aware of the systemic injustice enacted on women which makes it impossible for Tamar to seek justice out in the open."

 Krakowsky highlights that such injustice continues to happen too often today, citing especially the #metoo movement.

How can the story of Tamar, and so many other texts in the Bible, especially God's words about hating injustice and the wicked, challenge us to act when such injustices occur?

Acknowledging ugliness in the Bible - Tamar, Amnon, and David

I deeply appreciated Christianity Today's recent article asking whether we can finally break the silence around Tamar.

Jen Wilkin makes the following point about the story in 2 Samuel 13:

"Amnon, one of David’s sons, violates his own sister and then casts her aside. When her brother Absalom learns what Amnon has done, he tells her, “Has Amnon your brother been with you? Be quiet for now, my sister. He is your brother; do not take this thing to heart.” Absalom’s shushing and dismissing are certainly vile, but it is David’s reaction that stuns: “When King David heard all this, he was furious” (vv. 20–21). 

Furious. That’s it. No public denouncement of Amnon, no vindication of Tamar. No justice, no words of comfort or kindness for his daughter, just impotent, mute anger. David is silent. He takes no action against Amnon, opening the door for Absalom to have his brother murdered in revenge. And Tamar is left desolate."

She argues that David's own sin (with Bathsheba) and guilt prevent him from acting appropriately. We, the readers need to acknowledge not only that David's response was deeply inadequate - an anger that goes nowhere, but that we, as God's people, are called to respond very differently: with justice and compassion. Justice to punish those who have sinned and compassion to not abandon those who have been hurt.

Talking about the things that matter

At the recent Christian Reformed Campus ministry association conference we talked about a lot of hard things: racism, abuse of power, and sexuality (and all in one day!). It hadn't really occurred to me that people might perceive this as strange until one person asked me why we were focusing on all these things and another wondered if we'd planned in a drink at the end of the day (pub locations were indeed made public).

The hard conversations were framed by worship and by sharing with each other about how we [campus ministers and students] were doing. That, I hope, helped place the conversations in the right perspective, even as I believe that the conversations were still hard and could potentially have caused people distress and anxiety. I hope and pray that people are still positively working through what we talked about. After all, we have these conversations together because we all need to see how faith relates to all areas of our lives, including and especially the hard things.


Furthermore, I believe these are areas "where a lot of pain and distress has happened and continues to happen,” and so “I’d like to do all I can to be equipped to know best how to bring the hope of Christ to those [who] are hurting.”

cross-posted on the Campus Edge blog