EDITORIAL: Christianity Not a Formula

Samantha May

Going to a Christian school, I have never felt so distant from God.
Since attending Vanguard I pick up my Bible more for class than for devotions. Maybe you can relate. From Mere Christianity to The Spirit of the Disciplines, to The Bible, it is common to study them all here on campus. As students, it’s not out of the ordinary to read more on the subject to help us understand spirituality and God than to actually be spiritual. It’s kind of strange that somehow we really miss the point.
I thought coming to a Christian school would help me find God more intensely. Or at least make it easier to maintain a consistent relationship. Instead, I came to a realization.
There are 168 hours in one week. Roughly, a student spends 17 hours in class, 15 hours at work, three hours in chapel, 15 hours eating, 15 hours doing homework, and 56 hours sleeping. That’s already 121 hours scheduled into our work lives. That leaves the remaining 47 hours to juggle relationships in all forms, extracurricular activities and God.
Finding God doesn’t become easier in time, it becomes harder to seek his face. Prioritizing God slowly becomes secondary. This might not be the case for every student on campus, but there has to be someone out there that feels this way.
In Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis, there is a quote about ways the Bible speaks to us. Bell says, “Whether we are reading the Bible for the first time or standing in a field in Israel next to a historian and an archaeologist and a scholar, the Bible meets us where we are. That is what truth does.”
We sit through religion classes, we sit through chapel, and the Bible meets us where we are. Then why do I feel so empty?
For me, it has become so easy to push God aside when I constantly hear about God and who He is. Whatever happened to listening and being still just to know that he is God? Maybe, we just become too comfortable with the idea and reside with, “I go to a Christian school.” That should be sufficient. Or is it?