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For Christians arriving at university, in addition to the mad rush to establish oneself amongst the variety of people, places and opportunities suddenly available to everyone, there is also the issue of where to go and what to do with regards to your faith. The priority on getting this right will obviously vary between people, but I shall assume that since you are reading this you’ll have at least some interest in the matter, and hence whatever it is I have to say for myself. Not that I claim my opinion is definitive or anything … or even very useful … in fact I … (Get on with it! — Ed)
By the time my successors at Christis have diligently dumped copies of this very magazine on strategic table-tops over campus, you will doubtless have already seen a swarming mass of posters beginning to bury the walls and each other, all advertising clubs, societies, new things to consider doing, and probably more than the odd bar crawl. A number of them will have been advertising what at first can seem an unnecessarily confusing array of Christian societies and groups. Just to namecheck, there’s, perhaps most obviously, the Christian Union (that’s CU to you and me), but there’s also the Methodist-Anglican Society, Catholic Society (that’s CASSOC to just about everybody), and even Christians In Sport (bless their little games socks). Less directly, perhaps, there is the art group Pro-Deo, and there’s even us, Christis! Not to mention the Chaplaincy and all the various churches around York who seek to advertise here.
Now, all this can be of some considerable interest to the Christian fresher who is concerned about the deepening of his/her faith at university. If they think that university is a great opportunity to mature in understanding of God and really make a go of setting out on a life lived for that purpose, then I suggest that they are right. University is all that, or it can be if that’s what you want to make it. Where better to start than at one of these societies then? Meet a bunch of like-minded people, have some fun, learn about God at the same time — sounds OK! Anyway, being at university and away from home for the first time, it’s perfectly natural to feel a bit overawed and insecure to begin with, in the quest for new friends, and Christians are supposed to be all nice and squashy, aren’t they? All right, so it was a long time ago now, but I have been there and I remember very well what my thought-processes were!
It’s not the point of this article to go into a description of what each of the societies are, what they encourage you to do, or what their view on the Virgin Birth is. They’ll probably be eager to tell you all that themselves (except possibly the bit about the Virgin Birth). In as far as this article actually has a purpose, I suppose all I want to do is to just share a little bit of what I have found most important when it came to growing in my faith here at university. I get the feeling I’ve changed a lot in three years, hopefully for the better, and I guess that’s as much qualification as I need to yap away at you about the things that changed me for a bit. You don’t mind, do you?
Through Christis, through some of the above societies, and through good old plain chance it has been my pleasure to meet and befriend a good number of Christians here at university. Many of them have been a true inspiration to me, have enhanced my faith in both God and myself, helped me when I couldn’t see where I was going, and just generally been good and groovy people. They’ve done so in ways too numerous to mention, but I think — looking back — that I can see a few general trends in there. But to give things their proper emphasis I think I have to say that much of my ‘maturing’ in God wasn’t down to Christians at all, but simply to do with people. People in general, I mean. Whatever their faith. I have been very fortunate while here to meet (through societies and through good old plain chance) a surprisingly wide range of people with no obvious Christian inclination at all. And more often than not it has been just talking to them and getting to know them — my relationships to them in general — which has helped me considerably with my faith. I’m not talking about having enlightening theological debates with a panel of Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. (Not that I’m against inter-faith dialogue!) I’m talking about something much more profound.
You see, I think something which has always bothered me quite subtly about Christianity is the unspoken way Christians tend to become quite closed people after a while. I don’t mean closed in a nasty, aggressive sense, I just mean that occasionally I get the impression that there is an ‘us and them’ divide between the “Christian community” and everyone else, which is to my mind an artificial distinction. Where such a break-down occurs, it is to the loss of both parties, and I’m sad to say that it is at least as common a problem on York University campus as it is anywhere else.
So what do I mean when I say that people in general have been a greater influence on me than specifically Christian things? It’s hard to be specific, but I think that my great realisation was when I discovered, after immersing myself amongst lots of people for long enough, that everyone else was as contradictory, as confused, as lonely and as downright human as I am. From that moment on, smiles on encouragement and words of compliment took on a new importance: hey! They can lift a day for others as much as they can for me! A listening ear, a cup of coffee, a problem shared, a problem halved: it became more than just a sense of a warm glow for myself when I was able to provide these things, once I realised that truly listening to another showed me things I thought I’d never, ever find in them. The growth of trust between two people that allows another to slowly reveal some of their soul to you became a thing to actively seek everywhere, in everyone, because it was just so damn well worth it. You see, despite outward appearances, everyone is in pretty much the same boat as you or I when it all boils down to it. We’re all basically alone. We none of us are as confident as we like to pretend that we’ve got life worked out. We all like to feel that somewhere along the line we can communicate all this to someone, make them understand. Being a Christian for me never changed any of that. But it did change something. I now know that being a human being isn’t such a bad old deal after all. The late Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, puts it better than I can: “ … I have the immense glory of being man, a member of the race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realise what we all are. And if only everybody could realise this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are walking around shining like the sun.”
No way of telling them, perhaps. But the truth Merton saw so clearly, and even I catch occasional glimpses of, cannot help but change us. When you see it, you are suddenly put in awe of even the humblest person, far removed from the apparent ideals of the ‘Christian life’. And it is my hope that they too can see, if not understand, my recognition of what they truly are. Loving others then becomes its own ‘evangelism’. You don’t need to learn how to use ‘methods’, how to sneak God into conversation by the back door, how to be happy-clappy all the time “so people will want what you have”. You just need to learn to see God in other people. Love and evangelism follow on automatically. If only I could always remember that!
I know I’m rambling. (Well stop it, then — Ed). I suppose that what I am saying is this: God is found everywhere. Precious glimpses of him can be found in anyone, if you take the time to look. I’ve never really understood the purpose of cloistering oneself away amongst a group of people who will always agree with you, only emerging to wave Bible verses, poems, songs and other words in everyone else's faces. That’s a waste! I mentioned above Christians who have affected me most at York. Those people were, I think, the ones not afraid to take themselves (all of themselves!) and share that with the people around them simply and openly, whether they be York’s homeless or the members of the Fencing Club. Sure, all of them needed to be with other Christians sometimes, but they never confused a Christian group, church or society with their own Christian identity, and that’s important for it is something I’ve seen happen time and again.
I don’t want to discourage participation in and with as many of the Christian groups as you feel comfortable with. You have much to gain by trying, and will meet many wonderful people. But I want to encourage you to do other things too. The answer, it seems to me, is less ‘getting off your backside and doing something’, as the cliché goes, than actually getting on your backside, and taking time to sit with other people, giving them room to open themselves to you, and you to them. Christians, for who they purport to be, are often surprisingly bad at doing that. I think I have learned two important things in my time at York: that God is a God of Love, and that just being with another person (whoever they are), and trying to love them brings God there to be with both of you, too. These, I hope, will be the things I carry most with me into the next stage of my life after leaving here, whatever it says on my diploma.
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Last modified: 25th November 2005