God. Religion. Faith. In my experience, these words are often banned from intellectual conversation except in criticism. I have experienced a (negative) shift after mentioning my faith in various conversations with professors. In one instance during a one-on-one, a professor criticized aspects of my faith, Christianity, under the assumption that I did not have religious beliefs of my own.
Beyond intellectual stigma, these words represent a personal experience, an experience so personal that few are willing to speak about it. If we can so openly speak about our one-night stands and our last hook-up, why not God, religion and faith? Allow me to break the silence by telling a story about my journey discovering God. Whether you consider yourself religious, agnostic or atheist, I encourage you to continue reading as I attempt to provide a depiction of faith that you have likely yet to see.
I was raised in a fairly religious home, but I remember from an early age—about fourth grade—I began searching for more answers. To be honest, religion never satisfied me because it gave me a set of rules and expected me to follow it. If God really existed, I wanted to know the heart behind the rules, the person behind the laws.
I believe this is where faith can be distinguished from religion. Religion revolves around the act of doing—whether it be worshipping, praying, giving. Faith is a state of the heart—of believing and trusting. Religion summons us to do something for God—faith invites us to know God.
As the brilliant people we are, we tend to ask the “why” questions. It’s hard for us to accept a given set of rules without asking why these rules are in place. We discount religion because it precisely does that. But let’s approach religion in a different way. Could faith offer us a lens through which we can see the context of the rules? Could it provide us a window through which we can glimpse the heart behind the laws?
For years—from fourth to tenth grade—I remember searching for God, the person whom I knew of but in reality did not know. I understood well the principles but had yet to meet the person. I did a fairly good job of observing a set of rules, but following directions well does not mean I know the person giving me directions. Take, for example, the relationship between a manager and an employee. Most managers are not relationally close with their employees because their relationships revolve around giving/following orders. It takes conversation and quality time to build relationships, and I did not have that with God.
I remember attending camps, retreats and conferences attempting to pursue this relationship. The mob mentality overtook me during these gatherings, and I became lost in the sea of passion and zeal. When I returned home, though, I was exactly the same person. Whatever I received from those events never translated into everyday life. And that frustrated me.
My journey during those years was filled with enough emotions to last for a lifetime. There were instances when I was so persistent that I could hardly sleep at night. At other times, the journey was so mundane that I needed a picture Bible to even moderately engage me. There were some small victories along the way, but I mostly remember the many defeats. Several weeks ago, I wrote a column about an instance in which I hit rock bottom because I had attempted to cheat. This occurred during the beginning of my tenth grade year and triggered in me an increased desperation to encounter God.
I remember journaling around the holiday season that same year, desperately telling God that unless he showed up in my world, I simply would not make it. At that point, I felt that it was physically impossible for me to continue trying to become a better person because I was so burned out from the attempts. Although I exerted copious amounts of effort during those years, I always fell flat on my face.
About three months later, I traveled two hours away from my home to Dallas, Texas, to spend spring break with some old friends. They were attending a school through their church called Antioch Discipleship School. My first night in town, I attended a session of their school, and at the end of the session, my friends and some others in the school asked if they could pray for me. I agreed, and before I knew it, I was reduced to a puddle of tears. Internally, I encountered the love of God in a way I had never encountered before—it was the first time in my life that I had felt unconditionally loved, genuinely valued and truly beautiful. It was in that moment that I knew beyond a doubt that God is real.
That moment culminated my journey of searching for God, but it was the beginning of my journey of discovering God. It indeed has been a most beautiful, life-changing experience. Through it, I have gained an insurmountable amount of confidence and courage that have affected the way I approach various aspects of life.
At institutions of higher education, we tend to discredit the existence of God. If we can explain why life is as it is today, then why add God into the picture? On the other hand, some of the religious discount science because it does not align with their beliefs. What if science and faith were, in fact, not mutually exclusive? What if science explains the way by which God works and faith explains the way God is? Science offers an explanation for the evolution of life as it is today. Faith offers an explanation of where life originated.
Last year, in one of my classes, a professor made a snide remark about God and moved on to say, “Not that I believe in God or anything.” Similar situations have occurred in several instances in my other classes. There seems to be an underlying belief that faith is for the intellectually weak. However, that is simply not the case because one can have faith without compromising scientific theories. As a university, we need to realize that students on campus have a wide range of beliefs. Classes should be structured with these heterogeneous perspectives in mind. We need to create an environment that encourages the exploration of all realms of thought without subconsciously imposing a particular paradigm.
Thao Nguyen is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Tuesday.
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