“Know what you believe. Know why you believe it. Then live it. Because, if you don’t live it, you don’t believe it.”
Our beliefs form who we are as a person. They provide us with the motivation, desire and even courage to be the person we want to be. For many, the formation of these beliefs begins to take place during their college years. College, for a majority of incoming freshmen, symbolizes a time in their life in which they are on their own for the very first time. This new-found independence represents a freedom that can sometimes cause students to stumble and lose their way; for others, however, it is a beneficial time of self-discovery and adventure.
I asked lots of my friends my freshman year of college what they believed and many of them couldn’t tell me because they honestly didn’t know. They had gone to church their whole lives, but suddenly when they were on their own, they realized that they didn’t know why they believed what they did. They had been riding on the coattails of the parents’, friends’, and families’ faith for so long they had no actual faith of their own.
I’ve known so many people in my life who have grown up in the church and then fall away from their faith when given the freedom to do so. With 64 percent of those currently enrolled in a traditional four-year institution ceasing to continue their church attendance during college1, it becomes clear that their faith was not something that was a priority for them.
By growing up in the church and attending a faith-based school, I have been given the ability to see both situations of finding and losing beliefs play out on a regular basis. The main time in my life that I saw these changes was while I attended Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois. It was one of my professors at Olivet that first made me aware of the commonness of this spiritual uncertainty and challenged to live out my faith through his quote that is mentioned at the beginning of this article.
Because I’m from Kansas, college was far enough away from home that I was able to “get away” while still being able to come back to see friends and family on breaks and holidays. The distance gave me an independence that I had never experienced before and it forced me to make my own decisions and form my own beliefs. I no longer had the luxury of coasting through my faith with little to no effort. If I wanted to go to church, I had to get myself there on my own. There was no one there forcing me to go or making me feel guilty if I chose not to. Fortunately for me, my faith was and still is something that is very important to me. Because of this, going to church wasn’t a burden that was forced upon me when I was at home. It was a habit that I enjoyed and continued into my college career.
College is a great time of self-discovery. It challenges you to find out who you are and why. By attending a faith-based school, I was able to find answers to the religious questions I had and learn more about myself and my faith that I ever thought was possible. I was able to realize why going to church all of my life was important and why I should continue to do so. It allowed me to discover the reasoning behind the beliefs that I had held my whole life and helped me to determine my priorities in a way that better prepared me for my future. Thanks to my faith-based education, I now know what I believe. I know why I believe it. And I’m learning to live it.
1 Uecker, J, and M Regnerus. “How Corrosive Is College to Religious Faith and Practice?” Social Science Research Council (2007): 2. Web. 15 Jul 2010. http://religion.ssrc.org/reforum/ Regnerus_Uecker.pdf.