C cares, of the world

Description of cold Christians

Date: 1/2010.101

He permits suffering. He allows Peter's blindness. Laura's degenerative disease, Mr. Beach's hunting accident, my paralysis. Suffering reduces us to nothing as Soren Kierkegaard noted, "God creates everything out of nothing. And everything which God is to use, he first reduces us to nothing." To be reduced to nothing is to be dragged to the foot of the cross.

A miraculous exchange happens at the cross. When suffering forces us to our knees at the foot of Calvary, we die to self. We cannot kneel there for long without releasing our pride and anger, unclasping our dreams and desires - this is what "coming to the cross" is all about. In exchange, God imparts power and implants new and lasting hope. We rise, renewed. His yoke becomes easy and his burden light. But just when we begin to get a tad self sufficient, suffering presses harder. And we seek the cross again, mortifying the martyr in us, destroying the self-display. The transaction then continues.
CHRISTIANS

How to live in this world

Yancey – the key is to think myself as an amphibian living in two different environments at once, physical and spiritual. IN one I breathe without thinking. In the other, I must set my mind to the task. It takes no effort to notice a gorgeous specimen of humanity or a neighbour’s new sports car. It takes continues effort to pay attention to a homeless person with a hand lettered sign asking for food or a single mother with a disabled child who lives down the block. Those who believe only in the visible world have a single proving ground of worth and for this reason they celebrate beauty, success, wealth, talent – the values on prominent display at the magazine racks. The winners who excel get an ample reward in our celebrity culture.

On the other hand, if I believe in two worlds, I will look on the same values differently. With gratitude I accept the grace of athletes, the beauty of supermodels, the talent of successful people as God’s gifts. God is after all, the creator and sustainer of all good things on this earth At the same time I ask that my wyes be opened to a different kind of beauty, one that lies beneath the surface as manifest in the Elephant man. Those who have no chance for success in this visible world, may, after all , lead the way in God’s kingdom.

All too often, the attractions of the visible world simply overwhelm those of the invisible. Three centuries after Jesus, when the church had already spread throughout the Roman empire, Joh Chrysostom complained, “We admire wealth equally with them (non-Christians) and even more. We have the same horror of death, the same dread of poverty , the same impatience of disease, we are equally fond of glory and of rule, ..How then can they believe?”

Mahatma Gandhi

Date: 4/2009.101

Hope Again - Chuck Swindoll P188

Moralistic Deism

19 Sept 2010 DCFC English Worship – [Brick by Brick, Life to Life] Neh 4 Obstacles & Opportunities

Nov 20 2011 DCFC English [Jesus came to the world to...] John 11  offer the resurrected life

07 May 2017 QBC English [Kingdom Parables] Matt 13:24-43 Parable of weeds

14 May 2017 QBC Chinese [Kingdom Parables] Matt 13:24-43 Parable of weeds

August 27, 2010 8:57 a.m. EDT

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/27/almost.christian/index.html?iref=obnetwork

Anne Harvard of Atlanta, Georgia, may be a rarity. She's an American teenager who is passionate about her Christian faith.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

More teenagers embracing watered-down Christianity, author argues in new book

Teenagers see God as "divine therapist," author says

Teenager: "They don't want to make sacrifices"

Who's responsible for inspiring teens? Parents and pastors are, author says

(CNN) -- If you're the parent of a Christian teenager, Kenda Creasy Dean has this warning:

Your child is following a "mutant" form of Christianity, and you may be responsible.

Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." Translation: It's a watered-down faith that portrays God as a "divine therapist" whose chief goal is to boost people's self-esteem.

Dean is a minister, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of "Almost Christian," a new book that argues that many parents and pastors are unwittingly passing on this self-serving strain of Christianity.

She says this "imposter'' faith is one reason teenagers abandon churches.

"If this is the God they're seeing in church, they are right to leave us in the dust," Dean says. "Churches don't give them enough to be passionate about."

What traits passionate teens share

Dean drew her conclusions from what she calls one of the most depressing summers of her life. She interviewed teens about their faith after helping conduct research for a controversial study called the National Study of Youth and Religion.

They have a lot to say. They can talk about money, sex and their family relationships with nuance.

The study, which included in-depth interviews with at least 3,300 American teenagers between 13 and 17, found that most American teens who called themselves Christian were indifferent and inarticulate about their faith.

The study included Christians of all stripes -- from Catholics to Protestants of both conservative and liberal denominations. Though three out of four American teenagers claim to be Christian, fewer than half practice their faith, only half deem it important, and most can't talk coherently about their beliefs, the study found.

Many teenagers thought that God simply wanted them to feel good and do good -- what the study's researchers called "moralistic therapeutic deism."

Some critics told Dean that most teenagers can't talk coherently about any deep subject, but Dean says abundant research shows that's not true.

"They have a lot to say," Dean says. "They can talk about money, sex and their family relationships with nuance. Most people who work with teenagers know that they are not naturally inarticulate."

In "Almost Christian," Dean talks to the teens who are articulate about their faith. Most come from Mormon and evangelical churches, which tend to do a better job of instilling religious passion in teens, she says.

No matter their background, Dean says committed Christian teens share four traits: They have a personal story about God they can share, a deep connection to a faith community, a sense of purpose and a sense of hope about their future.

"There are countless studies that show that religious teenagers do better in school, have better relationships with their parents and engage in less high-risk behavior," she says. "They do a lot of things that parents pray for."

Dean, a United Methodist Church minister who says parents are the most important influence on their children's faith, places the ultimate blame for teens' religious apathy on adults.

Some adults don't expect much from youth pastors. They simply want them to keep their children off drugs and away from premarital sex.

Others practice a "gospel of niceness," where faith is simply doing good and not ruffling feathers. The Christian call to take risks, witness and sacrifice for others is muted, she says.

"If teenagers lack an articulate faith, it may be because the faith we show them is too spineless to merit much in the way of conversation," wrote Dean, a professor of youth and church culture at Princeton Theological Seminary.

More teens may be drifting away from conventional Christianity. But their desire to help others has not diminished, another author says.

Barbara A. Lewis, author of "The Teen Guide to Global Action," says Dean is right -- more teens are embracing a nebulous belief in God.

Yet there's been an "explosion" in youth service since 1995 that Lewis attributes to more schools emphasizing community service.

Teens that are less religious aren't automatically less compassionate, she says.

"I see an increase in youth passion to make the world a better place," she says. "I see young people reaching out to solve problems. They're not waiting for adults."

What religious teens say about their peers

We think that they want cake, but they actually want steak and potatoes, and we keep giving them cake.

RELATED TOPICS

Christianity

Teenagers

Elizabeth Corrie meets some of these idealistic teens every summer. She has taken on the book's central challenge: instilling religious passion in teens.

Corrie, who once taught high school religion, now directs a program called YTI -- the Youth Theological Initiative at Emory University in Georgia.

YTI operates like a theological boot camp for teens. At least 36 rising high school juniors and seniors from across the country gather for three weeks of Christian training. They worship together, take pilgrimages to varying religious communities and participate in community projects.

Corrie says she sees no shortage of teenagers who want to be inspired and make the world better. But the Christianity some are taught doesn't inspire them "to change anything that's broken in the world."

Teens want to be challenged; they want their tough questions taken on, she says.

"We think that they want cake, but they actually want steak and potatoes, and we keep giving them cake," Corrie says.

David Wheaton, an Atlanta high school senior, says many of his peers aren't excited about Christianity because they don't see the payoff.

"If they can't see benefits immediately, they stay away from it," Wheaton says. "They don't want to make sacrifices."

How 'radical' parents instill religious passion in their children

Churches, not just parents, share some of the blame for teens' religious apathy as well, says Corrie, the Emory professor.

She says pastors often preach a safe message that can bring in the largest number of congregants. The result: more people and yawning in the pews.

"If your church can't survive without a certain number of members pledging, you might not want to preach a message that might make people mad," Corrie says. "We can all agree that we should all be good and that God rewards those who are nice."

Corrie, echoing the author of "Almost Christian," says the gospel of niceness can't teach teens how to confront tragedy.

"It can't bear the weight of deeper questions: Why are my parents getting a divorce? Why did my best friend commit suicide? Why, in this economy, can't I get the good job I was promised if I was a good kid?"

What can a parent do then?

Get "radical," Dean says.

She says parents who perform one act of radical faith in front of their children convey more than a multitude of sermons and mission trips.

A parent's radical act of faith could involve something as simple as spending a summer in Bolivia working on an agricultural renewal project or turning down a more lucrative job offer to stay at a struggling church, Dean says.

But it's not enough to be radical -- parents must explain "this is how Christians live," she says.

"If you don't say you're doing it because of your faith, kids are going to say my parents are really nice people," Dean says. "It doesn't register that faith is supposed to make you live differently unless parents help their kids connect the dots."

'They called when all the cards stopped'

Anne Harvard, an Atlanta teenager, might be considered radical. She's a teen whose faith appears to be on fire.

Harvard, who participated in the Emory program, bubbles over with energy when she talks about possibly teaching theology in the future and quotes heavy-duty scholars such as theologian Karl Barth.

She's so fired up about her faith that after one question, Harvard goes on a five-minute tear before stopping and chuckling: "Sorry, I just talked a long time."

Harvard says her faith has been nurtured by what Dean, the "Almost Christian" author, would call a significant faith community.

In 2006, Harvard lost her father to a rare form of cancer. Then she lost one of her best friends -- a young woman in the prime of life -- to cancer as well. Her church and her pastor stepped in, she says.

"They called when all the cards stopped," she says.

When asked how her faith held up after losing her father and friend, Harvard didn't fumble for words like some of the teens in "Almost Christian."

She says God spoke the most to her when she felt alone -- as Jesus must have felt on the cross.

"When Jesus was on the cross crying out, 'My God, why have you forsaken me?' Jesus was part of God,'' she says. "Then God knows what it means to doubt.

"It's OK to be in a storm, to be in a doubt," she says, "because God was there, too."

CHRISTIANS

Media

Date: 11/2009.101

Early Christianity

How would we respond? How did Christians in the past respond to their culture? Look at the early Christians. The Roman theater was borrowed from the Greeks and the favorite dramatic themes were very much like today - crime, adultery, immorality, violence and the likes. Tertullian, an early apologist said, "The father who carefully protects and guards his virgin daughter's ears from every polluting word takes her to the theater himself, exposing her to all its vile language and attitudes. How can it be right to look at things that are wrong?" And of course, there is the all time favorite entertainment - the Gladiators. These brutal fights drove crowds wild with feverish excitement! Lactantius a Roman Christian told his fellow Romans, "He who finds it pleasurable to watch a man being killed pollutes his conscience just as much as though he were an accomplice of a murder committed in secret. Yet they call this "sport!" The crowds are even angry with gladiators if one of the two isn't slain quickly. By steeping themselves in this practice, they have lost their humanity. Therefore it is not fitting that we who strive to stay on the path of righteousness should share in this public homicide. When God forbids us to kill, he not only prohibits the violence that is condemned by public law but he also forbids the violence that is deemed lawful by men!" And I would add, "That includes make-belief violence that men deem as entertainment!"

Saint & Sinner

My Dad, the Sinner and Saint

http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2015/september/my-dad-sinner-and-saint.html?paging=off

SEP 212015

How I learned to see my father as more than his unfaithful past.

Editor’s note: Spouses are left with mistrust, anger, and betrayal after an affair. But what about children? Their hurt gets mixed with shock and confusion, unaware of the relational dynamics that led up to the infidelity. The news can have long-term emotional and spiritual effects, as kids wonder how a parent they loved could do something so hurtful.

Today's contributor—a writer and divinity school student—reflects on her family’s story. Out of respect for her father, who has not shared this publicly, she is writing anonymously. – Kate

Iwas 17, a senior in high school, working in my father’s store. Rumors had been floating for a few months that my dad was having an affair with a sales representative who visited the store periodically.

I did not believe it. My parents were adorably in love: regularly going on dates and trips, getting a bit too affectionate in front of their kids, laughing at each other’s jokes like they were in high school. And my dad was one of my most important spiritual role models: leading the family in devotions, spending hours talking theology with me, inspiring me to go to divinity school.

Then, one day he called me into his office. There was no mention of that woman, but he brought up problems with my mom and the possibility of divorce. I was in shock. I thought,Who are you, and what did you do with my real father? I could not reconcile this person with the dad I knew.

Six years later, my dad was pursuing his third affair. Each lasted a few months. I could tell when he was cheating by how little he was around and how much his personality changed. The timing was always terrible. Each major event in my life—graduating high school, going to college, and my wedding day—felt tainted by his infidelity. I didn’t know what triggered him to leave and come back, he and my mom returning to normal. During those times, my dad was his old self: affectionate, fun, generous, and devoting himself to God in prayer and Bible study. I didn’t know if he apologized to my mom and made things right again, but he had never apologized to me and my two sisters.

By that third affair, I was angry at my mom too. “You never gave him any consequences,” I said. “You let him have his cake and eat it too. What did you expect?” This might have been unfair, but she took it. And the scenario played out differently that time. My mom made him move out for a time, and she went on a date with someone else. Dad became so jealous he could hardly stand it. Finally, as he was beginning to break off the affair, his mistress's husband tracked him down and beat him up.

It’s been 14 years since his last affair. It seems my dad is “cured.” Was that the low point he needed to reach in order for things to change? Maybe. Over time, the Holy Spirit worked to grow and flourish the seeds of faith he had always had. He developed relationships of openness and accountability with other Christian men. He and my mom reached a new level of honesty, grace, and mutual respect. He dove in wholeheartedly to his relationships with his kids and grandkids. Perhaps the most striking sign of redemption? He and my mom now meet with couples in their church who are struggling with the effects of an affair.

Meanwhile, those of us hurt by his sin were left to make sense of it all. What was happening? Could we forgive without naively opening ourselves up to being hurt again?

A few years after my dad's final affair, our family was invited to sit in the audience of an Oprah show featuring married couples who had stayed together after an affair. When I spoke to one of Oprah’s people a few weeks before, I remember narrating my dad’s story and realizing for the first time: I’ve forgiven him.

That forgiveness had not come easily. My dad and I never had the bare-it-all, face-to-face talk I would have liked. But he began to talk openly about his sin in a way he never had—even if only in spurts. At dinner one night, he said that he saw himself as being like King David—whose name my dad shares—in all of David’s brokenness and sinfulness, but also in the restoration God brought to him. While my dad never fully apologized for the hurt he had caused me, I received moments like that as his way of acknowledging his sin and its consequences. I knew how hard it was for him to speak openly—his own family had a lot of brokenness and never spoke openly about sin and hurt—and recognized he was trying to build a bridge.

I am finally able to hold together the two sides of my dad. Previously he had existed in my head as evil/hurtful dad and good/loving dad. But then I allowed myself to view the two together. My dad is a complex person, full of sin and weakness, but also strengths and gifts. As we all are. This understanding allowed me to view the temptation toward infidelity as my dad’s “thing.” Mine is laziness and procrastination. For some, it’s alcohol. For others, greed. My dad’s is being tempted by sexually and emotionally intimate affairs with other women. That stinks. And it hurts a lot of people—so the recovery and reconciliation process can be longer and more difficult. But, ultimately, it’s a sin like any other sin.

As Christians we affirm that all have sinned and stand condemned apart from Christ. Certainly, some sins have greater earthly consequences than others. But no sin is “worse” than the other in the sense that all sin separates us from God. The good news of the gospel is that Christ saves us from sin byidentifying himself with sinners. We learn from Romans 8 that there is no condemnation for those in Christ—whatever their history—because God has condemned sin in the flesh by “sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.” Or, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, “He made him who knew no sin to be sin.” He did that for us: the greedy, the gossipers, the liars, and, yes, even the adulterers.

At that Oprah show, a young man sat on stage with his wife sharing about an affair he had had early in their marriage. He talked about being “disgusted” with himself, even as it was happening. Oprah rolled her eyes: “You were disgusted while you were having sex with this neighbor?” Her scorn was palpable. And I thought, Of course he was! That’s how sin works! As Augustine, the premiere Christian theologian on sin, wrote, “For these two can coexist in one person: both the hating it because one knows it is evil and the doing it because one decided to do it.”

As Christians, we understand sin in the light of grace and of the created goodness of humanity. Our society likes to alternatively demonize and idealize people. It’s happening right now in the political sphere. But we Christians must be different. We must embrace the complexity of our fellow humans, knowing that our most admired hero can (and will) fail us. But we must also remember that their failures don’t define them any more than their successes do. Christ defines them, as he defines me, as he defines you. Thank God.

Shema

Date: 12/2009.101

Spiritual Health Checks

Date: 3/2009.101

The Wrong Kind of Christian

I thought a winsome faith would win Christians a place at Vanderbilt’s table. I was wrong.

Tish Harrison Warren/ AUGUST 27, 2014
I thought I was an acceptable kind of evangelical.

I'm not a fundamentalist. My friends and I enjoy art, alcohol, and cultural engagement.

We avoid spiritual clichés and buzzwords. We value authenticity, study, racial reconciliation, and social and environmental justice.

Being a Christian made me somewhat weird in my urban, progressive context, but despite some clear differences, I held a lot in common with unbelieving friends. We could disagree about truth, spirituality, and morality, and remain on the best of terms. The failures of the church often made me more uncomfortable than those in the broader culture.

Then, two years ago, the student organization I worked for at Vanderbilt University got kicked off campus for being the wrong kind of Christians.

In May 2011, Vanderbilt's director of religious life told me that the group I'd helped lead for two years, Graduate Christian Fellowship—a chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship—was on probation. We had to drop the requirement that student leaders affirm our doctrinal and purpose statement, or we would lose our status as a registered student organization.

I met with him to understand the change. During the previous school year, a Christian fraternity had expelled several students for violating their behavior policy. One student said he was ousted because he is gay. Vanderbilt responded by forbidding any belief standards for those wanting to join or lead any campus group.

In writing, the new policy refers only to constitutionally protected classes (race, religion, sexual identity, and so on), but Vanderbilt publicly adopted an "all comers policy," which meant that no student could be excluded from a leadership post on ideological grounds. College Republicans must allow Democrats to seek office; the environmental group had to welcome climate-change skeptics; and a leader of a religious group could not be dismissed if she renounced faith midyear. (The administration granted an exception to sororities and fraternities.)

Like most campus groups, InterVarsity welcomes anyone as a member. But it asks key student leaders—the executive council and small group leaders—to affirm its doctrinal statement, which outlines broad Christian orthodoxy and does not mention sexual conduct specifically. But the university saw belief statements themselves as suspect. Any belief—particularly those about the authority of Scripture or the church—could potentially constrain sexual activity or identity. So what began as a concern about sexuality and pluralism quickly became a conversation about whether robustly religious communities would be allowed on campus.

In effect, the new policy privileged certain belief groups and forbade all others. Religious organizations were welcome as long as they were malleable: as long as their leaders didn't need to profess anything in particular; as long as they could be governed by sheer democracy and adjust to popular mores or trends; as long as they didn't prioritize theological stability. Creedal statements were allowed, but as an accessory, a historic document, or a suggested guideline. They could not have binding authority to shape or govern the teaching and practices of a campus religious community.

At first I thought this was all a misunderstanding that could be sorted out between reasonable parties. If I could explain to the administration that doctrinal statements are an important part of religious expression—an ancient, enduring practice that would be a given for respected thinkers like Thomas Aquinas—then surely they'd see that creedal communities are intellectually valid and permissible. If we could show that we weren't homophobic culture warriors but friendly, thoughtful evangelicals committed to a diverse, flourishing campus, then the administration and religious groups could find common ground.

When I met with the assistant dean of students, she welcomed me warmly and seemed surprised that my group would be affected by the new policy. I told her I was a woman in the ordination process, that my husband was a PhD candidate in Vanderbilt's religion department, and that we loved the university. There was an air of hope that we could work things out.

Line in the Sand

But as I met with other administrators, the tone began to change. The word discrimination began to be used—a lot—specifically in regard to creedal requirements. It was lobbed like a grenade to end all argument. Administrators compared Christian students to 1960s segregationists. I once mustered courage to ask them if they truly thought it was fair to equate racial prejudice with asking Bible study leaders to affirm the Resurrection. The vice chancellor replied, "Creedal discrimination is still discrimination."

Feeling battered, I talked with my InterVarsity supervisor. He responded with a wry smile, "But we're moderates!" We thought we were nuanced and reasonable. The university seemed to think of us as a threat.

For me, it was revolutionary, a reorientation of my place in the university and in culture.

I began to realize that inside the church, the territory between Augustine of Hippo and Jerry Falwell seems vast, and miles lie between Ron Sider and Pat Robertson. But in the eyes of the university (and much of the press), subscribers to broad Christian orthodoxy occupy the same square foot of cultural space.

The line between good and evil was drawn by two issues: creedal belief and sexual expression. If religious groups required set truths or limited sexual autonomy, they were bad—not just wrong but evil, narrow-minded, and too dangerous to be tolerated on campus.

It didn't matter to them if we were politically or racially diverse, if we cared about the environment or built Habitat homes. It didn't matter if our students were top in their fields and some of the kindest, most thoughtful, most compassionate leaders on campus. There was a line in the sand, and we fell on the wrong side of it.

We liked being in pluralistic settings, mining for truth in Nietzsche and St. Benedict alike. But if Christian orthodoxy was anathema in a purportedly broad-minded university, where did that leave us?

My husband and I love the idea of the university, a place of libraries and lawns, a space set aside to grapple with the most vital questions of truth, where many different voices gather to engage in respectful conversation. Both of us had invested considerable time and money into pursuing advanced degrees. He was preparing to be a professor.

We liked being in pluralistic settings, mining for truth in Nietzsche and St. Benedict alike. But if Christian orthodoxy was anathema in this purportedly broad-minded university, where did that leave us? What did that mean for our place in the world and how we interacted with culture?

And what did that mean for all the PhD candidates in my student group who were preparing for a life of service in the secular university? Did we need to take a slightly more Amish route of cultural engagement?

And what did all this mean for the university?

Facing an Impasse

A culture of fear seemed to be growing on campus. There were power plays and spin. A group of professors penned a thoughtful critique of the new policy, but remained silent when sympathetic department heads warned that going public could be "career damaging."

As a private university, Vanderbilt had the right to adopt particular beliefs and exclude certain religious groups. What bothered me was that they didn't own up to what they were doing. I wanted them to be truthful, to say in their brochure, "If you are a creedal religious person, don't expect to find a campus group here." I wanted intellectual honesty and transparency about their presuppositions.

Instead, top officials seemed blind to their assumptions, insisting all religious groups were welcome while gutting our ability to preserve defining beliefs and practices.

Those of us opposed to the new policy met with everyone we could to plead our case and seek compromise. We published essays and held silent protests with signs calling for pluralism and religious liberty. Hundreds of students and some faculty respectfully objected to the new policy. Catholic and Protestant students, low-church and high-church, met together daily in front of the administration building to pray.

As a writer and pastor, I value words, love careful argument, and believe good ideas prevail. I believed that if we cast a vision of principled pluralism, showed how value-laden presuppositions are inherent in any worldview, and reiterated our commitment to Vanderbilt and avoided the culture wars, the administration would relent.

But as spring semester ended, 14 campus religious communities—comprising about 1,400 Catholic, evangelical, and Mormon students—lost their organizational status.

A year later, my family and I moved to a different state to plant a new InterVarsity chapter. It was painful to leave beloved faculty, students, and ministry colleagues with the campus conflict unresolved. There was no happy ending, no triumphant reconciling moment. After that long and disorienting year, I left not in confident, defiant protest, but in sadness. What I thought was a misunderstanding turned out to be an impasse.

We Are Here

What's happening at Vanderbilt is happening at other universities. Increasingly, orthodox beliefs and practices are forbidden as those in power forfeit a robust understanding of religious pluralism.

Our task moving forward is to resist bitterness, cynicism, or retaliation, demonizing the university or the culture. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, the line between good and evil runs through every human heart, a reality that makes everything more complex. We have to forgive and to look squarely at places in our own heart that require repentance. In community, we must develop the craft of being both bold and irenic, truthful and humble.

And while we grieve rejection, we should not be shocked or ashamed by it. That probationary year unearthed a hidden assumption that I could be nuanced or articulate or culturally engaged or compassionate enough to make the gospel more acceptable to my neighbors. But that belief is prideful. From its earliest days, the gospel has been both a comfort and an offense.

We need not be afraid; the gospel is as unstoppable as it is unacceptable.

N. T. Wright points out in Paul: In Fresh Perspective that the unlikely message of a crucified Jew raised from the dead "was bound to cause hoots of derision, and, if Acts is to be believed, sometimes did." Throughout history and even now, Christians in many parts of the world face not only rejection but violent brutality. What they face is incomparably worse than anything we experience on U.S. college campuses, yet they tutor us in compassion, courage, and subversive faithfulness.

We need not be afraid; the gospel is as unstoppable as it is unacceptable. Paul persisted, proclaiming that Jesus was, in fact, the world's true Lord. And, as Wright notes, "people (to their great surprise, no doubt) found this announcement making itself at home in their minds and hearts, generating the belief that it was true, and transforming their lives with a strange new presence and power."

After we lost our registered status, our organization was excluded from new student activity fairs. So our student leaders decided to make T-shirts to let others know about our group. Because we were no longer allowed to use Vanderbilt's name, we struggled to convey that we were a community of Vanderbilt students who met near campus. So the students decided to write a simple phrase on the shirts: WE ARE HERE.

And they are. They're still there in labs and classrooms, researching languages and robotics, reflecting God's creativity through the arts and seeking cures for cancer. They are still loving their neighbors, praying, struggling, and rejoicing. You can find them proclaiming the gospel in word and deed, in daily ordinariness. And though it is more difficult than it was a few years ago, ministry continues on campus, often on the margins and just outside the gates. God is still beautifully at work. And his mercy is relentless.

Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America and works with InterVarsity at the University of Texas–Austin. For more, see TishHarrisonWarren.com.

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