It was the meaninglessness, the outright rebellion, and stupidity of what I was doing. I remember thinking that I just plain wasn’t living according to who I am. I thought I was being authentic, having been sick of hypocrisy. I thought I got a pass because I was young. I had all along been planning to eventually straighten up my act and become a responsible Christian adult when it was time to settle down and get a real job and all that good stuff. But that’s not how it goes.

 
I’m headed up the road to participate in tomorrow’s live Mortification of Spin panel at Cairn University. This is going to be an interesting conversation. The topic is “Getting Through College Without Becoming a Heathen.”

Again, I find myself coming to the discussion with a noteworthy difference from my two cohosts, and probably many of the students attending a Christian university. I went to a secular university and, for the first 2+ years, was not living anywhere close to the Christian that I professed to be. While I may have looked like I had high standards compared to the “heathens” that I hung out with, you could look at my college life and predict that I was going to be one myself by the time I graduated.

But that’s not what happened. I was partying with my four roommates one night my Junior year, and it hit me. What hit me? Well, it wasn’t a voice from God and it wasn’t a snowball with rocks in it (got hit with a couple of those this weekend). It was the meaninglessness, the outright rebellion, and stupidity of what I was doing. I remember thinking that I just plain wasn’t living according to who I am. I thought I was being authentic, having been sick of hypocrisy. I thought I got a pass because I was young. I had all along been planning to eventually straighten up my act and become a responsible Christian adult when it was time to settle down and get a real job and all that good stuff.

But that’s not how it goes.

And even in the pathetically immature state that I was in, I could see that a little more clearly that night. You don’t live in sin and then magically develop Christian character to be a good wife, mom, neighbor, or coworker. I was becoming someone whom I didn’t profess to be. I professed to be a sinner rescued by the almighty Son of God. But I was living like someone enslaved to sin. Things had to change. That wasn’t who I was.

And I believe the Holy Spirit had been pressing me to that honest self-evaluation. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church. Although I hadn’t been there in close to four years, the ministry of the Word was still powerfully working in me. It was powerful enough to work in me in the middle of a night partying with a group of college girls.

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