How They See The World.

This past week, I was really hit with how broken and hopeless a world without Christ is. Not because of anything tragic happening to a loved one or of an experience with seeing someone in need. This came through ordinary college students in my Creative Writing 2 class.

We have been workshopping our short stories for the past few weeks. The first round of stories were written by boys, and they were not pretty. One was about a man having an affair with a woman thirty years his junior, one was about a boy being repeatedly sexually abused by his adopted father (and, of course, ending with the son pulling a gun on the man), and the last one I didn't even understand amidst all of the killing and cussing that was involved. I thought, though, that I had gotten the bad ones out of the way... until I got the last six stories.

The combined second and third rounds weren't as graphic as the first ones, but they were still filled with abuse, drugs, suicide, homosexual thoughts, affairs, terrible family relationships, and the f-word every two lines. There was only one other story besides mine that was completely clean and moral. It was even commented on mine that my character and her life were both basically good - not that I needed to have the killing and abuse, but it was just an observation.

For all of my classmates, I suppose these terrible things are more normal. Not necessarily accepted, but I guess whenever they look at the world, that is what they have to focus on. The easiest ending for these characters is to pull a gun on their problem, whether it is a family member or themselves, as opposed to working through that problem. I just can't imagine living like that! My heart hurts for these classmates that don't see life without pain. I, too, have known pain, but I also know the One Who can heal that pain, and it hasn't been a defining factor in who I am or how I see the world around me.

What is even harder for me to figure out is the fact that these people see the pain, see the hopelessness, but they don't see a solution. Sure, they know about Jesus - most people who grow up in the South are familiar with basic Christianity and probably know a multitude of Christians - but that is not the solution because those Christians are hypocrites. They are the ones who have affairs or are critical of others or judgmental in situations they don't understand. So many people have not seen what true Christianity looks like and what it can mean in their lives, so they are therefore turned off by "just another crutch that helps someone sleep through the night."

I think that evangelism should not just be your actions - it should be your words as well. After all, Jesus spoke the message of the Gospel; He didn't just expect people to understand by watching Him, and He was the Son of God who was doing miracles! How much more do we need to speak the name of Jesus and the gift of salvation! When we do that, though, we do need to make sure that our actions agree with that. People will never understand Christianity if we do one without the other.