College Union

For good or bad, the power of one decision can affect the rest of your life. I remember hearing the story of a woman selling one dollar kisses to raise money for a charity. Men lined up by the droves to donate. Not long after the event, the local newspaper ran an article with the headline, “Kissing Booth Volunteer Found to Have Hepatitis.” Everyone who made a “contribution” at the kissing booth was encouraged to get to the health department as fast as possible to get a shot. In the end the cost of the injection was five times greater than the initial decision. For those who didn’t get to the health department…well, we can only imagine.

In addition to the hundreds of little choices made everyday, students contemplate some major life decisions, often from within a cloud of confusing messages. We’ve all spent countless hours trying to help students find good answers to big questions. At the same time, it seems I spend a lot of time trying to explain to students that they actually do have freedom to make choices and that it’s important to take responsibility for the choices they’ve made. They are not Pavlovion dogs who have to salivate every time the bell is rung. Nor do they have to assume a victim mentality, believing that whatever life situation in which they find themselves is the result of what a professor did, a friend said, a family member didn’t do, or “fate” cast their way. In the space between the thousands of stimuli and responses are choices. In that space, Jesus meets us to shape our character one small choice at a time.

So let me offer two, non-mind-blowing suggestions to communicate to students that will help them make better decisions in the space between.

First, apply God’s truth in Scripture to your choices. How does James say it? “Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don’t act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like” (The Message). Or what about Psalm 119:105? “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Notice here that the writer assumes that the choices which guide his journey with God are made in an environment of darkness and confusion. And the “light” he refers to is not a super-charged, halogen headlight clarifying everything in the near the future. It’s more like a candle illuminating only a few steps ahead. Small, faithful (even seemingly inconsequential) choices made in confusing surroundings keep our bearings steady.

Sometimes I tell students that the problem is not that we don’t know what to do; it’s that we don’t do what we know. Students are willing to apply all kinds of advice from all kinds of sources. We can help them apply God’s truth as their primary source.

In whatever venue Scripture is taught (preaching, teaching, or in small groups, retreats, etc.), we will do our students a huge service by adjusting our teaching to spend a significant amount of time on rubber-meeting-the-road actions—how to embrace and walk in God’s continuous, gracious activity in our lives. Even better, we can help students learn how to ask application type questions, and even set up some structures that help them encourage each other and remain accountable to one another (now there’s a Wesleyan idea).

That’s a good segue for the second suggestion. Travel with people you trust to help you live God’s way.

I love The Lord of the Rings scene in which Frodo Baggins leaves his friends of the Fellowship of the Ring, heading off alone to Mordor’s Cracks of Doom to destroy the ring. Frodo’s little hobbit friend, Samwise Gamgee, tracks him down just as Frodo is setting off across the river in a boat. When Frodo hears Sam yelling at him from the shore, he tells Sam to go back because he is convinced that he must go to Mordor alone.

Promise bound and stubbornly determined to never leave his friend alone, Sam wades into the river saying, “”Of course you are, and I’m coming with you!”

Since Sam can’t swim, his heroic attempts to reach Frodo result in only sinking. Frodo becomes terrified as Sam disappears and desperately tries to rescue him. After a few intense moments, Frodo grabs Sam’s arm, pulling his soaked and out of breath hobbit friend into the boat.

By the curious look on Frodo’s face, Sam can tell that Frodo is wondering why in the world he would risk his life to join him on the journey to Mordor. Sam simply says, “I made a promise, Mr. Frodo. A promise. ‘Don’t you leave him, Samwise Gamgee.’ And I don’t mean to. I don’t mean to.”[1]

No one makes the right choices all the time. We make them even less without faithful friends who promise never to leave us. Every Frodo Baggins needs a Samwise Gamgee. As Jesus put it, “If you want to be my disciples, love each other in the same way I have love you” (John 13:33-34).

As many historians have commented, Wesley’s genius was in organizing people for accountability and encouragement. When we help students develop small, safe environments in which they gather in community for encouragement, prayer, and accountability, applying Scriptural truth to advance holy living, better choices are made and Christ-like character is formed.

---

[1] The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (New Line Cinema, 2001), directed by Peter Jackson, based on the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, screenplay by Frances Walsh.

Categories: Nurturing the Soul of the College Student
Tags: