An abrupt lesson at VTech

Today at Virginia Tech University 31 people died in a shooting. As a former undergraduate and soon to be graduate student at CSU, I felt for the students as one of their own. Mom said the college years are supposed to be the best years of your life, and as students, we have a chance to break free from home, but we have (at least) a four year delay before entering the real world.

College in some ways, is a haven. A unique place to let one's mind loose on the most current ideas in acadamia and for some, college is one big party. For my first two years, I felt that my future was mine, and the university atmosphere sheltered me so I was free to pursue my premed ambitions without real-world responsibilities. Not all students are carefree like this, and I certainly wasn't my junior and senior year.

But today shattered that illusion for the student body at Virginia Tech. A time when mortality is the last thing on 18-24 year old's minds, students are probably realizing that they were one step away from death or injury. In the next lecture hall over from the one where the shooting took place, in the dining hall instead of the hallway where the dorm shooting was, in the library instead of in class. Chance it seems probably kept some students alive and unhurt.

What are we as Christian college students and alums to do? How does this affect campus preachings? How does this affect outreach to other students? Mortality may be on their minds more. The illusion that the world is theirs to control: what hall to live in, what major to choose, when to have class is shattered. Yet debates won't center around any sort of lofty academic philosophical disussions of doctrine. Questions of faith will be genuine, a student body that's suddenly aware of their fragile mortality will demand to know if there is a Creator, a God, and where He is. Therefore, we can also ask God to show those students on that campus and students everywhere how His hand was in this day, and how He can bring His healing and His light into this situation.

'Secret' philosophies in the Light

So today, (Easter) during the service at the hospital chapel, the chaplain's homily centered around rebuking this book / DVD called 'The Secret' or Law of Attraction.' It's this new philosophy someone put in a book about how we attract positive stuff by thinking and doing positive and attracting negative outcomes by thinking and doing negative things. New-Age stuff, but apparently a lot of people are caught up in it. The chaplain presented it in a play (put on by the other chaplains) about a woman in the hospital visited by two different people. One believes in The Secret and tells her to think positive and do positive things and her disease will go away, and another tells her to trust in God because He will see her through it and ease her suffering through the doctors and staff in the hospital. The play ended with the patient accepting God's truth versus 'The Secret' because she realizes that false philosophy doesn't make much sense and is therefore a lie.

That was amazing to see that truth brought right there to healtcare workers from houskeeping staff to patient transporters to nurses and clerks as well as visitors and two patients. There was a rousing "AMEN!" when the chaplain proclaimed that trusting in the light of God as Jesus was the ultimate hope. Twenty voices rising from a classroom sized chapel in a public hospital is powerful because the Spirit of God is behind them in power. I prayed that we'd all be able to unite in prayer and testify that this new false philosophy or any others are false compared to the hope and truth found in God.

"But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who ask you to give the reason for the hope you have." 1 Pet 3:15

More info: google 'The Secret DVD' or 'Law of Attraction'