Shayan Khalaj a student from Capo Valley Christian School, who also attends The WeLL was nice enough to post the first guest blog. I asked Shayan to talk about the reality of life in the culture of Orange County. Shayan has been involved with The WeLL for about 6 months and has shown a deep desire to influence those around him with the Gospel. Thank you Shayan for sharing your heart with all of us!
Being a Christian student in the heavily relativist culture of today can be a tougher demeanor then most people expect. Personally as a Christian I enjoy discussing with anyone who will listen to why I have chosen to put my faith in Jesus Christ the resurrected Lord. There is no disagreement between believers and skeptics alike that no single person had affected history more than Jesus of Nazareth. I personally believe that the historical evidence for the resurrection is compelling if someone didn’t look at it with a inherent bias against its reliability. Why is it so easy for the students of today to accept the life of Alexander the Great, when the first biography written about his life was written nearly a half a century after his death, but ignore the historical evidence for Jesus? The answer is simple, its “truth”. Any Christian student at a university can see that universities are no longer a center for personal development; rather it’s just a step for your personal career ladder. You aren’t truly searching for wonderful truths of this world, or creating space for a few years to consider valuable and precious things for their own sake, rather you can make an extra buck with a University’s name on your resume. Imagine a Christian walking into his University’s Biology class and starting a debate against his professor about Intelligent Design. That student would be torn apart by the contradictory relativist mentality that plagues our educational establishments. The professor might even fail the student. So this leaves a sad question, what can Christian students at any educational level especially high school and higher education do about this? How do we react?
How should Christians react to a culture and academic establishment that is so fiercely anti-Christian? First look at history, reality sadly is that nothing has changed. The world has always hated Christians because it first Jesus. This should be music to our ears. This should be the ultimate encouragement for any Christian student to never give up despite the apathy against them. Jesus promised to be with us to the end of the age. Hostility shouldn’t scare a Christian student that engagement to convert nonbelievers is impossible, rather the opposite. It should remind us that it is God who convicts and converts people, what a sobering truth. It is only with personal friendship and commitment that we can really engage with a person and get past apathy that all too often attends university or high school life. Let us as Christian students never forget how sweet the sound of the gospel is to those the Lord is giving ears to hear. Even in hard universities and colleges we can have confidence that the Holy Spirit will do His work of breaking hard hearts and opening once shut eyes. That is why I have no fear as a Christian student in today’s culture, because evangelism is God’s work. We can have the utmost confidence that our prayers, hard work and dedication is not, will not and cannot be in vain.
