The older sister is on her way home from picking up her younger brother, who has found refuge in the backseat of the car. The younger brother can be heard ranting on and on about his art portfolio he has brought home from school, filled with art that is the best he has done since second grade. He sifts through his art, more excited to show his sister than anyone else- he always sought the approval of his siblings than anyone else. They travel down West Mountain Street in the sister’s tank of a BMW. The younger brother pesters his sister to look at the latest piece of art he’s done, lilies floating a pond, as the older sister loses control of the car and begins swerving. In this moment neither knows what is going on, the sister begins to panic, her sense of responsibility is plummeting as the car’s control over her increases. The tank swerves across the other side of the road as a bright blue truck comes straight into the side of the sister’s car.
The next breath of life the little brother remembers breathing is being handled out of the car by strangers, while screaming for his sister at the top of his lungs. The sister sits in the driver seat motionless, and the younger brother can feel the weight of the world on his shoulders, just a third grader. Sister gets out of the car… something the matter with her leg, the silence of both the brother and sister screams louder than a child watching their first horror movie. The sister feels the most responsible; she had failed at taking her brother home from school... a seemingly simple task. She placed him in danger of death, and now she had to face the fact of her parent’s disappointment. This is too much for a young woman to have to deal with, too much regret to have to cope with. The brother has to call his parents; the sister is an emotional wreck… too fearful of what’s to come on the other side of the receiver, the third grade brother calls. The parents don’t care about the wreck… were him and his sister okay?
In college it seems like a focus on sin is a necessary day-by-day process. There is so much coming at you, so many pressures; it’s hard to focus on God while avoiding these sins. The responsibility as a Christian to not conform is a great burden to carry around, especially in college. A university campus is a feeding ground for lust, malice, hatred, and alcohol… the avoidance of these iniquities takes all of your focus.
I recently hear of friends going to places I have never heard of, places not good for their spiritual welfare. I hear my friends confessing to drinking, because hey, it’s not a big deal on campus. Sure they will admit it’s illegal, but it’s like going over the speed limit… everyone does it here… Am I hearing this right now, driving over the speed limit is the same as drinking underage? Can it be that I am the only one that thinks this is destructive? I begin feeling guilty when I hear that my friends are merely “experimenting” with these things. Like a helpless mother feels when she loses her child in the supermarket… could I have stopped them from doing these things? How do I show them they can’t be sinning like this when they claim to be such strong faithful Christians? The more I hear about it, the more I feel my own body being weighted under their sins. This feeling can be enough to drive anyone away from the redeeming nature of Christ.
For me to focus on others sins is dangerous… I begin to think of myself better than I ought. I am okay because my spiritual life is at a place where I am comfortable enough, not desiring these sinful desires of college. That’s just it though, I’m comfortable here and all I am doing is playing daddy to other people when they screw themselves over. I am the better one of the group, and I am now at a place where they ridicule me for what I chose not to do it…not because they are that rude, but because I keep waving their sin in their face, it would be my natural instinct to put a defense too. I end up sinning trying not to sin. This is getting really confusing for my spiritual life.
I’ve learned to become like my parents when they heard me and my sister had gotten into a wreck… not continually reminding my sister of her mistake, but rather, focusing on the deeper issue… were we okay during the situation. The truth is, everyone is going to sin, in different ways, in different places, at different times. Does it do us any good to focus on these things? No, because it spiritually drains us to the point we become a father to our friends rather than accountability partners, which is what Christ has called us to be. I can’t keep bringing up underage drinking to my friends, because I’m not going to be with them when they get offered a beer at the next tailgate, or when they somehow find themselves with friends at the hookah bar. What matters is that I am there for them, whenever they need someone to talk to about what’s going on in their lives. We start to badger other Christians, seeking to “do what God wants us to, by persecuting their downfalls.” What kind of friend is this?
Christ is calling me to focus on the bigger issues: how is my relationship with Him, what am I doing to pursue Him on a daily basis rather than persecuting my friends to get an ego boast. If my friends are sinning, and they’re Christians, the Holy Spirit will take care of the badgering, why don’t I help them focus on growing in Christ rather than the world? I can daily remind them of Christ’s grace, redemption, and the beauty of living for something greater than the world. It’s not important to live in the ghosts of our past, but focus on redemption in Christ, and like my mother asked my sister and I, “how are YOU doing?” Where are our spiritual lives heading?
“You can hear it in the trail behind your voice
There’s a multitude who claim
They’ve been through the fire of fallen angels
They’ll never be the same
We live with the weight of what we’ve done
The cracks that we slip through
No time to forget about our future
Just the things that we won’t do
But you know you can’t”
-Needtobreathe
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