I’ve been to three colleges in three years. Now a junior in college, I’ve been blessed to experience two very different kinds of education. Previously a student at Liberty University—the largest private Christian university in the country—we prayed together before class, worshipped together at convocation three times a week, and focused our entire education around living a Christ-centered life. Now a student at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, nearly every class is devoted to attacking faith and framing Christians in the worst possible way.
I transferred to UMass Boston because they offered me a full scholarship and I wanted to be closer to my family, but I realize now that God’s plan was for me to come here all along. For months, I felt my faith strained under the barrage of jokes about Christians and accusations of translation errors and inaccuracies. Instead of the Word, we were fed with endless examples of injustice and tyranny at the hands of white male Christian Americans.
In the name of social justice, the guilt began to pile while I let my guard down, promising to be as open-minded as possible, hoping they would do the same for me. The atmosphere quickly became more oppressive as I felt my confidence slipping in the principles I had championed for so long. I accepted my guilt, unable to deny the historical examples of systemic injustice and oppression of minorities. I began to wonder if God was a lie meant to control people, and that the liberation of the proletariat is what it really meant to be free.
But then I began to see that their sense of justice really wasn’t justice, but a negation of the law because they felt entitled to do so. Illegally crossing the border, vandalism and Antifa violence, taking from others what you have not learned—all these things have been endorsed by some teacher or another.
Lawlessness was justice as long as it benefited the underprivileged class, while I was meant to suffer because someone else’s ancestors had something to do with discrimination and slavery. Through constant put-downs and accusations, I remained quiet, recognizing that in this political climate I was the minority—the lone conservative. As I felt the spirit being drained out of me I recognized that everyone was oppressing each other as well.
Students joked—but not really—condemning one another for perceived slights and possible racism. Privately, friends would confess that they felt like they couldn’t say anything without being condemned and withdrew further into themselves, oftentimes becoming more depressed. Meanwhile, I pretended I was exempt from these same pressures, denying in my head that I was not the awful things they accused people like me of.
While experiencing this outcasting, it dawned on me that the biggest creator of the white nationalists and neo-Nazis was not the Trump movement and the Right, but the Left. When everyone thinks they can carelessly label other people with the worst and most vile titles in our society—racist, fascist, xenophobe—people who don’t have those beliefs begin to accept them along with the titles.
President Trump has taught this country that when we are hit we must fight back.
During my freshman year at Roger Williams University—a slightly less liberal college—I tried that approach and it didn’t work. Instead of winning others to our side we polarized the campus and I became ostracized. When I was all alone in one of the most hopeless times of my life, I realized God can use everything for His glory and that’s when I became serious about my faith.
From there, God took me to Liberty University where my spirit grew into eternity. When I transferred to Tyranny (how I’d liken my Marxist indoctrination camp), I knew I could not fight their labels and that’s when I gave up. Instead, I let them accuse me of being the embodiment of every evil of the world because according to James 2:10: “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.”
Then I saw that if I can only be a negative force in their eyes, I would agree with them. If they say that God is a lie, then I am a liar because I believe in Him. Otherwise, according to 1 John 1:10: “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”
The Bible says that Satan is the liar and the accuser of our sins, but that God “remembers your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25). The left is right—we are guilty of all—but God teaches us that Up is Down. God says the weak will be made strong (2 Corinthians 12:19) and the last shall be first (Matthew 19:30). While the left offers me death, Christ offers me life, hope, and opportunity—the dream that everyone can succeed and no matter what the consequences on Earth we will be made perfect in heaven.
I agree with the Left on one point: man has fallen, but Christ has risen. We won’t let the world put us down because the free gift of God (Romans 6:23) is our salvation. In class, we read Plato’s Republic and learned that man-made justice is impossible, but with Christ’s love, it’s possible. In communion, we judge each other as Saints (1 Corinthians 6:2) pardoning others as we need to be pardoned, and that is true justice—forgiveness.
While the Left claims moral relativity, they affirm Judeo-Christian values with every accusation they throw down. And when the agony of guilt and shame finally breaks them, God will guide them to the light and we will all realize that the only cure for self-inflicted pain is the death of our Lord.
