Wow… the summer is nearing its closing. It’s an interesting time for a Muhlenberg student to be ministering to others at PSU. The ideal that we have been aiming for is to find students who desire to chase after the Lord, learning as much as they can and growing as close to the Lord as possible. We want to be doing that too and so we want to be in discipling relationships with those new students. So as the summer is ending I am learning to say with John the Baptist, “I must decrease, He must increase.” We want to make sure that the people that I have been reaching out to and investing in are also in contact with believers who will be living and serving here in State College along side them.
This doesn’t meant that I’m neglecting the people I’ve met and formed relationships this summer, they are still my friends and I’m still grabbing meals with them, playing Frisbee, etc, but the experience has been really pivotal in revealing to me what my role is. In all of my relationships I need to be pointing people towards Christ and not myself.
It’s also giving me a good perspective on how I can be using my time. In the sense that maintaining deeper relationships is not my primary focus here I found a renewed boldness in meeting new people. Last Tuesday in the HUB I saw two guys just sitting and enjoying some soda. It was refreshing to see them there just to be there and enjoying their time (not working on homework/group project/ipod/etc.) I got a soda myself and sat down with them as we began discussing the new Batman movie. It was incredible. We spent the first half hour or more just talking about Batman lore, should Robin be in the new franchise, whose better batman or superman, what villains might be useful for any new movies, etc. We really began to relate on that comic book superhero fan to fan level.
The new movie, “The Dark Knight,” deals with some serious themes and issues. One of the broader questions is asks is “are humans basically good or basically evil?” By bringing it up there it wasn’t difficult to steer the conversation into more personal territory. They admitted that the glimmer of hope that the movie gives (if push comes to shove, humans are good) seemed contrived and vaguely unbelievable. It allowed for the very natural question of “well what do YOU think?” Before long they were attacking Christianity and the church with a direct question, saying that no real Christian who goes to church every week and studies the Bible would be able to answer. I pulled my Bible out of my pocket and answered their question. They were shocked and then we had a good laugh about it – our bond was forming strong.
Batman became a common language for the three of us to be able to communicate easily and freely with each other. One of the guys started saying lines directly out of the movie to describe exactly what he had experienced. He shared a horrific and painful experience that happened to him that I don’t believe that he would have had the nerve to do so without the context of the movie to help us all understand. The other guy also became very raw with his feelings, explaining to us the pains of being asked to leave his home by his mother and being bounced around the foster care system. They really bared their souls (“there is no way hell could be worse than life here”) and in a sense pleaded with me/God wanting to know where God was during their struggles. The movie also ends with a sacrificial gesture where in a smaller sense “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”(2 Corinthians 5) but if I tried to explain it to them by quoting the Bible I don’t think they would have understood it nearly as well as if I used the illustration of Batman saving and redeeming the people in Gotham.
On Friday I called the second guy up and met him at a McDonald’s for a milkshake. I’ve never met anyone who thanked me as much as he did for just asking to spend two hours with him.