Quest for Truth in an Age of Questions
As Lindsey Graves invited me into her office, I thought I would ask a few questions and leave. I was there to hear her thoughts on questions about life, faith, and the universe, and as our conversation was reaching the one-hour-mark, more questions about faith and truth were being birthed by the ones I asked. Lindsey is Stetson’s assistant director of interfaith initiatives, and though she’s not a chaplain, Stetson students look to her for guidance in spiritual matters. Her office was filled with colorful posters, pillows, and books — clearly a space that welcomes visiting students to stay and have a conversation. I left wanting to know more about how she and others in the Stetson community make sense of faith and the world around them.
The Interfaith Initiatives Department is a smaller branch within the Cross Cultural Center which coordinates events to “equip students from various religious and non-religious backgrounds to work together in cooperation,” according to Stetson’s website. Lindsey explained that sometimes she creates panel Q&A events, but sometimes she just helps back up various religious groups’ gatherings, as long as they are open to the larger Stetson community.
She said her personal faith values align with Stetson’s values, in her willingness to remain open-minded and willing to explore other faith traditions. But as I learned more about her job as sort of “guidance counselor” for faith, I wondered where most college students fall on the religious spectrum. According to USA Today, when it comes to college students, “About a third, 32%, are true believers. Another 32% are spiritual but not religious. And 28% consider themselves secular.” The same article also stated that more and more Americans are putting themselves into the “none” category in relation to religion — The Pew Research Center recorded that the number of those who identify with no religious view at all “grew from about 15% in 2007 to just under 20% in 2012.” This sparks the question: Are people finding a dearth of answers about life, meaning, morality, and the workings of the universe? Or are they resolving to just give up looking?
With growing access to information about other religions and cultures, people are being presented with more options. The consumerist mindset of our American culture encourages us to get a quick fix, and that is extending to spirituality. If Americans are seeking an eight-step way to a better body or to a perfect career, who is to say they won’t approach religion in this manner? Professor Michael S. Roth of Wesleyan University wrote in the New York Times:
“Confronted with the manifold choices in the ‘marketplace of ideas,’ we want to keep our options open. But at some point inquiry must lead somewhere; exploration must to give way to discovery; thoughts must go home, so to speak. All sound critical thinking has a destination.”
Lindsey’s world as she knew it opened up when she was introduced to the diverse study of religion in college. As we sat at a small round table pushed up against a wall in her office, she explained how intriguing her Freshman-year discovery of religions other than Presbyterianism had been; she wanted to know more about religion, mainly out of curiosity. As I listened to her story, I noticed the colorful book spines lining a shelf closer to the ceiling than the floor, many of which had the word “God” on them — indicative of her Christian theological studies. Yet she doesn’t seem stand by Christianity as her source of answers, not does she stand by the tenets of Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, or any other religion in totality. Her view of faith is a journey, and she that “If someone seems too overtly certain about something — a bigger question — it makes me question a little bit more.” There is always more to learn, and in her opinion, openness is key.
Openness to answers about life and faith, however, means that questions must be asked, and it seems that much of the time, the hustle and bustle of college life distracts students from thinking about the deep questions their souls are asking. But sometimes these questions become too loud to ignore, and they are questions that can’t be answered by feel-good-spirituality because they are reflective of students facing things so raw and painful, that mottos, mantras, and feeble hopes in things or people can’t begin to touch the reality of pain. The problems of pain, identity, and relationships are ones that humans have been trying to figure out how to cope with for centuries. Somehow, the journey for impersonal spirituality can’t engage with the deep wounds we carry with us from both tragic events and the daily wear of searching for answers. It seems to be only when death, war, and injustice shake us that the questions come out. Throughout our conversation, Lindsey noted that Stetson students are commonly asking questions about reconciling faith beliefs with the world around them, identity, fears of apathy, but the underlying question come back to relationships: How do I understand and relate to other people in this world as I know it?
“There’s something so healthy about questioning,” Lindsey said, “but I also think it is important to not be this leaf lost in the wind. I think you have to have some sort of roots. You have to be grounded in some kind of way.”
I thought I might find people seeking some grounded-ness through one of the newer Interfaith Initiatives: the “Sacred Space” gathering. Every Wednesday, the newly hired chaplains lead in a time of singing, meditation, and reading from different religious traditions. This time is intended for students to take a break from the week’s rigor and get in touch with the spiritual. I showed up to Allen hall, the designated meeting place for “Sacred Space,” expecting to find a room full of people mingling before the event began. But I was shocked to enter a completely silent room and to see a fourteen-chair semi-circle filled by only the three chaplains. I have heard students ask questions in and out of the classfrom masking their cries for help, but I wondered why they weren’t showing up to ask them.
I walked in and quietly sat on a chair on the end. I introduced myself, and learned that one of the chaplains is a Methodist Christian Minister, one is a Buddhist Sensei, and one is a Baptist Christian Minister — her name is Christy Correll-Hughes, and she led the service. After she lit the candle and some incense sitting on a small table placed in the middle of the room, she stepped behind a pulpit to speak to her audience of three. Lua Handcock slipped in shortly after the service started, making it an audience of four. Correll-Hughes read some scripture from the Christian Bible and spoke a bit about her own faith, particularly about how it is okay to doubt and to have questions. She admitted, “Sometimes I don’t want to think about faith, life and what happens after death,” but that “I’m okay with living in ‘The Question’.” She said that though she has questions, and doesn’t claim to have all the answers, she can be sure of one truth — Truth as a person. She said, “I put my faith in the living Christ.”
Michelle Tepper, a Stetson Alum, Oxford scholar, and current member of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, seems to think that the deepest questions are answered through faith. She talked to me about her “Big Questions” events she helps host college campuses across the country through RZIM, which is Christian organization that focuses on answering big questions, but is more interested in the questioner than the question. In other words, she believes that the questions people ask reflect something deeper within the heart of humanity, and because her biblical belief elevates human worth, it is important to listen to each individual’s story and personal longings for identity. She explained that in the “Big Questions” events she has helped facilitate, students come forward to ask questions within forums relating to topics like, “Is true love possible?”, “Can science and faith coexist?”, and “Why would a good God allow suffering?”. But among these questions, she said the topic unfailingly draws a crowd that packs out a room is “Who am I?”
It’s clear that in the grand identity search that is a large part of the college experience, students are trying to find themselves in many places: Social media, popularity, grades, parties, and relationships, to name a few. When these don’t bring fulfillment, some often turn to self-medication with drugs, alcohol, or sex. But it is when these things aren’t falling into place that students ask the big questions of life.
The natural succession of a question is an answer, but the pluralistic take on religion implies that there is no definite answer, because everyone has their own individual truths. With this view, people experience truth in different ways, and tolerance is crucial to cooperation between human beings. But Michelle has learned from speaking to others and observing the world around her that post-truth ideas of tolerance haven’t really led to less exclusion, but have homogenized cultural differences and squashed individuality in the process.
Toward the end of my conversation with Lindsey in her office, she mentioned, “I keep thinking about the absolute truth question. It’s so hard… I know what I don’t believe,” Perhaps students across Stetson’s campus also feel this way, but aren’t stepping forward and asking questions out loud. Michelle, who has spent hours talking to college students about deep fears and questions, noted that without truth, people lose a sense of meaning. She believes there is meaning is asking questions, because good questions can lead to livable, cohesive truth.
Is there truth that we — as students on an endlessly busy campus — can grab hold of and get to know in a way that cuts to the core of who we are and breathes life into our thirsty souls? The questions we cry out may echo into the distance, but we hear the echo because the sound of our voices are bouncing off of something greater.
