Making College Count – Part 3: Own Your Faith

Brent Aucoin |

Almost two million people are fans of AXE on Facebook. Apparently, I can get the time of my life by just wearing the right deodorant.  Who would have guessed?  I don’t even have to be breathing for this product to work.  That’s what AXE wants us to believe. They are banking (literary) on the fact that you’ll believe something enough to purchase their product.  So, beliefs do matter–especially when it is expedient to get you to buy something.

Oppositely, we are told beliefs don’t matter as long as you don’t hurt anyone. So you may smell like road kill because you believe road kill is good, but who am I to judge!

We all know that beliefs matter and have consequences (greater than what you smell like).

Your Beliefs Are Showing

These “worldviews” will rock you when you realize that there are people out there who see the world differently than you.

College, the first step away from your parents, tends to be the time when you start showing your own core convictions and testing them.  Whether your core beliefs stimulate you to live for parties, prestige, pleasure, praise (all self-absorbed BTW) or live for the one true God, these beliefs will be demonstrated, be challenged, and possibly be changed and/or be deepened.

Your professors, while influential, may not be the most significant shapers of your beliefs. More likely, your peers’ collective beliefs sway you the most.  Regardless, you will be exposed to a diversity of friends’ and professors’ and even cultures’ network of values. These “worldviews” will rock you when you realize that there are people out there who see the world differently than you.

So get ready for the foundation-shaking moments when your mind starts wondering, “What do I really believe?”  “Why do I believe this?”  “Why don’t I believe that?”

Use Doubts to Refine Your Beliefs

Undealt with, doubts default to unbelief over time.  Maybe there are a few man-made concepts you need to stop believing.  Some of these may have accumulated in you like barnacles on a ship.  Some may even be beliefs you thought at one point were biblical.

But truth does exist because God exists.  Embrace your doubts and ask questions to discover the truth.  Truth, God’s defined order of reality, gives you the most comprehensive and stable foundation on which to live your life. You must seek it. You must own it. True biblical Christianity represents it. Christianity is not just what you do on Sunday and holidays.  Christianity is precisely living out God’s truth 24/7.  And learning the riches of the truth of our God takes a lifetime of discovery.

So ask your questions, search for answers, engage in thoughtful debate.

“The reason many of us do not ardently believe in the gospel is that we have never given it rigorous testing, thrown our hard questions at it, faced it with our most prickly doubts.” – Eugene Peterson.

I know AXE’s claims could not survive the kind of scrutiny as the claims of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Try spraying Him on and get the Christ-effect.

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This post relies on some content from chapter three of the book Make College Count.

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Brent Aucoin
Pastor Brent Aucoin serves as the Pastor of Seminary and Counseling Ministries at Faith Church. He is the president of Faith Bible Seminary, and is a counselor and instructor for Faith Biblical Counseling Ministries.