But now back to the resolution I made with myself.
Even though last school year was very difficult, I never doubted that I loved my classes, or that I loved my professors.
Trinity Western has some of the most outstanding staff members there are, and they were all so supportive, yet they constantly pushed us to be better in one way or another.
Last semester one of my professors, and luckily for me my academic adviser, mastered the perfect combination of those two crucial tasks.
And I will never forget my first lesson with her.
It was American Literature and we had started at the very beginning: Native American Creation stories.
After reading them and discussing how they paralleled the Christian creation story she froze and asked us:
"Now tell me why you believe our creation story."
In our very first lesson she was already pushing us to verbalize our faith. She challenged us to defend the story of a God who made man from mud and woman from man.
We did not go into the logistics of how long it took Him, or whether a form of divine evolution was used, but we did have to fortify our reasoning for believing in the God of the Christian Creation.
And after we all spoke, she had this to say:
"The Christian God created humankind because He intimately desired a relationship with us. He did not need us, but He yearned for children to love and cherish. And the Christian God is the only God who desired that relationship enough to rectify it after it was broken by sin. Christianity is the only religion with an incarnation. And I would rather believe in a God who loves me enough to sacrifice His power in order to know me than believe in anything else."
And after hearing it phrased like that, no other religion, no other god can really match the I Am.
And that is how a class in a Christian university should be. It should affirm our faith and challenge us in ways that we never would have expected.
And I'm looking forward to returning to that.
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