CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: How open are Highland students to discussing spirituality?
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Michelle Ross's words could have been echoed by each of the UHI Inverness students I spoke to recently: "God made the difference for me, and he can for other people as well."
In the 2nd year of a nursing BSc, she is the secretary of the Christian Union (CU) at the campus. I also met the president, Amy Mustarde, who is on a graduate apprenticeship in civil engineering, and treasurer Jonathan Moir, studying at the Scottish School of Forestry.
The CU is not a church, but a forum where Christian students support one another through friendship and regular meetings, encouraging each other to display the attractiveness and truth of Christian faith in the way they live, in conversations with their friends, and through ‘outreach’ events. They seek ‘to give every student a chance to hear and respond to the good news of Jesus Christ’.
How open were their fellow students to discussing spirituality and faith? They told me that while most of their peers feel ‘church’ is part of the culture of the past, and know little about Jesus and Christian beliefs, they are open to spiritual ideas such as horoscopes, and ‘manifesting’, the power of a benevolent universe to change your reality.
And so they aim to introduce their peers to the God behind the universe, who manifested once and for all in Jesus, through whom all gifts are given.
Amy, Michelle and Jonathan shared with me their own stories of encountering Jesus. I heard of faith in God bringing hope when it could be found nowhere else (Michelle). I heard of faith calming an inner storm of anger (Jonathan). I heard of the simplicity of following Jesus: it is not a question of amassing facts and understanding, but of simply placing faith in him (Amy).
In aiming to ‘grow together in sharing the gospel’, CU members are not promoting a therapeutic lifestyle, or passing on ‘something my church tells me to share’. Rather, their attitude is ‘I want to tell you about this because it is so important to me.’
Michelle described writing a letter to herself which ended: ‘Do you want to dedicate your life to God? Do you want this to be your reality?’ And after these words she simply wrote ‘Yes!’ In God she finds certainty and hope in life’s challenges.
Amy spoke about getting to know her fellow students, and finding out what ‘scares’ and excites them. I realised that for Amy, Michelle and Jonathan, Jesus is the powerful reality who puts the things which scare them and all their fears in a new perspective, and gives them a profounder excitement – that of knowing themselves part of an everlasting story.
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