Every night I close my eyes and drift into a dream so realistic that sometimes I ask if I ever even woke up. Dreams that carry the vividness of life that scare me to the bone sometimes, and other times I never want to leave. These are not what concern me, what concerns me is that there are times when I wake up and have no idea what the dream meant. But know that its implications are rather far spread.

Ive had several of these dreams in the last few months, some with girls in them, some with no implications just a very very nervous feeling accompanying them. What concerns me is that they prompt me to think about things I don’t really care to think about, things I would rather ignore and lock away in the back of my head.

Whats wrong with entertaining these thoughts, these concepts, these ideas? They are dangerous to the way that I act and appear to others, the way that people will view me, and my social status. And this in itself is the issue that bothers me so much. As a Christian I make my life about being out of place, and in your face. I try to be counter-culture, to push things to the limit and ask those tough questions that no one will ask for fear of offending others or being politically incorrect.

So how can I say that I am accomplishing this while I am haunted at night by my failures? I cant really say that, but I can say I am trying, i try to give those thoughts more time now, even if the actions associated with the concepts are hard to carry out and slow to move.

This isn’t to say that all these dreams are of a serious nature, I am pretty sure some of them are just misguided fever dreams of a life I wish I could live, a girl I wish I had to nuts to ask out, a place I wish I could go to. Being 19 I have only gone from one awkward stage in life to another. There is the stage where you are a teenager, and you are an adult but expected to act like a kid, and now I am physically an adult, but mentally a 13 year old with a suitcase of cotton candy and a wicked diagnoses of ADHD.

I have been feeling the pressure to grow up a lot lately, something I am not a huge fan of. I feel rather lost in this process. This does not go without mentioning that the alienation felt at my school is due in large part to the fact that socioeconomic status here is dependent on if you are dating/engaged/married or single. Single people here are often looked to for some kind of outside wisdom, like we are a sage living on a summit who watch the movements of all the others and come up with creative solutions to their problems.

What if we have a problem? I am better friends with several other of the minority of single guys here on campus, and it seems that the last week or so we have had a real opening up to each other where we expressed our concern that there were a lot of people floundering and asking us for advice and through this we ourselves are floundering.

That is not to say that asking for help is the wrong thing to do. Just to say that there seems to be an incomplete circle of help here in the world of Bible College Land. Something that seems to be growing closer to a solution than a year and a half ago when I was here, but still pretty bad. There is  a lot of socioeconomic separation that is bridged by sports and other campus activities, but I still cant help but feel that there is still a group out there trying to fight this community that is being sought out by so many.

How exactly do you fight a community that is trying to grow? Its pretty simple actually, a lot of people here don’t even know they are doing it. The opposite of community is devision, this can be determined from reading how Adam communed, or had community, with God while he was in the garden. But when man fell, God separated him from Himself. Thus division is opposite of community.

So how is division caused in most modern situations where racism, predigests, and class divisions don’t typically stand in the way? Simply, gossip. Gossip is a rampant monster on this campus, something that tears through the potential impact we could have on the local community and the world like a double edged sword. I have watched it time and again ruin the reputations, relationships, and hearts of people here on campus.

Are we not on this earth to make relationships for Christ? Are we not here to make disciples? Is that not the great commission in itself?Then how do we stand around talking behind the backs of others, telling stories that make them look foolish or demean them? I know I am guilty of this, I will be the first to raise my hand to the question of guilt. So many here think its in innocence, that its only a joke, a comment, a quip and then its done. How does that change the way that the person you made that comment to looks at the person you made it about? These are things we need to be asking ourselves daily.

Back to my topic, the dreams. When I dream about people here on campus, there are those who are clean and always make my dream a brighter place, and those who I fear, because I know they know no bounds in their deceit. Deceit is one of those things we call sins, and the reward for that is death. Not only death eternal, but death of your friendships, of the amount of patience people have for you, and eventually your popularity. People here will only tolerate so much, and I am pretty close to my line. If you don’t have a line, draw one.

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