Freshman Reflections From Belmont UniversitySample

Day 16 – Faith
The first year of college can be disconcerting. Many of the courses we take challenge things we’ve known—or thought we’ve known—for our whole lives, and it’s not uncommon for first-year students to find themselves doubting a great deal about themselves and the world they live in. Combine this with newfound freedom to shape and arrange their daily lives as they wish, and it’s no surprise that many students struggle to understand the role of faith in their college lives.

At first glance, the passage from James would seem to condemn such doubting. But James is not concerned with the kinds of doubts that first-year students often encounter—doubts related to their sense of knowledge of the world. Rather, James is concerned with a different kind of doubt—doubt related to the pursuit of wisdom.

This is not to suggest that wisdom and knowledge are not related, for they certainly are. But it is to suggest that even as we encounter doubts about what we know about the world, we can boldly pursue the wisdom to act faithfully in the world. Later in the epistle, James makes this explicit: “Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom…[that is] peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits.”

It’s these things that James exhorts us to pray for, full of confidence that God desires for us to live with such wisdom. Our academic knowledge is of prime importance during college, and we tend to attach positive and practical value to it inasmuch as it prepares us for a career. Thus, our doubts about what we know or don’t know can seem like mere distractions from what is most important—getting a job.

But it is also true that our doubts can open us up to the possibility of wisdom, which as James reminds us, is imminently practical. Hearing the perspectives of those different than us, learning things that challenge our assumptions, being open to new facts and ideas—these are things that both require but also often produce such things as gentleness, peaceableness, mercy and good fruits.

So, when we pray, we don’t pray to know the answers. Rather, we pray to glean the wisdom necessary for our world here at Belmont and after. We pray, in other words, for the wisdom to live a good life, and as James reminds us, we should definitely have faith in God’s provision of that.

MICAH WEEDMAN
Director of Missions and Outreach
Associate University Minister & Director of Outreach