Faith.

My perspective.

I completely understand youth groups and their purpose. When I went to a youth group, I admit that it was nice having a group of like-minded Christians who had the same religious perspective as myself and who would support me in my faith. However, while I was in that youth group, I sort of think that my faith began to stagnate. I felt growth in my faith at first from being surrounded by fellow Christians, but later on I sort of felt that I had hit an impasse...nothing challenged my faith and no one brought new perspectives into light about it, which I suppose is comfortable but not exactly stimulating or conducive to growth in my opinion.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm in college downtown at VCU. The set of friends I've made are certainly a different crowd than those in my youth group; of about the 15 people I hang out with most, only myself and maybe three others are Christian. As for the others, it's a mix of (mostly) atheists and agnostics. In the beginning, constantly being around those who truly believe that there is no God (for personal reasons; these aren't just atheists who choose to be so because they want to seem edgy, they all have had things happen in their lives to bring them to this point) was somewhat of a challenge, and I thought I felt my faith slipping a bit, or that I wasn't the same Christian as I was before. However, after awhile, I really started to listen to what they said and believed in terms of religion, and I realized that I wouldn't want to live with no hope for anything to look forward to after death, and with nothing to rely on but myself. I feel that from hanging out with these people my overall faith has grown stronger, because I have seen those without faith, had my beliefs questioned and even insulted at times, and yet I can still feel God's presence.

It's definitely been refreshing and revitalizing in terms of my faith to be around those with such radically different perspectives. I'm not in any way saying being around other Christians all the time in youth groups or other organizations is a bad thing at all; for some people, that approach to Christianity works best. For me however, getting outside of the traditional box and broadening my horizons was the change of pace I needed.