Campus ministries come together at Connect
Connect 2010
Steve Garber began addressing the group of college students from around Missouri by telling about himself, and noting that remarkably, his wife still loves him.
“It’s one of the hardest things to do – to really know someone and still choose to love them,” he said. “It’s hard to love the world after you get to know it.”
Garber was speaking to students from Missouri’s United Methodist campus ministries at an annual event called Connect, at First UMC in Jefferson City. His topic was weaving together individual belief and how we live. He has authored several books including "Fabric of Faithfulness".
Garber spoke about the current movie Avatar. He saw the core message of the movie as being based around pantheism, a belief in everything being of God, and being divine. In this panthetic world, God was not to take sides, because if everything is one, there are no sides. Garber spoke of how relativism can be problem today.
“We need to be able to connect our ideas about the world with how we live in the world,” he said. “At the end of the day, we want a side to be taken. We just do.”
He told how once he was having dinner with Peter Gabriel right before one of his concerts. Gabriel was raising money for an organization focused on addressing international human rights abuses. Garber asked Gabriel how he could take this position as a Buddhist.
“When you take Buddhism down to the basic level, there are no distinctions, and everything is mya, or equal. So how can you protest human rights abuse?” Garber asked Gabriel. The conversation continued, so much so that Gabriel cancelled his session with his personal masseuse that he usually has before each concert. Garber said there was a dissonance between what Gabriel says he believes in, and how he really feels we should leave.
Garber told of a colleague at a university who was working international human trafficking issues. She used student volunteers, and was routinely challenged by them saying that it may to parochial of us (the United States) to impose its values and morals and other countries, even on issues as basic as human trafficking.
“She told me, ‘I wish I had access to young people who still believe there is a basic right and wrong in the universe’,” he said.
Garber said he believes the scripture to the truest of truths. He cautioned the students that most of their professors in college would press the idea upon them that nothing is true. He said today’s pluralistic society doesn’t lend itself to being a faithful Christian. If they wish to remain faithful, they must form their beliefs, and hold tight to them.
“If you’re not able to come through these years with a deeper set of convictions, 10 years from now you won’t find yourself in a room like this one,” he said as he spoke in the church sanctuary. “It will cost you to believe in God.”
Not all of the Connect event was as heavy as Garber’s talks. There were late night board games, sports and small group time. Worship was led by the Justin Graves Band. The event was attended by 67 people from seven schools.