Author: Abigail Bruxvoort

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Opinions

Do You Live in a Generational Bubble?

After four years at this college, I have heard my share of depreciating remarks about the “Houghton bubble.” We’re a geographical bubble. A religious bubble. Perhaps a socio-economic bubble, and sometimes even a racial bubble. And none of these bubbles are bubbles you want to live in, since living in a bubble means residing in a state of relative ignorance and naiveté, cut off from the rest of civilization in a more-or-less pathetic way. People who live in bubbles are clueless. They make sweeping and misdirected assumptions about the world outside their bubble. They don’t get it. Now, to be frank, I’m not so sure that Houghton is a bubble. At least, Houghton doesn’t have to be a bubble for anyone. However, this doesn’t mean that we’re not in danger of slipping into bubble life, at certain points.

abbyHere is a kind of bubble that you may not have thought about before: generational bubbles. College students, perhaps more than any other demographic, live in a generational bubble, since to be a residential college student is to live entirely among one’s peer group. We share rooms with our peers. We eat with, attend class with, study with, and hang out with them. We are constantly around others our age. But isn’t that the point? It’s the “best” age group and a high concentration of the age group to boot. No wonder your college years are the “best” time of your life!

This is bubble thinking at its worst. College students are not self-sufficient unto their own age group. We need friendships with those from other generations, whether younger or older. In part, we need these relationships in order to counteract bubble life. Being friends with people who are younger or older helps us to get outside of ourselves and remember that non-college students have lives and worries too. Getting to know empty nesters, for instance, offers us insight into the lives of our own parents. Meeting the parents of young children makes us feel embarrassed about our own pretense to busyness and sleep-deprivation. Interacting with the children themselves is, usually, plain-old delightful.

Moreover, although we toss around phrases like “older and wiser” with carelessness, there is truth to the idea. We ought to treat experience with living as something of great value, and accordingly, we should seek out those from older generations. Furthermore, we ought to put the experience of these people to use by asking for advice, in mundane and deep matters both. In some cases, we will reject the advice upon reflection, but the practice of asking for advice is still a helpful one, since we practice not-knowing-it-all when we ask for advice. Additionally, when we find ourselves returning repeatedly to a particular person for advice, we form a mentoring relationship. Or, as I like to think of it, a well-established mentor relationship is a kind of apprenticeship, in which the skill being learned is how to live well.

Thankfully, Houghton students are well positioned to counteract the generational bubble. A happy side effect of attending a tiny college in the middle of nowhere is that we have an abundance of opportunities to meet and get to know people from other generations. Our professors are an obvious starting point, as are Houghton’s staff members.  Churches, bible studies, and small groups are another good place to look. But, regardless of how we counteract the bubble, this much is clear to me: there is more to life than being a college student. Interacting with other generations will help us remember this.

 

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Opinions Two Views

Two Views: Convictions and Compromise

Can a Christian hold convictions strongly, yet at the same time be willing to compromise?

First of all, how we answer this question depends on who we’re talking about and what convictions we’re referring to. For instance, if this is a question about policy makers, my answer would be: please compromise. Yet, if we’re thinking of “mere” voters, I’m not so worried about staunchly adhering to a position. Or, if you’re an activist for social change, we might even encourage you to forgo compromise in order to make your point. In addition, we should think about what convictions are up for discussion. Are they convictions central to your outlook on the world, such that giving them up would be a breach in your integrity? In this case, bartering and compromise is inadvisable. However, if the convictions in question are peripheral to your worldview, we’d think you were inappropriately stubborn if you refused to barter and compromise.

abigailNow, caveats aside, I do have a general answer: Christians are not only capable of holding their convictions strongly and simultaneously compromising, but in addition, it is necessary that they do so. For better or for worse (for better, I suspect), we live in a culture that admits of multiple values and beliefs. Given this, a refusal on the part of Christians to compromise and barter is a kind of arrogance; it suggests that Christian perspectives ought to be imposed everywhere and privileged above all others. I find this attitude morally objectionable, but we can also object to this way of thinking on practical grounds.

           Imagine that Christians refused to compromise and barter. The result would be a political standstill involving two polarized groups. On one hand, we’d have a Christian group, insisting, “These are our convictions, we will not budge. Join our side or leave entirely.” And how will the other group respond? One thing is certain: the conglomerate of non-Christians is not going to acquiesce and adopt Christian convictions. In this case, the remaining option is for the groups to split. Each side will form its own state. Does this solve our problem? Well, no. You may have noticed that there isn’t one set of “Christian convictions” universally shared by Christians. In fact, there’s serious disagreement within Christianity, which implies that our Christian state would have to break down into denominational states. This could, of course, keep going. We weren’t compromising before; why start now? Why not reduce to states of individuals?

           I’m assuming that the above thought experiment points out the absurdity of a “never-compromise” position. But aren’t I being unfair? Perhaps compromise is a necessity in a pluralistic world, as I’ve argued above. The real question, then, is whether a general policy of compromise weakens our Christian convictions. Do we trivialize our own convictions when we set them aside in order to compromise?

      At this point I would defer to my earlier remarks about the nature of the conviction in question. In some cases, yes, I think we rightly hesitate over compromise. Nevertheless, in many other cases, I don’t think that compromise weakens my own convictions on a given subject. Moreover, I suspect that the value of compromise is a deeply held conviction for many of us. We’re interested in promoting our own flourishing, and we’re interested in promoting the flourishing of those around us. Compromise is one of the chief ways in which we express our desire for general well-being in the world. Thus, although we temporarily set aside some of our convictions when we compromise, the very act of compromise honors our conviction that it’s a good thing for diverse groups of people to get along.

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Opinions

Rethinking the Houghton Community

Community. You can get your token laugh-of-familiar-amusement out of the way now. I’m not writing about community because it’s a long established Houghton tradition; I’m writing about it because I’ve been thinking about it, and my conclusion is that there’s more to be said about community than we who are so familiar with the term might imagine. This has been on my mind because a few weeks ago, one of my seminars ended with an enthusiastic discussion about the nature of a Christian liberal arts college: is this kind of thing a community? My preference is to answer “yes,” though with a caveat: a Christian liberal arts college can, and should, be a community. Whether or not it actually is – that’s a different question. So, what do I have in mind, when I use the word community?

communityOur lives involve all sorts of projects, things we’re pursuing and working on. Lots of our projects are shared with other people. Sports teams share the project and pursuit of athleticism; musical ensembles share the project and pursuit of producing quality music. At minimum, this common pursuit, or common end, unifies individuals into a cohesive group. But, better than merely finding common ground in some pursuit or end is to care about the team or group for its own sake. This doesn’t happen easily, or immediately, but it certainly does happen. After playing together for a while, the team ceases to care only about winning, and the team members start to care about their shared pursuit of winning. Once the team members start to love the team for its own sake, the care spills over and is extended to individual members of the team. At this point, I think, community enters the picture. When a collection of people start to care about their shared project for its own sake, their care extends to the other members of the group, and the group becomes concerned for each one of its members, over and beyond that member’s ability to contribute to the group. For instance, the choir expresses community when it mourns a death in the family of one of its members (which is, strictly speaking, not relevant to singing well together). The mourning becomes relevant if the choir is a community that cares deeply about each of its individual members.

Now, I’m assuming Houghton’s primary project is education, or more specifically, Christian liberal arts education. That’s what we’re pursuing, and unless you take an entirely mercenary approach to your education, the shared pursuit of education is unifying: it makes us a group, a team. At least, then, Houghton is a shared project. But is it a community?

It’s worth pausing before answering that. I don’t think community is to be taken lightly, since community involves the accepting of other people’s well-being over your own. To be in community is to ally yourself with others in a fundamental way. Thus, community is not about warm-fuzzies, or team spirit. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with these things, and they’re helpful in establishing an especially well-functioning community. Yet, to equate community with emotional attachment to a group of people is to reduce community into something too ethereal. A community is a substantive thing, the kind of thing that can and hopefully will exist even when team spirit and warm-fuzzies have faded away.

This is, of course, a tall order. This demands something from us, something more than wearing purple or gold and faithfully attending SPOT. It’s also a rather complex goal: the good of Houghton as a community is linked to your individual good, if you’re part of the community, but neither is your good reduced to what’s good for the community, since the community is also adopting your good as relevant to its own. Given this complexity, it might be a little naïve or optimistic for me to argue that Houghton is a community. Nonetheless, I do think that Houghton can be a community. It may be difficult for such a large group of people to be a community, but it’s not impossible. For us to be a community, individual members would have to express concern for the good of other individuals, the institution would have to make the well-being of its individual members a priority, and individual members would have to care about the institution for its own sake. Hard to achieve, but not impossible. Moreover, I’ll take this “can be a community” a step farther: given Houghton’s Christian commitments, Houghton should be a community. So, don’t just claim community in virtue of your emotional attachment to the school. Make community happen, through your attitudes and behaviors towards the institution and the individual members of the institution.