Editor's Note: Collegiate Fridays is a new series at CGO in which college students around the country paint pictures of how the Lord is helping them learn and live the Christian story. This week comes from Lizzy Eickenhorst, a student at Lewis and Clark College, who became a believer last summer and is endeavoring to live out her new faith in a milieu she describes as "indifferent to God and hostile to Christianity."
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As I travel through my college campus, I am acutely conscious of the frequency in which our Lord’s name is used in vain and with profanity. I am not entirely sure if my sensitivity of this comes from my recent faith in Jesus Christ or if it is just the latest trend in vocabulary among Liberal Arts students. It is not the offensiveness of the language that disturbs me, but it is the mindlessness in which His name is used.

I became a Christian ten months ago. I attend a college in Portland, Oregon that is indifferent to God and hostile towards Christianity. Since I became a believer my life has been going through a transformation. In my new walk with Christ I struggle to find my own vocabulary to express my faith and to distinguish myself as a Christian. The root of my struggle lies in separating myself from the culture at large and learning to obey God. This tension between my faith and my culture has been made particularly clear to me through conversations that I have with my many non-believer friends.

One conversation that I had several months ago sits in my mind as a turning point in my faith because it exposed to me the disparities between Christian beliefs and the popular culture that I live in. I also realized that God was changing my heart to understand Him.

It was a fairly typical Saturday night in October. Amelia and I had just returned from a night of socializing and party going; we were having our usual post party game of cards. Read more