It is paradoxical that we are most alive in our encounters with death. Our entire campus grieved, and continues to grieve the death of student Aaron Hohwieler just ten days ago and professor Wayne Ellingson three days later. For those closest to Aaron and Wayne, grief is a consuming fire. It is a time of mourning, a time of remembering, sifting and sorting, grieving and gratitude. Even those who did not know them are filled with the deep sadness pervading our campus.

Death reveals what is most important in our lives, enabling us to see the true value of those things that fill our lives. In the face of death we find much of what we busy ourselves with lacking in meaning and purpose.

Philosopher Martin Heidegger speaks of moments when we see deeply into the essence of life as “enabling us to understand our being unto death.’ For a time we are able to discern with clarity and confidence those things of true value: family, friendship, faith. Those things which inform us, which enable us to know who we are and who we are called to become. It is this knowing which, over time, pulls us through grief and back into the fullness of life.

We do not emerge unchanged or unscathed. Like Jacob, we wrestle with God in the darkness of night to find meaning and purpose where none is to be found. God did not will these deaths. God’s will is always for life rich and full. Jesus ministry is clear testimony to this. When St. Paul writes, in his letter to the church at Rome, “…all things work for good” he does not say all things are good. Rather, he is saying, out of the worst that can happen God can bring good: a deeper appreciation of friends and family, a clearer sense of who we are, our faith, values and vocation. This does not negate the pain, grief or loss. It is still a bitter and uneven trade.

Heidegger maintains this insight into the essence of life cannot be grasped but only revealed. This runs contrary to what the academic community is about: learning, testing, proving, knowing. Heidegger points us to the boundary, the place where knowing gives way to trusting. Knowledge is not transcendent. To truly know ourselves we must be defined by something beyond ourselves.

Faith grasps what knowledge cannot. Faith is not knowledge but trust. Death asks each of us, “Where is your trust?” Faith calls us to trust in God’s promises to guide and sustain us through the darkness of the night. In the blackness of grief it is barely enough, only a candle in the darkness. Yet, it is enough. That is God’s promise.

Pastor Bob Chell’s door is always open at the University Lutheran Center South of Brown Hall. His email is bchell@hotmail.com

Last spring, right before my daughter turned one I had a lot of fun teaching her a little basic sign language. I was so excited when she began to sign back to me. It was a great way for us to start to “talk” before she had any words she could say. From the beginning Alexa had one favorite sign MORE and soon she used it for everything. More food, more stories, more swinging, more mommy. Simply by tapping her fists together she was able to get whatever she wanted.

I know I am a little like my daughter. I am often looking for more, but my requests are often a little harder to fill then my daughter’s. You may be able to relate, if you have ever felt the need for more rest, more money, or a little more time.

Jesus’ disciples were a little like this too. In the Bible they ask Jesus for more faith. Jesus answers this request in a rather puzzling way, saying that if they had even the faith the size of a mustard they’d be able to uproot a tree and replant it in the sea. For those of you non-horticulture majors a mustard seed is very small only about one or two millimeters long. So Jesus claims that with just a time bit of faith the impossible, like planting a tree in the ocean, become possible.

Wanting more faith is not an unusual request. I believe we all have times where we doubt and despair and wish for more faith. Times when we worry our faith cannot be enough because it seems so weak. Often college, when you have moved away from your family and support system, can be a time when your faith seems dried out, maybe even nonexistent.

So you, like the disciples, may have worried that your faith isn’t enough and have begged for a little more, hoping to make things a little easier and to feel a little more reassured. In telling the disciples they only need the faith the size of a mustard seed, Jesus is teaching them about the nature of faith. You see, faith isn’t a substance that you can measure or count. It’s not something you can add to, subtract from or measure in anyway. Faith is not about an amount, it is about a relationship. Therefore, what matters is not how much faith you have, but who you put your faith in.

You may have learned this the hard way. When we put our trust in the wrong people we can end up badly burned. Perhaps you have learned to be careful who you put your trust in. After all the more you trust the more it hurts when they let you down.

But our relationship with God is not like our human relationships. When we put our trust in God all things are possible. Therefore, Jesus does not want us to spend our time worrying about whether or not we have enough faith; instead, he desires that we delight in the Lord. When we are able to drop the fear and worry that can consume us, our lives are open to God in a whole new way. We are able to see the blessings and gifts God has given us and trust Him to guide our lives. Then instead of asking for more, we are able to delight in the time, the resources and the relationships that we already have.

Vicar Amy Martinell can be reached at amartinell001@luthersem.edu.

#1.1668955:4106007149.jpg:Columnists/AmyMartinell.jpg:Vicar Amy Martinell:File Photo

Is it possible that a loving God would send “good” people to hell?

For many who would say they are Christians, and even for those who wouldn’t, a lot of the time the question isn’t does heaven and hell exist but rather “how does one get there?”

In small town South Dakota I have talked to people about this question over and over and most often the answer I get is that people get to heaven by being good. But then, naturally the next question raised is “how good is good enough?” How many good deeds must we do in order to obtain heaven? And I would state that in fact no person has ever committed enough good to enter heaven, however, God has created a different standard for us to enter eternity with Him.

For those of us who know people who seem like genuinely good, kind people; or maybe for we who attend church often, do good works, and stay away from anything that is “that bad” this statement could be hard to deal with. In all reality, Christianity is the only religion that good works and “doing something” doesn’t allow us to attain right standing before God. The Bible makes it clear that even these people have sinned and fallen short of God’s perfect standards. Ecclesiastes 7:20 says “There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.”

God sees a person’s whole heart, sees all of their actions, and knows all of their words and thoughts. So God has a lot more information to use when judging someone. It is with this complete knowledge that God can judge us righteously. Not to mention, when God is measuring the standard of good ,He is not merely comparing one person’s actions to that of someone else’s and deeming some good, and some bad, but rather He compares a humans actions to HIS standard of good… that standard purity, perfection and holiness.

So how does this answer our question about how one enters heaven or hell? It puts everyone in the same boat. No matter how good or bad we would deem a person no one is good enough on his or her own to enter heaven because, from God’s perspective, no one perfectly follows his commands. In one way or another, all of us have forsaken God and gone away from Him.

So how then does one enter Heaven? The truth of the Bible says that it is by Jesus and Jesus alone that one enters eternity with God. We must repent (turn/admit) our sins and ask Jesus, the Son of God who did live a perfect life, to pay the death penalty for our sins and to bring us forgiveness.

All through the Bible, God makes it clear that we gain heaven, not by our “good works” or “good life,” but that God offers it to all as a gift. Rather than pretend that we are good people, He asks us to admit that we sin against Him.

For me, I grew up in church all my life but it wasn’t until I came to college at SDSU that I learned the truths in this. For more information on this, or other questions about faith visit www.everystudent.com.

Desi Hoffman is an SDSU graduate from D2008 with a degree in consumer affairs and now is a fulltime staff member with Campus Crusade for Christ. Contact her at Desi.Hoffman@uscm.org

In my experience, religious talk often seems too sentimental. It often seems to be separated from serious intellectual engagement. Intellectual engagement should seek to understand, “What is True?”, and this question has changed my life. Were Jesus’ claims about himself, God and reality simply helpful moral teachings or was he absolutely accurate when he made these claims? Whether or not these claims are true makes all the difference in the world for how you think about your life and how you prepare for eternity.

The apostle Paul, the greatest Christain missionary and author of nearly half the New Testament, made clear how he thought about Jesus’ teachings as being much more than mere moral exhortation. In his letter to the church in the city of Corinth, Paul gives a short list of things the designation, “the matters of first importance.” What is this list? At least four things: 1-Christ died for our sins, 2- Christ was buried, 3- Christ was raised from the dead, and 4- Christ appeared as alive again to many, many people (1 Cor. 15: 3-9). These things are of “first importance”.

Interestingly, the problem is that the majority of people in the Midwest have already heard this or something similar to it. Many of you reading this will intellectually acknowledge this to be true, but it has little to no effect upon the way you live your life. As a Christian, I simply want to say that unless these claims are indeed actually true, they are meaningless, and more than that are probably more harmful than helpful. Why? Because the apostle Paul says so. In the same chapter to the church in Corinth Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God… if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins…If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:12-19).

Christianity is not a nice religious and moral teaching. Christ did not come to be merely emulated as a super great guy or a great moral teacher. Christ should be believed and followed because he is in fact “the “way, the truth and the life”. Paul did not mess around with being a Christ follower for any other reason than because he believed that Christ’s claims were true. Consider 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 again. Paul says that Christians should be pitied more than all other people if in fact Christ was not raised from the dead, validating all of his life’s teachings about heaven, hell and all of reality. Paul says that Christian faith is vain, futile, and misrepresenting God if in fact Christ was not raised from the dead. In effect, Paul says that if the claims about Jesus Christ are not true, Christianity is pointless and useless.

f you are like me, this was not the sort of thing I heard very often in my good, moral, traditional Christian church. So, as you start a new school year, some of you for the first time, I challenge you to think deeply about the Bible’s claims about Jesus, God and the nature of reality. Don’t waste your life. Don’t waste your life chasing the American dream – a good spouse, a good family, a good paying job and a secure retirement – only to die and turn to dust, never having seriously searched out the nature of reality. I invite you to honestly pursue the claims of Jesus Christ and to pray that God would open your eyes to the truth.

“A man can be damned alone but he can only be saved with others.”

This quote, of Slavic origins and attributed to Saint John Climacus, caught my attention this summer while on retreat. In many ways it is a steep challenge to our culture of isolation and individualism. The Christian life is undeniably linked to this communal aspect and it is worth thinking about as we begin a new year.

“A man can be damned alone.” We might think of damnation, isolation or loss as something imposed on us by others. On the contrary, when the Catechism of the Catholic Church talks about Hell, it speaks of the “state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed.” (CCC 1033). Clearly, the individual chooses this “self-exclusion” and we could say that many of us choose a self-made aloneness on a daily basis. On a campus as large as SDSU and with as much technology available for communication, how many of us suffer alone and apart from the multitude with whom we live?

As I preach at Sunday Mass or as I walk through our campus, I can see those hearts that are suffering alone. They bear their pain or guilt as a private burden, certain that no one else understands or cares about their plight. We hear a similar story in that extreme anguish of suicide- “No one cares.” Sin affects our spirit in a similar way; we feel that we alone are left to bear the burden, isolating a part of our heart from God and others.

“He can only be saved with others.” Salvation often appears as an individual question but is intimately tied to others. Saint Paul makes this point in Romans 10:14, “But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach?” Whether it is the hand that wrote the Scriptures, the voice that proclaims them, or the friend that invites us to Church, we are only saved with others.

Do we have friends who will help us find faith, hope and love in the midst of the challenges of life? Do we have friend who want our happiness, our virtue, and our salvation? The truth is that if we go to Church and don’t reach out for friends there, we probably won’t be long in Church and we probably won’t be long in our Christian life. The truth is that if we run a Church and don’t reach out to create friends, we won’t long have a Church.

Jesus Christ chose a human life, a human voice with which to effect our salvation. Jesus Christ continues to choose those human means to announce the Good News ever anew- as a living Gospel for all to hear. Your desires for joy and Christian living will flower in a home of kindred spirits, men and women striving for excellence for their selves and for you.

Father Andrew Dickinson can be contacted at father.dickinson@gmail.com