It’s room pick season. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “quad” or “six-man” in the last week, I would be a very wealthy man. Even when I’m not in Keenan, when I’m walking between classes or eavesdropping in dining hall lines, I cannot escape room pick drama. This article is for all those stressing over room picks: In the words of Aaron Rodgers, “R-E-L-A-X.”
You would be stupid to take advice from me. Last year, I lived your worst nightmare — I was left out of my group’s plans and left with no plan of my own. I remember walking into Keenan common rooms asking, “Do you guys know of anyone who needs a roommate?” Almost everyone in my grade had already paired up, so I reached out to my friend Gray, who is a year younger than me. Averaging my high lottery number with their low numbers, Gray, his other two sophomore friends and I were able to get the worst quad in Keenan.
What got me through the process last year was prayer. I gave up my fears and hopes to the Big Man. And the Big Man came through, as He always does. The quad this year has been a great time, and I fit better in my current group of guys than my previous one. And, as if telling me He had heard me and had everything under control, God put me in the closest room to the chapel, inviting me to pray even more. I know prayer often feels useless and ineffective compared to figuring things out yourself, but if you pray you will find that God will deal with your problems in surprising ways.
I share my story to say that no matter how screwed you think you are for room picks this year, you will be okay. Say a few prayers, and God will take care of it — maybe not how you think you want Him to, but how He knows is best for you. Don’t get sucked into the drama of room picks. Don’t let it divide your dorm; don’t let it ruin friendships. Let it bring you together. Let it offer new friendships. Dorm life is less than ideal in many ways — it never quite feels like a true home. But who are we to have a luscious life when “the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head” (Matthew 8:20)? In other ways, dorm life is a special time we will never get back. Let’s be patient, let’s make the most of it, let’s r-e-l-a-x, and let’s be just glad to be here.
In response to Lang
In the remainder of this column, I’d like to respond briefly to my fellow columnist Jackson Lang’s most recent column, “Catholicism cannot be the only true faith.”
As far as I can tell, what Jackson is getting at is this: It is narrow-minded and unreflective to believe your religion to be uniquely true simply because it is what you have grown up with. I actually do not disagree with this, but I would like to point out that it is a distinctly modern (or postmodern) way of looking at religion. For better or worse, pre-moderns did not reflect on how their religious worldview might be at odds with others’ worldviews; they just believed. But the moderns became disillusioned with their childhood faith because they felt the need to reflect on the truth of their faith in an objective, non-biased way; only then could they affirm its unique truth.
Now, we postmoderns go a step further and say that such objective reflection is a waste and fails to arrive at the one true faith, so we can either say that all religions are equally false or that all religions are equally true (which is Jackson’s conclusion).
The trouble with saying that all religions are equally true is that often the falsity of other religions is built into the truth of one religion. Catholicism and Judaism cannot be equally true: either Christ was (is) the Messiah or not; either Christ rose (rises) from the dead on the third day or not. As St. Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain” (1 Corinthians 15:17). Catholics and Protestants who deny the real presence cannot be equally right: either the consecrated host is the Body of Christ or not. Catholicism and atheism cannot see the same God through two different windows, for atheists do not believe they see God at all. Either one or the other is true, not both, not a dialectical synthesis (as Jackson must know well from his Kierkegaard).
It is indeed narrow-minded and unreflective to believe your religion to be true simply because it is what you have grown up with. But just because your belief is narrow-minded and unreflective does not mean that it is not true faith. Of course, nothing ensures that an unreflective belief is true, but neither does anything ensure it is false.
That said, I agree that a reflective belief is preferable to an unreflective one. And a reflective belief in Catholicism says that Catholicism is the one true faith. The reflective Catholic is undeterred by the sincere belief of those of other religions, just as one who argues for the truth is undeterred by the sincere arguments of those with dissenting opinions. And a reflective Catholic has no reason to doubt that if he were brought up under a different faith, the Holy Spirit would have guided his heart to convert to Catholicism, the one true faith.
Richard Taylor is a junior from St. Louis living in Keenan Hall. He studies physics and also has an interest in theology. He encourages all readers to send reactions, reflections or refutations to rtaylo23@nd.edu.
