The Christian fellowship Chi Alpha met on Tuesday, Mar. 15 to bring a conclusion to this quarter’s theme: “Staying spiritually healthy in a rotten world.” Throughout the quarter, Chi Alpha has focused on many topics of spiritual health including healthy relationships, being wise with money while still giving to people in need, keeping a healthy community around oneself, dealing with doubt and developing physically healthy practices.
This particular meeting’s topic was time. “The overall message of this is that God really cares about how we spend our time,” said Ben Bothwell, who gave a sermon at the meeting. “We’re looking at, ‘what does God think of these areas of our lives that normally we think of as less spiritual?’”
According to Jack Moore, one of the leaders of the group, by calling the world “rotten” they mean that it is not an easy place to live in when one has values, especially if they are based in religion. “If anyone has these rules they are trying to live by, it’s going to be confronted,” he said. He went on to say that a person’s values either go with the flow or against, but Christian values usually go against it.
Moore also said that a lot of values some people hold may be a bit too harsh. “For example, some people say, ‘I’m a Christian so I don’t drink.’ That doesn’t make sense because Jesus drank wine.” This is the kind of thing that Chi Alpha is trying to steer people away from with this topic of spiritual health. “We try to help you learn how to better spend your time and your money and how to treat each other,” said Kylie Rekers, another leader of the fellowship.
Going along this topic, one of the first things Chi Alpha did was clarify to its members that Christian values are not just a set of dos and don’ts. They did this by focusing only on the topic of health in order to talk about values. Moore said that when people think about values as dos and don’ts “things are pretty black and white” and one’s values will not work in every situation. “When you think in terms of health, you’ve got this system to judge it by. Is it healthy, is it unhealthy, is it more healthy or less healthy to do this thing?” Rekers agreed, saying that teaching things like value flexibility are important. “We just recognize that in our community and on campus there is a lot of unhealthy lifestyles and behaviors and choices,” she said.
Even though all three stated that these meetings can help people take control over their lives, they had recommendations for people who can’t attend. Bothwell encouraged people to find a community that can help remind them keep spiritually healthy. He said to “spend time with that community because they can remind you to take care of yourself.” He then went on to say that even though these meetings are “an apple a day for health,” going by the phrase “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” he said that people who couldn’t attend these meetings find their own “apple a day” and take time to rest and rejuvenate.