It’s an overcast, cold, windy afternoon, and the sidewalks of Liberty University are bustling with thousands of students, most of whom are clearly absorbed in their own little world.

Yes, I confess—I watch them. It’s fascinating to me to observe the ways that students interact—or don’t interact—as they jostle through their daily routines. Often times, they’re elbow-to-elbow with hundreds of other men and women just like themselves…men and women whose names they don’t know and whose faces they probably don’t even recognize—because sadly, college campuses are home to some of the most sobering incongruities of our generation. College students are daily demonstrating the fact that it is entirely possible—maybe even probable—to live in close physical proximity to thousands of other individuals who are in approximately our same stage of life…and yet be incredibly isolated—almost as completely alone as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the sole human occupant of a lonely island, whose isolated stretches he wandered alone for years.

As college students, we spend prodigious amounts of time talking—moving our mouths—and very little time communicating. We long to be heard—and yet we rarely take time to truly listen and ask thoughtful questions. We yearn to be considered intelligent, significant, sophisticated, mature, and respectable—and yet we feed our minds with trivialities, mediocrities, and frivolities, and are completely oblivious to the fact that what comes out in our behavior and our words is a reflection of what we put into our brains in the first place.

We are eager to find people we can follow—people who will lead—because we ourselves lack direction. We want others to make all or most of the important decisions in life for us—because we are mortally terrified of failing…of messing up…or—horrors!—of having to reap the consequences of our own actions. We desperately seek for intimacy—for that magical someone who will love us unconditionally—and yet we fail to understand that we ourselves lack the capacity and the maturity to love in the ways that we demand others should love us.

We point angry fingers at the Church, and accuse her of frightful shortcomings and egregious moral failures—and yet we are incognizant of the inconsistencies and shortcomings in our own spiritual lives…and oblivious to the fact that we ARE the church…ignorant of the reality that truth must be lived honestly before it can be spoken powerfully.

Does it frustrate me to witness this on a daily basis? Sometimes. Does it hurt to see humanity wrestle—and often fail—in their struggle to begin to understand what it means to live in community—to live fully, and joyfully, and righteously, and well? Yes. But that’s probably the wrong question.

Maybe what I really need to be asking is, what part do I play in all of this? Am I part of the problem or part of the solution? And what does it look like to be a part of the solution?

It costs us nothing to point fingers. It solves nothing either.

But what would happen if we talked less…listened more…read more…thought more…asked more questions…realized that it’s ok to mess up as long as we’re willing to get up and try again?

I guess the only person that can really answer that for me is…me. And the only person who can really answer that question for you is...you. But I’m willing to venture a guess that when we make the decision to live as we would have others to live around us…life looks a lot different, both inside and out.

Are we willing to be the change? To live the difference?