I learned that my most substantial witness in the newsroom perhaps will not be from my spoken words, but through my daily lifestyle as I endeavor to live out a godly lifestyle. I also learned this summer that your words mean very little if your actions cannot back them up. One day one of the aides in my intern house mentioned that the Congressman that he worked for had never had a drop of alcohol in his entire lifetime. Quite a substantial accomplishment in D.C., a town where the line between right and wrong can at times be increasingly hard to find. Our nation's capital is a town of immense stress, where the unknown twenty-something congressional aide can hold unmerited influence, and where happy hour is a popular way to find relief from the constant weight and potential consequences of your actions.
Many people change after living there for a few years, some after living there for only a few weeks.
What I learned this summer was that I was not as smart as I thought I was. I thought, having grown up in public schools since second grade, that I was undefeatable, and nothing about life around non-Christians could surprise me. I thought, having received some of the best training in the world here at ORU, that I knew exactly what I believed theologically. For someone who has always just wanted to be a light in the darkness, I was awfully self-centered when it came to seeing the needs of those around me. For an ex-chaplain, I was pathetically ignorant in defending my doctrine on the Holy Spirit to my Catholic friends at work.