The Real Thing

September 5, 1975. Cobo Hall, Detroit, Michigan.

            You notice the cheers of the crowd, fans whistling between their teeth, and the first audible words: “You’re here because you want the real thing.” This is the start to Bob Seger’s Live Bullet album.

            We’ll come back to the album, I promise.

            When you hear someone talk about the University of Alabama, odds are they’re talking about football. There’s an expectation tacked onto the name. A stereotype, if you will. You hear people talk about where they want to send their kid to school and oftentimes, in the church of Christ, that answer is not the University of Alabama. Most of the times with members of the church, that answer is a Christian college.

            Now, I’m not here to denounce an education from a Christian school, or the Christ-centered environment that they offer. I’m here to say that it’s not the only option. There is a way to be in the world and be set apart from it at the same time. A way to show Christ to those who need it the most. Showing the praises of Him who called us out of darkness and into His light, 1 Peter 2:9.

            It’s imperative to us as Christians to let our light so shine before men (Matthew 5:16). It’s of the utmost importance to not put that light in a secret place (Luke 11:33). What we don’t need to do is give continuously positive feedback where we don’t face conflicts, where we don’t face the worst of what our world can give us, where we learn all the theology to be learned but have none of the experience.

Jesus says in Mark 2:17, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” In Luke 19:10, our Savior says, “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” We’re not in this world to convert Christians. We’re in this world to go into all of it and preach the gospel to every nation (Mark 16:15). Every nation includes our own. Every nation includes Henderson, Tennessee. Every nation includes Searcy, Arkansas. Every nation includes Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Every means every.

The majority of Tide 4 Christ’s focus is on evangelism. As a part and affiliate of a state school, we participate in intramural sports, we attend sporting events. We wear our name on t-shirts, we sing praises and study scripture openly in the Ferg (Alabama’s student center). Most certainly we are in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, and Tide 4 Christ is striving to shine as a light within it. It’s not anyone else’s responsibility to reach the lost but ours. It’s personal.

Saying that being a Christian on a campus of 40,000 (when you and your group make up only 0.25% of the student population) is without challenges would be false. Of course there are challenges, but isn’t that what the real world is? Come here and face them. Come here and bond with your brothers and sisters in Christ and take on the work of the Lord together.

To ad-lib the late great Frank Sinatra, if you can make it as a Christian here, you can make it anywhere. It’s up to you. It’s not New York, New York, but it is Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

So, do you want the real thing?