I’ve been visiting colleges with my sixteen year old daughter. Yup. It’s that time again. Yesterday we went to a campus in Pennsylvania and it had some absolutely wondrous buildings. Stunning massive stone and brick structures with carvings and spires dot the landscape.

Next to some of these buildings are these “modern” buildings that look straight out of 1973 East Germany. Large boring rectangles which were the “modern” of the day.

Something like this:

It’s just soul deadening even looking at it. It’s because it doesn’t take humanity into account. The rage among architecture of the time was very utilitarian. Every building was built for its use and its use alone. If men had no souls this would be a perfectly fine place to live and do business. Unfortunately, we do have souls.

But it astounds me that these uber wealthy schools had a choice between continuing building their campus with the timeless buildings that inspire or go with a more “modern” look for “modern people.”

But what happens is that the “modern” look is outdated within a decade and those big old timeless buildings just remain timeless and awesome. The modern buildings just look sad next to the magnificent timeless architecture of the past.

I think though that this is a physical manifestation of the rot of our modern universities and our culture at large.

My daughter and I went on a tour and this campus that we saw had yard signs all over the place begging people to “be Kind.”

I wondered what it meant. Truly. What does it mean? If someone is oppressing someone else, should we “be kind” to the oppressor? If someone is running toward the end of a cliff should we not yell and inform them they’re going the wrong way, even if they are offended by our yelling?

So we entered into the student center and we saw a bunch of signs about how important “consent” was before engaging in sexual activity.

That’s what they want to replace Christianity with. This thin gruel. Be kind and get consent before using another person for your own enjoyment.

But that’s not what we’re called to do. We are called not merely to be kind (whatever that means) but to love. And we are not called merely to get consent for using another human being for our enjoyment but to love our neighbor.

Our story is one where we view one another as bipedal miracles, an immortal soul whom God loves and has a plan for. Love, actual love, comes with responsibility.

Ours is a better story. We just need to share it. God will do the work on other’s souls. We just need to share the good news. That takes some courage nowadays. It also comes with consequences. But that’s what we’re called to do. We are called to love and every Christian must understand, love can mean suffering. That’s not very popular right now but it’s the truth. Jesus died on the cross because He loves us. We are called to follow Him, not merely to be kind and get consent.