My Taylor Application Essay
In the Fall of 2022, I will be attending Taylor University in Upland Indiana. I applied only to Taylor, and I have already been accepted. It is with certainty that I say: Taylor it is the college that I will call home this coming Fall. I am continuingly infatuated with the school.
As a part of application to Taylor, I was asked to write a 700 word Christian testimony, prompted under the title “Your Story”. I am publishing my response here because, I feel, I sincerely and succinctly divulged my life experience and present sentiments.
There was a point in my life that I could have given a linear testimony; there was a time that I would have described my life in stages. First, I would say, I grew up in a Christian home. Then, I would say, I became dissatisfied with the faith of my parents. Finally, I would say, I resolved my religious inconsistencies and unanswers, becoming the person who I am today. This description I now understand to be all too simplistic. Instead, I do say that I am ever evolving in my understanding and application of what action aligns with the will of God. There may have been a moment of salvation in my life, a transition from death into life, but this singular transition must have occurred in a moment undatable or even identifiable (surely it was not when I first came to the alter at 5 years old, but still if it was, God’s transformative power had not taken hold of my life at the time). Accordingly, I expect that soon I will look back to this current day and scoff at my past ineptitude and comparative blindness in my understanding of the almighty. This to say: I did not grasp the fullness of God; I do not grasp the fullness of God, and as long as I live, I will not grasp the fullness of God. In the present day, however, I strive to know what can be known, to do what I know to be right, and to have faith in what is beyond my understanding. I generally categorize knowledge into three areas: what is definitively known, what the necessity of action insists must be known, and what the impossibility of knowing is no hurdle to action. My faith in Christ and His virtues comprehensively align in the first two categories, and thus I live by faith. It is the ache of my heart and the conviction of my mind that my life is wholly consumed in the pursuit of virtue. I am driven by a romantic idealism for the dismantling of my own desires, to be fully reimagined in the will of God. Given my natural proclivity to insecurity and frivolity, I see my current advancement towards behavioral solidarity with Christ as a miracle of divine proportion. I believe it probable that, one day, I will fully devote my life to the alleviation of some practical concern, some humanitarian cause that ensnares my heart and mind, but until that time, I seek to devote my energy with an idealistic zeal to the acquisition of knowledge, the discipline of the physical, and the pursuit of Christlikeness in interaction with those around me. Still, nothing agonizes me more than my repeated shortcomings in these regards, I am prone to impatience in demeanor, and ironical jabs in speech. I tend to moralize others, in overconfidence, while lacking perspective. There are times that I retreat from responsibility when I feel it overwhelm or consume me. I am not particularly consistent in my application of my values. As for all my shortcomings, I bow at the feet of Christ and seek remediation. Only through knowing Him and His ways may I know what it is to fully live. In this world, enveloping myself in story, study, community, and physical exertion are my greatest pleasures and joys; contribution to virtue, knowledge, and God’s grand work in the world are my aims and duties. I hope to fulfill these joys and aims at the school that has presented itself as distinct in the fostering of meaningful community, intellectual curiosity, and the Chirstian ethic, while remaining practically grounded: Taylor University.
