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Faith Focus: University encourages students to live in 'actual reality'

Georgetown University is installing a unique section of seating for its Jan. 20 basketball game against St. John's University. Each person in the section will wear a name tag to encourage conversation in the section. A letter-writing station will be nearby as will a Polaroid station. And the biggest kicker of all: No cell phones allowed. 

Welcome to the "Actual Reality Seating Section."

The idea is the brainchild of Chris Grosse, Georgetown's assistant athletic director for marketing, and his team and is meant to give students a break from technology as well as encourage in-person engagement with each other and the game. 

An Actual Reality Section. I'll be honest, I never saw this coming. 

But maybe I should have. With the way the world is increasingly segmented, it seems harder to live in Actual Reality each day. I can watch news that reinforces my beliefs and viewpoints. My social media feeds often are echo chambers of my own opinions. If I'm not careful, I never have to go anywhere that people look and think differently than I do.

The problem is that world isn't reality. It's convenient. It's comforting. And it's false.

Multitudes of people are fighting through issues each of us struggles to comprehend. They live lives in ways we don't understand. 

When we look at the life of Christ, we see a him reach across economic, gender and ethnic lines. He understood the plight of each person and sought to bring hope into each of their lives. He understood absolute truth was beyond personal experience. 

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. -2 Timothy 3:16-17

What would it look like to serve people who are different than ourselves? For many of us, there's an easy way to find out: volunteer through Buckner. Through service, we see people connect across differences each day. Through acts of kindness and humility, we see bonds form. We see lives change. We see hope shine.

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