Flowers, chocolate, hearts, and supermarkets flooded with the colors red, white and pink.
That’s what is commonly associated with Valentine’s Day, but for the Element Youth Group, it’s a day to be countercultural, as for the past five years, the holiday has gone hand in hand with demonstrating acts of compassion. Each year, instead of waiting around for that special someone to come knocking on our door, we mobilize and go out into the community to model God’s love.
This year, our gifts of handmade cards and blankets went to the …

By Jane Cho, InterHigh Mentor, Senior @ UC Berkeley
If you’re like me when I was a teen, you have dreams of hang-gliding in the Grand Canyon or becoming a successful lawyer/musician/whatever. You probably have a list of things you really want to accomplish before you “kick the bucket” and die. But when my pastor pointed out how self-focused a lot of these bucket lists are, especially when this dying world needs salvation, I realized that my ultimate wish list was really selfish.  
In the video below, Francis Chan, pastor of Cornerstone …

By Steven Chang, InterHigh Mentor, Sophomore @ UC Berkeley
Over winter break I went on a mission trip to Tecate, Mexico. The team was there to minister to the community by showing God’ s love in very practical ways – we worked on repairing houses, a kindergarten, and played with the kids in sports, song, and arts and crafts. We went into the trip knowing that Tecate was an especially poor area. In Tecate, much of the population is made up of people who have spent all their money to get …

By Elaine Chen, InterHigh Mentor, Senior @ UC Berkeley
Does separation from your cell phone bring you great anxiety? Does studying ever end up becoming a time of “see how many things I can look up on Wikipedia”? Or has your hearing been severely impaired because of the amount of music you’re blaring into your ears every spare moment in the day? I can relate.
Reading this article reminded me of the downward spiral we’re all heading in with the advent of newer and faster technology. Our world is more and more …

Who is William Lane Craig? Why Should I be Excited?
How can I explain to you how awesome William Lane Craig is? He has been faithfully defending the faith for over 30 years! He uses awesome logical arguments winning debate after debate against the brightest Atheist scholars.

If you wanted to gather a team of the best defenders of the faith, William Lane Craig would be near the number one pick year after year. He is still debating the most popular Atheists of our day, and he is still presenting Christianity as a much more reasonable choice than anything else out there.

By Annie Strother, InterHigh Mentor, Senior @ UC Berkeley
I just got back from a mission trip to Tecate, Mexico and it was amazing.  We got to go to a church with many people who were recovered drug-addicts, and it was incredible to hear the passion in their voices as they sang praise songs.  We also got to eat a lot of delicious authentic Mexican food which has left me utterly spoiled; I think it will be a long time before I can eat La Piñata again.  But one of the …

By Ellen Yu, InterHigh Mentor, Senior @ UC Berkeley
Finals is the time when the concepts you didn’t quite master (or learn) the first time around catch up with you. The vast amounts of information that you must absorb, sometimes quite literally by noon tomorrow, can cause much anxiety and impair sight of the eternal perspective.
During this past finals season, I experienced the anxieties of reviewing and learning what seemed to be a hopeless amount of material. And yes, my sight of the eternal was also impaired. However, in the midst …

By Jenny Zhao, InterHigh Mentor, Junior @ UC Berkeley
Riding off of Dan’s recent article, I wanted to pose the question of: what does it look like to honor God with your clothing? Like Dan mentioned, I think we have to think critically about what the things on our clothing says, but for girls, another aspect is that of dressing modestly. I have many peers that have been convicted in this aspect of our Christian lives because they realized they needed to honor the people around them through dressing in a …

By Christine Seo, InterHigh Mentor, Sophomore @ UC Berkeley

Do you ever wonder about the consequences of your seemingly meaningless actions? Ever wonder how the world would be different if you hadn’t got out of school a little late, putting you in the moment and position to be asked directions from someone who, otherwise, would have not arrived at his destination on time and not have met the people he met on the way there? How did he influence them? How did you influence him? How did he influence you? How …

By Dan Kinder, InterHigh Mentor, Junior @ UC Berkeley
I always knew elements of culture broke into our lives in subtle ways, but sometimes it takes a real life object to set me off thinking about it. The other day I saw a girl at the BART station carrying a bag with the catch-phrase “Live Your Life” printed on it, in very large colorful letters. My first lingering thought was: wow, isn’t that incredibly narcissistic? Of course she probably didn’t really think about it, and it turns out she’s not alone; …

By Irene Kwan, InterHigh Mentor, Senior @ UC Berkeley
Throughout this winter break, with so much more time on my hands, I have been able to draw closer to God by spending more time on self-reflection. I considered many of the obstacles this past semester which kept me from facing my own personal struggles and thus, from drawing closer to God. Each semester, I see my faith and desire to know God fluctuating, usually toward a downward path. I become more apathetic and less willing to serve. However, God is always …

This year, I decided to take a health class that our school offers and requires all students to take. Though at times unbearably boring, we recently watched a documentary produced by Frontline which piqued my interest. This particular documentary followed the lives of several teenagers from a small, well-to-do town. These teenagers had everything a they could possibly want and need: lots of money, the latest in clothing or gadgets, cars, and a few were quite popular at school. However, the makers of the documentary discovered that most felt very …

Here’s a man on the street video where UC Berkeley students were asked, “Does God Exist?” The film was made by InterHigh mentors and shown at InterHigh Monthly #1.

If you’re interested in knowing  who’s who among scientist who doubt Darwin’s theory of evolution then go to this site. In it you will find a list of academics, scholars, scientists and medical
professionals from Harvard, MIT, Berkeley and other top research institutions stating their disagreement with Darwin’s theory to account for the complexity of life.
Also, click here to download an article written by Dr. Jonathan Wells, Ph.D, UC Berkeley. The article, titled “Survival of the Fakest,” reveals the hoaxes behind the famous “icons of evolution” that have been presented …

“There was a time, literally, when there were no teenagers.” What Diana West is suggesting in The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Threatens Western Civilization will undoubtedly sound ridiculous to thousands of youth pastors, family therapists, and advertising gurus whose livelihoods depend on entertaining, counseling, and selling to teenagers. Nevertheless, West argues that adolescence didn’t always exist.

Mark Henderson, science editor of the Times Online, recently wrote an article about Darwinius Masillae, once hailed earlier this year as the missing link. In the article Henderson reports that Darwinius Masillae, aka “Ida,” is not even a distant relative. Recent studies have shown that “Ida” is more like a lemur or a loris. Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook University writes, “Our analysis provides no support for the claim that Darwinius is a link in the origin of higher primates, and instead indicates that, if anything, Darwinius …

Whether it is from performing in front of a crowd or just listening to some tunes on an iPod, music is definitely part of everyone’s lives. Music is a big part of my life. I play alto saxophone at band and the piano at home, listen to songs on my iPod, and perform at a local hospital and convalescent homes. What we listen to influences us and how we behave, sometimes in a negative way.
Sam McCroskey was a talented musician all throughout his life. A native of the Bay Area, …

As I try to reach out to my non-Christian friends at school, I tend to rely on argument- debating them and engaging them on a purely intellectually and rational level.  Although there’s nothing wrong with that- indeed, I need to work much much harder to dispel the lies of the world that have their grip on my friends-a problem arises because I tend to forget about the crucial ingredient in evangelism, the seminal part of Christianity itself- Love.
I need to imitate Christ by reaching out in love and letting the …

It seems that 1 out of every 3 popular songs these days are about love—longing for it, being upset about it, waiting for it, everything. Teens seem to be especially captivated by love, and seem to think they can fulfill their longing to be loved through teenage relationships. One very popular song that really speaks about this longing to be loved within people is “You Belong With Me” by Taylor Swift…

“7 in 10 girls believe they are not good enough or do not measure up in some way…” “92% of all young women in the USA want to change some aspect of their physical appearance.” “Girls who watched TV commercials featuring underweight models lost self-confidence and became more unsatisfied with their own bodies.”

Doesn’t that all just break your heart? The young people of today are …