Today, I experienced one of the saddest things I've ever faced.

The office I work in on campus is located in the administration building, so we share that space with the university president and some other fairly important departments. I was working today at the front desk. It's located in the lobby of the street level of this building, so a lot of times, people will mistake us for a receptionist for any of the other offices in the building.

My job is to greet prospective students and their families to campus, so when he walked in, I thought he was there for a tour. He couldn't have been any older than 16 or 17 years. He wore a dark-colored coat, well-pressed pants and smart-looking glasses, and he had dark brown skin. I could tell he was visibly frustrated based on his body language, and I thought it was because he was arriving 20 minutes late for the 2 p.m. info session.

You'll still get into college, kid, I thought to myself as I stood to greet him. "What can I do for you? Are you here for the 2:00 campus--"

"I need to file a complaint," he said in a very, very Middle Eastern accent.

Uh oh. Maybe you were on an earlier tour and something went really wrong. Here comes customer service mode.

"What's going on?"

"My roommate is harassing me. I've spoken to housing and I've had meetings, and they sent me here. I need to file a complaint," he said, exasperated.

You're not here for a tour. Why are you here? I glanced down at the building directory. Institutional Equity and Equal Opportunity. He needs to file a complaint. Room 15.

"Are you looking for Institutional Equity?"

His discontent reached a peak as his eyes welled with tears, even though he wouldn't let himself cry. I looked into his eyes, and I saw pain. I saw desperation, and I saw a world he didn't feel worthy of living in. I saw fear, and he said in a trembling voice, "I do not know where I need to go. I need help."

"Institutional Equity is down that way. Room 15." He left.

I've never been ashamed to be a human before, but in that moment, I wanted to fold myself into a thousand pieces. I wanted to take this person back to his home, and I wanted to tell him that he doesn't deserve whatever hell his roommate is putting him through. I didn't know what to say, because I realized that I am cut from the same cloth as this kid's roommate.

I've never been ashamed of my own humanity before. Today, I am.

This story doesn't mean that much unless you consider the scene around it. I'm not going to fill you in on what happened last week, because I'm sure you know.

A lot of people died.

Young people at a concert. People having romantic dinners at a nice restaurant. People shopping in a marketplace.

A lot of people died, and even more people lost loved ones, and even more people are today living in fear of their own concerts, restaurants, shopping malls, and soccer games.

Last week, the entire world was made afraid by a group of people who are blaspheming a peaceful religion, disfiguring what it means to be human and disrupting the world's collective life.

This group of people aim to be terrorists, and they operate on fear.

By definition, terrorism is "the state of fear and submission produced by terrorization."

We can talk all day about political solutions and foreign policy and G20 summits and no-fly zones, but as one man, as one white American left feeling incredibly deflated by the struggles of a foreign exchange student, this is what I'm saying: I'm not willing to let fear win.

I'm not willing to allow myself to enter a state of fear produced by the actions of a group of people determined on intimidating the rest of the world into accepting their legitimacy as a "state." I'm not willing to let them win.

I'm not willing to recognize these people as terrorists, because I am not willing to grant them the courtesy of frightening me. Regardless of your personal faith, I believe that one day these men will stand before the God whom they've forsaken. If I beat them there by way of a gun or a bomb, then so be it.

That's enough for me.

Until then, I will go Black Friday shopping, I will go to concerts, I will go to shopping malls, and I will go to football games.

I will continue my life as normal, because I won't be afraid, but this isn't the most important message here.

Even more important than refusing fear in our lives, we must not allow fear into our hearts.

I believe it is fear that causes prejudice and hate like the problems the kid from the start of my writing is experiencing. It is fear that causes us to do things like refuse shelter to people in need. It is fear that causes us to falsely label entire populations of people.

We're called to love, not fear.

2 Timothy 1:7 says, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. "

I'll leave you with this, on top of one of my favorite pieces of scripture, a quote from one of my favorite writers, Ms. Harper Lee:

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”

When this world fails you in reason, let your life be guided by faith, not fear, not prejudice and not hate.