Ebenezer — The Ultimatum
March 13th, 2008 -- Posted in Grace, Heal, Remember, Speak | 18 Comments »Whate’er my God ordains is right:
Holy his will abideth;
I will be still whate’er he doth;
And follow where he guideth:
He is my God: though dark my road,
He holds me that I shall not fall:
Wherefore to him I leave it all.Whate’er my God ordains is right:
He never will deceive me;
He leads me by the proper path;
I know he will not leave me:
I take, content, what he hath sent;
His hand can turn my griefs away,
And patiently I wait his day.Whate’er my God ordains is right:
Though now this cup, in drinking,
May bitter seem to my faint heart,
I take it, all unshrinking:
My God is true; each morn anew
Sweet comfort yet shall fill my heart,
And pain and sorrow shall depart.Whate’er my God ordains is right:
Here shall my stand be taken;
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine,
Yet am I not forsaken;
My Father’s care is round me there;
He holds me that I shall not fall:
And so to him I leave it all.
My dear friend often reminded me of that song during that difficult year. I was totally unfamiliar with it. It has a different character than I was used to hearing in so many gospel songs in my slice of the world. It wasn’t saying that I let God take care of me. It was saying that God just took care of me. Amen.
That summer, after we had submitted the document but before we had gotten a response, I participated in a bridal shower with my colleagues. It felt so good to be with them. I never told them that because I didn’t want to gush, but I had felt so isolated that previous year. It was just nice to chat about silly things like vacations and dishes. We did talk about the changes that were to happen in the coming semester. A friend I’ve known for forever tossed out a little comment: “Take it from me. It doesn’t matter if you put in your resignation before Feb 1st or after. If they consider you a lifer, they’re always going to react badly to your leaving!” That was another room-spinning moment for me. I felt like I had been punched in the gut, but I couldn’t figure out why. We were staying!! We were committed for the long haul. But I couldn’t shake the comment.
We were out of town when we got the email response to our statement. The whole thing is a blur now. I think we were in Tennessee or Missouri. I just don’t know. Their response: they had “some concerns.”
It hit us both between the eyes. That’s it. We’re done. It was just a question of when. We both repeated over and over and over — “But we will not break contract. Not on your life. No sirree!”
After what seemed like an eternity, we all had the second meeting. On Friday the 13th (of July). Another ominous day.
We were handed one copy of a lengthy, single-spaced document detailing their response to our statement. And the presentation of their explanation began.
1) We were orthodox. Yes, thank you. We knew that. William Combs, J.I. Packer, Louis Berkhof, B.B. Warfield, Augustine, and the Apostle Paul are pretty good foundations.
2) “They” only disagreed in emphasis. Fair enough. I understand.
This criticism, in essence, came down to the fact that we were, according to them, “too Reformed” for their comfort — or for their presumed customer base’s comfort level. This point is important to understand no matter what the Campus Store sells: any optimistic predictions that the organization’s new administration is growing more tolerant of Reformed-leaning ideas are simply groundless. We know from the conversations with the very top echelon that that is not the case.
To further prove that particular point, when my husband was relishing the goodness of a gracious Sovereign, one of the gentleman seized upon what he thought was a loophole in Calvinism. “If grace is so irresistible, then why do you need to talk about it at all?” he said. I started to laugh because I recognized this sophomoric attempt to trip up TULIP. But Grant was truly just rejoicing in a good God and wasn’t trying to push doctrine or argue Calvinism (that’s how overtly Reformed we actually are). He tried to understand the question and finally just responded with, “What are you talking about?” while I continued to shake my head.
Like many, I was hopefully optimistic that a change for the better was taking place under BJU’s new administration. And as reluctant as I was to admit it before, during, and immediately after the meeting, I now see that really very little has changed in the last 81 years in the way that organization handles intellectual differences, faculty development, interpersonal disagreement, and administrative egos. Stories from the disenfranchised are legion, and if you compare our story to ones from 30 years ago, it’s plain to see that nothing’s changed. The direction that the meeting was about to take that unlucky July afternoon made that abundantly clear.
Somewhere at that point in the conversation, I asked for the document from Grant and flipped to the last page. Don’t know why really, but I knew the clincher was going to be there. . . . and I found it:
3) “If you cannot hold your position without openly promoting it in spoken or written communication to colleagues, students, or others at a distance from the University, we would have to come to a parting of ways.”
There you go.
I interrupted the conversation and asked what “openly promoting” meant. The leader of the discussion said, “How about changing that to ‘proselytize’? That’s what’s in the Faculty Handbook.” I nodded and said, “Okay. I understand that, but this is still different. Before you all had said that we needed to keep these things out of the classroom, and I understand that. But this? What are the boundaries here? I don’t want to mess this up.”
And — no joke — we got a shrug. No explanation. No nuance. Nothing. Just a shrug.
I was reeling. Clearly they weren’t going to tell us. It was more vagueness. The same gentleman, who at my February meeting was so clearly blunt, was now being cagey. Now I had the deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression.
I do remember one other moment vividly. My husband was in rare form. He took off on Galatians. It was beautiful. “Paul doesn’t mince words there. He says that if you put yourself under a rule-keeping system, you ‘fall from grace.’ That’s sobering.”
The leader responded: “But Grant, you don’t understand. Paul is talking about a specific problem with the Judaizers. You can’t apply that to today.”
What?!! ::checking ears for ‘taters:: What did you say? Are we all fundamentalists in this room or mainline liberal Protestants? We were so stunned by the comment that we asked for clarification in several follow-up email messages. Despite those repeated attempts, it seemed we could not pin him down on the issue.
The rest of the discussion about the document was fairly academic. Grant and I really couldn’t come to any conclusions because we needed to read their response and talk it all through. But it seemed that all was to end pleasantly enough.
But then, like all our other Ebenezers, it turned rotten. I’m getting sick again just thinking of it.
The leader appeared to be nonverbally wrapping up the meeting and turned to the other gentleman saying, “Is there anything else?” Now, this was somewhat disingenuous because they admitted later that they both knew that there was something else — together they had been “praying about how to handle this situation” earlier.
The second gentleman said, “Well, there is one matter I wish I didn’t have to bring up. . . .”
::eye roll:: Anyone reading who’s been a student at BJU knows that this is just the scripted cue for lowering the boom.
He continued, “A staff woman had been doing some internet research on modesty, and she came across this blog post at ‘True Womanhood.’ And there was a comment you made there: ‘This is so interesting. I have to admit that I thought of you all while I was getting dressed yesterday. I was wearing an “uncheckably” lower neckline that was still, IMNSHO, modest. Christian liberty rocks.’ So . . . what do you have to say for yourself?”
Huh? Nothing. What’s the big deal? They obviously thought they had me in some embarrassing position. I wasn’t embarrassed. The leader of the meeting was feigning dismayed surprise (as if this were his first hearing of it) and then utter disappointment. I still wasn’t understanding the reaction.
But then I had this very sick feeling. . . . After that vague ultimatum about “others at a distance from the university,” I realized that this was all connected. It all the same big ball of wax.
I cried. It was too much. It was too personal. It was too petty. My sweet Prince Valiant came to my aid and explained to them what I meant in that post: that modesty is internal, that you can be immodest even if you “check,” and that it’s an issue between you and God.
I was so disgusted with this ignoble behavior. I finally burst out, “I knew something was up because I was getting a lot of hits on my statcounter from this IP address. I knew that someone from campus was googling me. A lot. . . . Why didn’t you send that staff woman to me? Why are we talking about this here at all? This is exactly the kind of gossip that I’ve been subjected to all year. This is the same-old, same-old. YOU should have sent her right to me instead of encouraging gossip and tattling by bringing it up here. I’ll tell you, I know exactly how the students feel.” I shook my head and clenched my jaw.
That thought kept ringing in my head. This. This is what Grant and I were objecting to from the start really. The gracelessness of a system that justified all sorts of secrecy, lying, and cruelty simply because of who was doing it. A system that claimed to be parental but was simply punitive. We had heard about it from our students. We had read about it in those books. And now we were getting it first-hand, in living color, right before our eyes, right from our friends. . . . I pray I never forget how that feels so that I’m never tempted to do it to another human being. I know who that “staff woman” is, and I continue to be terribly disappointed in the whole mess.
My outburst stunned them. I didn’t hear much else except a misinterpretation of James 3. I could only stare as I listened. My mind was reeling. I heard the Scripture used not as a corrective for those of us riddled with our total inability to save ourselves, but as a club to shut me up and as a prop for an ideological house of cards. “Classic spiritual abuse,” I thought, stunned at the irony. The book that I first read in denial I now was seeing demonstrated before me. The very book that I bought as a gift for this gentleman just a year before.
We left the “Holy of Holies.” Smiling and joking because that’s what you do after a whippin’. You learn to do that.