Jan 12 2008
Inside the Gates
Often when people ask Camille or me about our resignations from BJU, they’ll say with a puzzled tone, “Why would you leave when things are getting so much better? I hear that things are improving under the new administration.” I can very much appreciate the wish for things to get better. I believe that things CAN get better (though whether or not they actually will is another story). But those Outside the Gates can’t really appreciate what life is like Inside the Gates.
When we were there, we saw some of the rules and regulations become less stringent — like ties for men and hose for women (and now facial hair for male employees). That’s all well and good, but these relaxations are an unfortunate distraction from the real problem. The trend we were trying to warn against did not entail these small-minded things but rather larger theological perspectives that indicated a much more insidious kind of misdirection. We were trying to get the administration to reassess those foundational struts that have recently become wobbly: mistaken perspectives that deal with works righteousness, fundamental misunderstandings of sanctification, an atmosphere of man’s all-consuming control that wrest from the believer the joy of learning the Holy Spirit’s leading. Which is more important: students who can conscience going to the mall without hose on their legs, or students who understand that God’s righteousness (and not their own goodness) is their life and breath, their all-sufficiency, their joy and hope?
You can choose to believe me or not. Now that I’m on the outside like many of you, what do I know, right? Maybe a current student’s words will help you to understand what I’m talking about.
Unfortunately, the opening meetings this week are pretty discouraging. Could I please hear something about the Grace that flows from the Cross and a little less about how badly God wants to sit back and watch me strive myself to death trying to get sanctified? And I sure hope I “end up” in God’s will, since He’s evidently not going to be very glorified if I blow it…. I’m not hearing about the gospel or the God that I see in Scripture.
I’m beginning to see that fundamentalism isn’t just wrong, it’s frightening….
Matthew 7:26: “But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.”
5 responses so far
I’ve always wondered if someone outside the gates is willing to write a book about the inside and title it, ” Fundamentalism: A House on the Sand “. Ask that question to the man who wrote a similar book how well his own children turned out.
Yeah, when you look at the direction that the SBC has taken in the last few years — turning from the problems it encountered a couple of decades ago to the vital and vibrant (and perhaps more conservative) organization that it is today — it should make us all sit up and take notice of what God can accomplish if He so chooses. No institution (NO institution) is lost if God’s not done with it. And when we join with God to accomplish His work, we are the better for it.
I am a recent graduate of BJU and in the last year I have seen exactly what I have been reading here to be so true! As a result, I am now on the “outside” now, labeled by my church and family as “lost” When I first started questioning things while I was in college, my parents’ (my father is a pastor) reaction was to tell me that I was not saved. Since then I have relized that they are wrong, but it is still a very difficult position as a single girl. It is frightening to see the direction that fundamentalism is going, not only because it’s wrong, but because my entire family is immursed in it and without a miracle they will never change!
It’s sad to see people who have been caught up in religious systems, y’know? And there are plenty of us who have been “caught up” (as in caught up in the machinery of thoughtlessness and ungraciousness). I’m very sorry for the way you’ve been treated. Nietzsche was far from a noble man, but he certainly had it right when he said, “Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.” In many ways people who respond in this way are only exhibiting what they’ve been taught. By God’s grace, we who know better can begin to break the ugly cycle.
I graduated from BJU in 1980. At BJ, I was taught that the Bible was the Final Authority for faith and practice. I assumed that principle guided the administration of BJ.
In 1991, I started evaluating the University, its leadership, and BJU’s end product, the BJU graduate, both preachers and laymen and laywomen.
Since everything within social orders rises and falls on leadership, my research inevitably led directly back to the leadership of BJU, the decision-makers and policy-makers.
As I reviewed the way decisions historically had been made at BJ - decisions affecting faith and practice - I realized that many important decisions and policies had been made based upon nothing more than pragmatic expediency and institutional and personal loyalty, ie., what will appeal to the greatest number of our IFB support base and/or please leadership.
Somewhere along the line, I realized that the Joneses - Bob Jones, Sr., Bob Jones, Jr., and Bob Jones III - were the true final authorities for faith and practice at BJU and that those who disagreed with the Joneses didn’t last very long within their orbit.
As a result of that realization and the fact that the Joneses were often wrong, I was led (either by the Spirit or my Scot-Irish independence) to evaluate (almost) every facet of my own Faith and Practice as taught to me at BJU and within BJU’s IFB orbit. (I have met many BJ grads who are going through the same process of near total spiritual re-evaluation.)
Sadly, in many cases, I found that my faith (and my practices, spiritual attitudes, assumptions, etc.) had been subverted by the teaching that I received at BJU and from BJ-trained preachers.
The Spirit of God is not always able to work effectively in an atmosphere of spiritual coercion. I don’t know what the precise nature of the atmosphere is at BJ presently. But, I do wish that my professors would have been able to operate (teach and mentor) freely, from their own hearts and minds, in an atmosphere free of the coercion that held sway when I attended BJU. What might have been?
Grant, Camille, blogs have forever changed the way institutions are run. (Jonathan Pait has evidently commented on this fact on one of the debate forums.) General George Patton, the great tank commander, said, “Fixed fortifications are monuments to men’s stupidity.” Those at the Fortress of Faith would do well to note that truth and start moving rapidly to respond to a changing landscape. The common people can publicly praise well-doing and expose and rebuke evil-doing as well.
Tell your story. Like Paul in rebuking Peter in Galatians 2, speak the truth in love, reference Scripture, tell your story simply and honestly “before them all”. Rebuke sin as sin without equivocation. This is your responsibility as “an anointed of the Lord”.
The Biblical example is to name names. It is important to name offenders, not for vengeance’s sake, but for the sake of those who are tempted to become partakers of other men’s evil deeds. “Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear…neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure.” (I Tim. 5: 20-22)
Fear is a great and godly motivator for weaklings or for those who otherwise partake in the deeds, or bask in the patronage, of evil doers. (Through the years I have become less and less apt to excuse those who bask in the patronage of the Joneses/BJU while casting a blind eye toward those who are savaged along the way.) As Paul tells Timothy, the secondary purpose in public exposure of evil doing is that others may “fear” like exposure.