{"id":4344,"date":"2012-11-13T08:15:38","date_gmt":"2012-11-13T13:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drslewis.org\/camille\/?p=4344"},"modified":"2013-02-25T01:32:47","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T01:32:47","slug":"spiritual-probation-a-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drslewis.org\/camille\/2012\/11\/13\/spiritual-probation-a-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"Spiritual Probation — A Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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To forget whatever was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself\u2014that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word \u201cdoublethink\u201d involved the use of doublethink.<\/p>\n

~George Orwell<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Some stories from college, like love stories<\/a>, have a universal appeal that connects with a general audience. But so many of events that we BJU alumni share are just inexplicable. Even inscrutable. And always peculiar.<\/p>\n

Those of us whose life partners are not<\/em>\u00a0among BJU alumni give up trying to explain that world. A friend of mine had her Vietnam-vet husband turn to her one evening to state this epiphany, “You. . . . You have PTSD!” It was a revelation for both of them.<\/p>\n

Our never-attended friends just blink and listen kindly. Sometimes they strain to comfort us with us with a word of praise about BJU’s “stand” or their lovely concerts or that wonderful resource<\/a> there in “the Mall.” It still leaves us stymied. There’s so much darkness. Too much to communicate in polite company.<\/p>\n

A dear pillar of our current church, after we had signed her guest book thanking her for a lovely Sunday meal, wrote next to our names our new anti-Infoman code, “F for friendly,” she said. She had no idea, I don’t think, how important that felt.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I remember stuttering to my fellow grad students at IU, “Look. It’s just . . . you can’t. . . . I can’t explain it.” And shrugging. And giving up. Shaking my head.<\/p>\n

When there is no friendly connection, however, often we survivors get a\u00a0caveat-emptor-inspired “You chose to go there!” or a flippant “You should have known better!” It’s a pretty effective “shut-up.” Those assumptions are too knotted together to unravel in an acquaintance-level conversation.<\/p>\n

So a description of that world goes unspoken. And the world lives on. People assume it’s like every other college experience and the handbook is like every other conduct code. Just because we don’t have the words.<\/p>\n

Rich Merritt<\/a>, I believe, has given us new words and good ones. He has published Spiritual Probation: A Novel<\/em><\/a> which just begins to describe what is too often indescribable. It’s a must-read for any BJU alumni and BJU-satellite alumni. And it’s a good book to show our well-intentioned friends who think we’re more than a little quirky.<\/p>\n

And it’s an indispensable book for the civic sphere at large to understand this former Republican campaign stop<\/a> and Greenville<\/a> political powerhouse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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In his novel, where Jones<\/a> is now Johnson and Greenville<\/a> is now Guerneville, Merritt offers a very human story–with bright, promising young people caught in an oppressive, intrusive ideology and thrown into the most senseless tragedy. Rich based the story on Dayne Baker<\/a>‘s tragic plane crash and the civil court case that followed, Baker v. Bob Jones University. If you’d like to see all the court documents themselves, you can read them here<\/a>.\u00a0BJU’s main defense brief<\/a> is a document so typical of the ones I’ve discovered in my research from the last 100 years.<\/p>\n

19921000Defendant’s Trial Brief MainDoc<\/a>